A Personal History of this Translation
(An account of research and presentations leading up to this translation of Laban's 1926 Choreographie)
This English translation of Laban’s (1926) German book Choreographie has developed along my own personal journey over the past 20 years. Before I even knew about the book I had already become known as some sort of ‘choreutics expert’ which I expressed in my Laban Movement Analysis certification project which probed into the details of “volutes” leading to a deeper understanding of the systematic structure of Laban’s space harmony system, together with practical experience creating a dance duet with the spatial forms:
- Longstaff, Jeffrey S. (1987). The theory and practice of volute spatial forms. Certification Project in Laban Movement Analysis, Laban / Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, New York. (Advisors: Peggy Hackney, Pam Schick, Carol-Lynne Moore and Kate Jobe)
This was soon followed by my Masters of Science Thesis which reviewed details of polyhedral geometry, how these could be applied to spatial analyses of body movement together with further practical explorations of using these in choreography:
- Longstaff, Jeffrey S. (1988). Moving in Crystals: A Continued Integration of Polyhedral Geometry with Rudolf Laban’s Choreutics towards its use as a Choreographic Tool. M. S. Thesis, University of Oregon, Eugene.
This thesis was considered to be unique and significant enough to be chosen for publication by the university:
During these early practical choreographic studies I first realized how, contrary to a typical LMA doctrine, that body movement does correspond to regular polyhedra, but instead is in a constant pattern of flux, growing and stretching or recoiling. Regular polyhedra are useful as regular grids for general analyses and mapping of spatial forms, but actual body movement is continually deviating. When this is analyzed through polyhedral concepts the polyhedra themselves are not seen as rigid or fixed, but as constantly changing shape or deforming from one polyhedra to another.
I first saw the German text of Choreographie in the library archives at Laban Center on Laurie Grove in New cross London SE 14 when I began my PhD studies there in 1989. I obtained a photocopy, drew on my German language studies from High School to begin translating some of the main concepts and used my knowledge of Labanotation and choreutic scales to decipher the early notations in the figures.
Soon after, my native Berlinerin companion Evamaria Zierach and I both went through the book with a ‘fine toothed comb’ during the summers and winter of 1992-1993 while she participated in, and I was assisting with, the Laban Movement Analysis program in Berlin (directed by Peggy Hackney). During that time I picked apart every little word in the text and relied on Evamaria to add many more illustrative examples and explanations informed by her background in German history and her professional background in physiotherapie and gymnastics in Germany. With Evamaria as the main leader in interpreting the sometimes ‘old’ German expressions, we completed a first rough draft English translation.
In the years that followed I continued to work on the translation generally, but mainly focused on individual issues that emerged out of the book.
One major theme, perhaps more clearly expressed by Laban in Choreographie than his other works, was the idea of regular orientations of dimensions and diagonals as the basic spatial concepts, which then deflect in infinite irregular orientations of inclinations in actual body movement. I found this same theory in psychological studies of spatial cognition where prototypical spatial concepts (regular, normalized, idealized) serve as mental references points for the myriad of actual irregular variations of spatial features in the real world. This “prototype deflection hypothesis” became a major component of my PhD Thesis:
My PhD supervisor was Valerie Preston-Dunlop, one of Laban’s students and an expert in choreutics, and my PhD examiners included Roderyk Lange, another student of Laban and an expert in the history and applications of Labanotation. Immediately after the successful PhD examination Marion North (another of Laban’s students) offered me a position as a research supervisor at the Laban Center for movement and dance (then at Laurie Grove, New Cross, London SE 14).
After this, a series of publications and presentations on various aspects of Choreographie followed.
I gave a practical movement class at a Motus Humanus Round Table exploring deflected content of cardinal planes and common dance movement:
Next came a similar workshop at the EuroLab conference in Rotterdam, this time focusing on the actual notation signs in Choreographie (‘vector signs’) and how they could be used:
- Longstaff, Jeffrey S. (1998). ‘Vector symbols as used in Choreographie’. Paper and practical workshop presented at the 1998 EuroLab Conference (May 21-22). Rotterdam: Modern Dance Centre.
Also at this time a portion of a movement memory experiment from my PhD was published which provided some evidence that people actually do encode the spatial aspect of body movements as regular dimensional prototypes, even though the movements themselves may be at irregular orientations:
- Longstaff, Jeffrey S. (1998). Subjective organisation in the recall of abstract body movements. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 86, 931-940.
Soon after I gave a lecture at the Laban Center conference day, reviewing the notation signs used in Choreographie and how they represent lines of motion (‘vectors’):
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Longstaff, Jeffrey S.. (1999). ‘Vectors and deflections in Laban’s Choreographie’. In I. Bramley (Ed.), Theorizing and Contextualizing Dance; Papers from the Laban Centre Research Day [May 28] (pp. 43-51). London: Laban Centre.
Following this I presented a lecture at Brunel University encompassing a larger context for deflecting inclinations by considering human anatomical structure as the source of ‘chaos’, that is continuous variability in physical movement performance, together with examples of visual spatial perception, and how Laban’s conceptual system of “24 deflecting inclinations” offers a parsimonious conceptual structure for encompassing this infinite variability:
I then published a larger overview of the psychological validity of Rudolf Laban’s choreutics including concepts from Choreographie as researched in my PhD thesis:
Next I presented a workshop at the University of Surrey, specifically on deflections, focusing on dimensions and diagonals and how these deflect in body movement into deflecting inclinations, and thus Laban’s system of choreutics can be conceived as “vectors” (as it is in Choreographie) rather than the point-based static concepts which developed later (together with the position-based direction signs of Labanotation):
- Longstaff, Jeffrey S.. (2001). Beyond the Scaffolding, Conceiving of a Choreutic Vector Space. Movement workshop presented at “What is Laban Movement Analysis?”, Movement Analysis conference series; Labanotation Institute, University of Surrey; 6 January. (Invited)
(Reviewed by Hoffman, Phillip. 2001. Conference reports. Action Recording, 89, 2-4.)
I was invited to write up the perspective from this workshop in the Laban Guild magazine:
A major theoretical presentation followed at the conference of the International Council of Kinetography Laban (ICKL) where I gave details about the translation of the old symbols which Laban used in Choreographie, the meanings of which had been forgotten, but which I translated into modern-day Labanotation direction signs, showing that Laban’s old notation signs were used to represent lines of motion without regard to any specific points or positions in space, and thus they can be considered to be “vectors signs”:
The next year I used the concept of deflections to discuss the concept of ‘tetrahedra’ in choreutics and how these do not only apply the the sitting triangular meditative posture (which an LMA attitude had emerged that this is their main embodiment) but that these also rotate and deflect so as to be applicable to a wide variety of postures such as standing on one leg, leaping through the air, or the 3-point stance when preparing to run:
Next I visited the World Congress on Dance Research and shared a practical workshop on how ballet movements can deflect into irregularly oriented inclinations (according to Laban’s vector conception):
- Longstaff, Jeffrey S. (2004). Dynamic Body-Space; Rudolf Laban’s choreutic conception. Practical presentation at the 18th World Congress on Dance Research, Argos Greece 3-7 November. Council International de la Danse; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (CID, UNESCO)
http://www.CID-PORTAL.org/site/index.php (August 2011)
One particular chapter in Choreographie, titled simply: “Minuet” , then received detailed attention since Laban devoted several pages to it in his book, but never explained why. With Laban Notator Andrea Treu, the minuet was notated and through interviews with Laban students the significance of the Minuet for Choreographie and for Laban’s Choreutics was identified as showing the dance as examples of movement in the three cardinal planes:
This research was given as a theoretical lecture at the ICKL conference in Beijing, China:
- Longstaff, Jeffrey S., with Andrea Treu. (2004). Recovering the minuet from Rudolf Laban's (1926) Choreographie. In Proceedings of the twenty-third biennial conference of the International Council of Kinetography Laban (ICKL), 23 - 28 July (pp. 50-91). Beijing Normal University, China: ICKL. (Includes 144 bar notation score)
Abstract http://www.ickl.org/conf04_beijing/sessions/sessions08.html (July 2004)
And the findings were also presented as a practical workshop at the same ICKL conference:
- Longstaff, Jeffrey S.. (2004). Forms and symmetries in the minuet from Rudolf Laban's (1926) Choreographie. In Proceedings of the twenty-third biennial conference of the International Council of Kinetography Laban (ICKL), 23 - 28 July (pp. 174-179) . Beijing Normal University, China: ICKL.
One year later at the next ICKL conference in London I prepared a major review of all the various notations which Laban had experimented with in Choreographie and associated these with other modern-day notation methods and other LMA concepts:
Soon after I focused again on findings of prototypes and deflections in spatial cognitive studies and how these parallel the same structures devised by Laban for deflecting inclinations (and their vector signs) as used in Choreographie and embedded in the system of choreutic scales:
With my colleagues Andrea Treu and Darren Royston, I returned to the “Minuet” chapter in Choreographie, presenting this to the Dolmetsch Historical Dance Society as a new perspective for the minuet, beyond traditional historical accounts:
The topic of continuously deflecting inclinations in human body movement (as embedded in Laban’s choreutic system) was further elaborated in a publication within the Motus Humanus Supplement of the Laban Guild Magazine, where perceptual and motor characteristics of constantly changing stimulations, as opposed to steady-states were considered, and how living organic phenomena embodies, and perceptual-sensory data arises from, continuous change rather than from states or positions:
Most recently I compiled a large overview of schema structures (prototypes with deflections) as evidenced in studies of spatial cognition, and related how these same structures are embedded in Laban’s choreutic system and embedded in the vector signs:
- Longstaff, Jeffrey S. (2010). Schema structures in spatial cognition, motor learning, and Rudolf Laban’s Choreutics. Lecture given at Motus Humanus Advanced Seminar: Rudolf Laban: New Facets of His Life and Work. Columbia College Chicago, 22-23 May.
http://www.laban-analyses.org/jeffrey/2010-schema-Laban-choreutics/index.htm
- Longstaff, Jeffrey S. (2010). Schema structures in spatial cognition, motor learning, and Rudolf Laban’s Choreutics. Motus Humanus Supplement. (in press).
This extensive background around the topics of Choreutics, I hope, have made this current English translation of Laban’s (1926) Choreographie deeply informed and well integrated with modern-day concepts in Labanotation and Laban Movement Analysis.
Jeffrey Scott Longstaff
August, 2011
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