Papers
Andreia Yonashiro
(UFRJ, Brazil)
Topological Gesture and other cosmologies from Choreotopology
Choreotopology is a proposition of Joana Lopes (2001, 2008, 2020) and, overall, gives name to an approximation between the art of movement and some models and terms of subatomic particles in Physics and mathematics. In part, it is about a critical review of Rudolf Laban's work. In part, it is about the creation of pedagogical discourses capable of performing compositional acts in dance. In this paper the notion of topological gesture (Yonashiro, 2020) is elaborated on the basis of Choreotopology. This other perspective of gesture enables us to recognize other kinds of relations between dance and cosmology. Some particularities of Rudolf Laban's work and of the Choreotopology will be approximated to ethnographic data present in the anthropology of lowland Amerindian populations, in which dance and other cosmologies are present (Gell 1985, Lima 2005, Beaudet 2017, Vilaça 2017). Such a gesture enables the discussion of a relationship between dance and anthropophagy from a metaphysics of predation (Viveiros de Castro, 2015), rather than thinking of it as a cultural metaphor.
Carolina Navarro
(UFRJ, Brazil)
From 1922 to 2022: the application of modern digital technologies in LMA
The Spatial Scales suggested by Laban provide a wide practical possibility for the experimentation of the body in space from different courses and dynamics. This paper aims to present the initiatives developed at the National Museum of UFRJ in the Digital Image and Processing Laboratory. Using the Motion Capture technology, the phases of this research foresee the development of an educational tool for Dance teachers in the Virtual Reality environment and the creation of a choreographic work that returns the virtual registers of the Spatial Scales to the scene. It is believed that the data generated by means of Motion Capture allow a different way for the visualization of gestures, inaugurating new possibilities of dialogues between Dance and other areas of knowledge, as well as body and space.
Cláudio Marcelo Carneiro Leão Lacerda
(UFPE, Brazil)
Loose Ends of Modernism
This paper proposes a reflection based on the idea that modernism left some "loose ends", whether considering that it was not completely finished or realized in its full potentiality or not recognized in its plurality. In the first part I present eight points covering "loose ends" from different points of view: the modernist influences of Malevich and Kandinsky on Zaha Hadid's architecture; the interruption of Laban's work in Germany in 1937, with his exile; the discontinuity of the teaching and practice of Laban's legacy in post-World War II Germany and its rescue in tanztheater; questionings related to the Art Week of 1922; power struggles in the discourses about modernism, having as example Banes and Greenberg in the USA; reflections about modernity/modernization in Brazil; critical reviews about the international origin of the term modernism; historical comparison of 100 years in the contexts of pandemic and war. In the second part I will explain how I have connected some "loose ends" in my dance practice, with emphasis on Laban's theories and the influence of Hadid's architecture.
Denise Mancebo Zenicola
(UFF, Brazil)
Zara Tempo
Proposes to approach some dimensions of the principle and concept of the Time factor in the construction of Modern Dance. To this end, it considers modernism as rupture and restructuring, carried out from the 1920s on. The aim of this article is to establish a decolonial reflection in cross-cultural analysis in diversity of perspectives. Therefore, it considers principles and uses of the concept of Time in dance and uses the concepts: Bantu of the Bangdnga; Yoruba of Iroko, the enchanted tree; of the Western Time passage Kronos; of Laban in the relationship between energy, space and time. Our thematic analysis axis thus refers to the concepts and processes of researchers in the space/time relationship and relies on theorists such as Fu- Kiau, Harvey, Laban, Martins, Mignolo, Newlove.
Guilherme Hinz
(Paris 8, France/Brazil)
Basil Easton and the First Steps of Labanotation/Laban cinematography in Rio de Janeiro (1952-1971)
The purpose of this paper is to present part of my ongoing doctoral research. In order to understand the construction of the Labanian field in Brazil, I was led, as part of my thesis, to undertake some case studies on figures that claimed a Labanian heritage. It is on one of these figures, quite unknown to the contemporary Labanian field, that I would like to focus my presentation, giving great attention to the dynamics of exchanges that inform the transfers of Laban's thought in Brazil. Basil Easton (Dmitri), a US artist and pedagogue who settled in Rio de Janeiro in the 1950s, worked for almost four decades on the diffusion of Laban/Labanotation kinetography. In this communication, through document analysis and archival cross-referencing, we will be interested in some stages and challenges of his activities in the dissemination of Laban notation in Brazil in the second half of the twentieth century. My goal being also to share the sources with which I work, my intervention is intended to be richly illustrated with photos, newspaper articles and excerpts of correspondence.
Julia Coelho Franca
(UFRJ, Brazil)
Circularities, revolutions and turns around oneself and the other: the thinking-acting of the circus body under the Labanian prism
The paper aims to share some aspects of my ongoing doctoral research (PPGArtes-UERJ), which has focused on possible analyses of the circus body under the prism of dance. We propose to ask how to perceive/read the gestures danced by circus performers can open the possibilities of looking at the circus arts? Under Labanian lenses, we perceived a capture of the multifaceted meanings of the circus bodies, which can establish a state of "turning over", as in a "turn over itself", found in several Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis deepenings, and manifested in its 4 Categories. Inspired by the term "body revolutions" (GUEST, 2011, 417- 429) these "turns" manage to enter and exit the Body-Space self (MIRANDA, 2008) in one movement. In a never-ending practice of turning around with the universe that surrounds it, among countless objects, apparatuses and specific gadgets, would it be too much to think that circus expressivity has a saying in itself, its own dramaturgy that accompanies the transformations of its knowledge and that is constituted in its bodies in movement?
Juliet Chambers-Coe
(Universidade de Essex, Inglaterra)
Ethical Legacies of the Laban/Bartenieff Movement System — differences and sameness in Laban’s use of polarity: a gentle provocation in dealing with social precarity
This abstract proposal for a presentation at the 22+100: Laban and the Modernist Project conference aligns with one of the conference’s aims to “support decolonial perspectives in movement studies”. This can take the format of a traditional paper presentation, or my preference, a moving paper where participants are invited and prompted to move the ideas under discussion, lifting theoretical ideas off the page and into the body in acts of “movement thinking” (Laban, 1980).
Letícia Nabuco
(Diversão e Arte, Brazil)
Beach States:
pathways from the body to the city
Inspired by the Pau Brasil Manifesto, PRAIA proposes an urban intervention that establishes a beach in the commercial center of the city of Juiz de Fora/MG. Considering the influence that coastal cities operate in the social imaginary and in the field of desires of its population, the project was developed through a public call for proposals commemorating the Week of 22 and had its debut in February this year. It caused a real commotion in the city and beyond, involving media, macro-political disputes, daily conversations and social media, culminating in the prohibition of its second presentation, which ended up happening after a popular mobilization in which hundreds of people occupied the city streets in bathing suits showing and celebrating their bodies. All the stages of this process were conducted with the selected artists from a somatic approach based on the Bartenieff Fundamentals principles, seeking support to perform scenic situations based on the exploration of variations between the Remote and Mobile States and changes of Form in Shape-Flow, creating what we call the Beach State.
Luize Helena da Silva Pessanha
(CIEMH2 Núcleo Cultural, Brazil)
Impulse, pulse, improvise
Throughout the years of technical study in Dance I understood, from my body, the importance of codified movement through the experience of several techniques, such as classical ballet and modern dance. However, when I got to know the theories developed by Rudolf Laban, I understood the relevance of learning dance from the fundamentals of Efforts Theory and Spatial Harmonies. Through the methodology conceived by Laban, the dancer dives into himself to develop the non-coded movement, so, as I deepened my research on the legacy he left for Dance, I identified the path to extend this ability so that my students could have a complementary dance education. So I developed a course, which at first was called "to Improvise" and later became Impulse, Pulsing and Improvising, with the main objective of fomenting the expression of the dancers beyond the codified movements when dancing through the study of the foundations of Laban's theories.
Marta Scarpato
(UNIP, Brazil)
Teacher's Expressivity and the movement factors in the teaching-learning process
This paper aims to present reflections about the possible interrelations between teacher's expressivity and the movement factors studied by Laban in order to propose notes on the pedagogical action of teachers in the teaching-learning process with the purpose of emphasizing a full-time and integrated education among all the actors: teacher and students.
Thaisa Martins Coelho dos Santos
(UFRJ, Brazil)
Archeochoreology: Debates on Dance's Self-Effacement, Notation and Autonomy
In the following paper we will present the discipline of Archeochoreology through a transdisciplinary approach between the fields of Dance and Archeology based on authors such as Preston-Dunlop, Royo, Shanks and Pearson. We will reflect on materiality in Dance, presenting a debate about the defense of the self-effacement of dance and how this affects the advancement of discussions about notation, documentation and autonomy of the academic field of Dance.
Rosane Campello, Luciana Carnout and Helena Bevilaqua
(Adolpho Bloch, Brazil)
Facing waves that spread...
The work done in the Adolpho Bloch Actors' Dancers Company since 1999, within the Adolpho Bloch State Technical School, unites the Labanian field with the Methodology of Significant Dance (MDS), idealized by the teacher Rosane Campello, based on the theory of significant learning of the psychopedagogue David Ausubel. MDS believes that for a meaningful learning in dance, the contents present in the classes must make sense to the student, associated to previous experiences, through facts, objects, images, memories and fed with new knowledge, so that they can build on what they already know and, thus, learn autonomously within the collective. This search for stimulating self-knowledge from the body as a protagonist field of knowledge in relation to the space, to the people around and to the mottos of life is directly connected to the principles of LMA. The company's trajectory with these pillars of knowledge has been taking shape, reaching more and more students interested in pursuing the field of dance. Several performances have been created, presented in great cultural spaces in Rio de Janeiro and so Rosane Campello had the idea of expanding the company's training ground and implemented, within FAETEC, the Technical Course in Dance, the first course with an integrated curricular framework in Latin America. The components of Contemporary Dance and Body Consciousness are based on LMA, and in these 11 years of existence it has fomented the production of dance in Rio de Janeiro, with several professionals from the technical course and the company seeking continued education and insertion in the labor market.
Sandra Sok
(UPPU-PULS/HUP-SUP, Croácia)
Somatic and Philosophical Approaches around the Embodied Flow in Motion and Phenomenology in Thinking in Experiential Learning and Contemporary Movement by Using Basic Concepts of Laban Movement Analysis and Bartenieff Fundamentals
This paper explores embodied flow in motion and somatic voyages of ego, Self and freedom of thinking body in motion and fluid movement expression by developing mind awareness and activating embodied thinking and accepting vulnerability, equality and diversity through listening and observing as a main tool to encourage to the movement. These movement has its own inspiration, discoveries and pathway. My philosophy and embodied fluid movement ranges through themes in theory of perceiving and aesthetics combining methodological approaches from life experience, modern metaphysics, phenomenology, somatics, meditation, Buddhism and Indian philosophy. Describing movement through LMA/Bartenieff concepts and terminology I am engaging into experiences that leading us to reflect what really does it mean being in the lived body and to heighten awareness of our ‘identities in motion’. Involvement in that kind of movement language introduce us with a lively and intimate interplay with the body and its limbs, environment, emotional, social and historical aspects of myself and the audience, which produces ongoing whole body dynamical motion expression.
Sandra Adiarte
(SRH School, Heidelberg;
HWR School, Berlin, Germany)
"Who´s bad?" Observing to close a case.
Structured observation is a profound part of forensic and scientific evaluation. The structured analysis of movement, movement patterns and behaviour in this context, not so much. While video data collection and usage is common among social media users, it is still a well under researched topic when it comes to criminal investigation, analyses about modus operandi, as well as in policing and enforcing the law. Despite the growing automatization of data processing and analyzing, the human factor remains a crucial part in investigative proceedings and the necessity to train personnel in observation has never been more evident.
While the bigger part of Europe is still getting used to the idea of using surveillance systems and body cams regularly for security and policing matters, other countries have been exploring and using video footage for these purposes for over 8 decades. In times of insecure virtual and unstable living spaces the ability to identify threats and tell friend from foe is crucial. This is a necessity we share with like-minded individuals all over the world. Laban Movement Analysis, Laban Bartenieff Movement Studies and comparable observation systems hold the systematics, theories and terminology to describe and evaluate movement in complex contexts. Possible applications and limitations are discussed.
Scientific Committee
Agatha Oliveira (PhD UFRJ/FAV certified in LBMS)
Ana Bevilaqua (Ms FAV/CMA)
Adriana Bonfatti (Ms Unirio/CMA)
Billie Lepczyk (PhD Virginia Tech/CMA)
Cláudio Lacerda (PhD UFPE/CMA)
Flávia Valle (PhD UFRGS/CMA)
Isabel Marques (PHD Laban Centre London/Caleidos)
Lígia Tourinho (PhD UFRJ/CMA)
Marisa Lambert (PhD Unicamp/CMA)
Regina Miranda (Ms Centro Laban Rio/CMA)
Registration for Workshops
Registration for the workshops is reserved for participants and presenters of the Conference and will be made during the Accreditation.
Workshops
Alison Curtis-Jones
(Trinity Laban, Reino Unido)
Organism and Fracture
This workshop explores Rhythm and Effort, their affinities with time and space through embodied understanding of harmonic principles. Exploration includes rupturing the principles to engage with creative possibilities for dynamic movement phrases. We will work through collaborative tasks exploring metric and arbitrary rhythmic phrases in movement embodying the changes in intention and expressivity resulting in individual and group cohesion.
Andreia Yonashiro
(UFRJ, Brasil)
Repetition and Transformation: the Notion of Topological Gesture from Choreotopology
Choreotopology is a proposition of Joana Lopes (2001, 2008, 2020) and, overall, gives name to an approximation between the art of movement and some models and terms from subatomic particle in Physics and Mathematics. In part, it is about a critical review of Rudolf Laban's work. In part, it is about the creation of pedagogical discourses capable of producing compositional acts in dance. In this workshop the notion of topological gesture (Yonashiro, 2020) will be practiced from Choreotopology. Some kinesiological protocols will be taught, like the Extended Relational Gesture (GERA). The topological repetition and transformation will be thought in an approximation between examples of dances coming from the Labanian corpus, from Coreotopology, and from ethnographic data present in anthropology concerning lowland Amerindian peoples, in which dance and other cosmologies are present (Gell 1985, Lima 2005, Beaudet 2017, Vilaça 2017). Such a gesture enables the discussion of a relationship between dance and anthropophagy from a metaphysics of predation (Viveiros de Castro, 2015), rather than thinking of it as a cultural metaphor.
[cancelled]
Anneliese Monika Koch
(Vis a Vis Tanztheatre, Austria)
Dramaturgy via the Body: Vis a Vis Tanztheater Performance Research Laboratory
This Performance laboratory focusing on Choreographic Research based on practices of Vis a Vis Dance Theatre offers an opportunity to young performaners for self growth and intense physical challenge The work will inlcude contemporay approaches to Laban based movement practice and its value as a creative tool of for the Training and Education of Performing Artists.
From Improvisation to Composition: Rhythms of the conscious and unconscious Mind
To be able to move is to be able to improvise. In the moment of improvisation we forget everything just like children absorbed in play, exploring endless, extraordinary possibilities through the rhythms of human emotion in contact with others. How powerful it can be to witness a choreography being born in front of our eyes, just like in a Jazz Concert. We are no longer observers of some kind of frozen Life. We become part of an experience which is life. Life cannot be repeated. It demands constant attention to constant movement. The workshop will introduce approaches to Improvisation as a creative tool in Performance rooted in the Practices of Vis a Vis Tanztheater. The emphasis will be on the rhythmic dialogue between performer and director in the form of conducted rehearsal. This workshop is designed for a minimum of 6 physical performers (open level) Duration: can be arranged (from one 90 minutes to 3 days).
Bala Sarasvati
(University of Georgia, Estados Unidos)
Identifying and Applying LMA/BF to Contemporary Dance Techniques
In this workshop, we will explore the creative process within the contemporary modern dance technique class environment. This will include movement processes that involve release, riding on the wave of momentum, free-falling; and three-dimensional activities such as looping, threading, and spiraling while regenerating internal lines of energy. The correlation of all these dynamic aspects, now considered central to the contemporary modern dance genre at large, will be explored through level changes, short partnering sequences, moving through space and during stillness. The essential core of this experience is to access and further deepen inner body connections; and awaken movement sensations to create motion, momentum and expression. While cultivating artistry and nurturing the creative process in the daily technique regime may be greatly enhanced through anatomical, sensory, kinetic awareness, sustaining an inquisitive nature and pure passion for motion and movement is essential. While we explore both simple and sophisticated movement processes we will also reflect our body’s memory of significant individual moments of freedom. When do we feel most alive through open channels of energy flow? How do we apply LMA/BF to practice technical skills and enhance our creative approaches to do so?
Darren Royston
(Laban Guild International, Reino Unido)
“At the Still Point”: The Moving Actor in Modernist Drama
In 1922, T.S. Eliot published THE WASTE LAND which marked the poet as a leading artist in the Modernist Movement. This workshop will use Eliot’s modernist dramatic verse as textual material to explore Laban’s modernist approach to Time as a Factor of Motion in dramatic performance. Rudolf Laban’s ides of movement for the stage connected to developments in modernist drama, particularly in the changes of how the element of time was conveyed in performance due to changes in the speed of the modern world. The individual’s physical sensation of time was changed by such things as: new modes of transport; communicating the sensation of moving through space at different velocities; and the idea that the future appeared to arrive at a quicker pace. Laban’s exploration in spatial rhythm in performance challenged the established metric mechanical notion of time as a fixed measured unit. He encouraged a freedom of expression with an awareness of the dynamic continuum of sensations, the perception of which is phenomenologically experienced as “inner feeling.” This has direct links to modernist theatrical representation in drama as an “outer expression.” In this workshop, the actor-dancer will be guided through an exploration of modernist dramatic text informed by the Motion Factor of Time, constantly being required to “make it new” as moments are given combined body and voice performance. In simple terms, we will aspire to the maxim from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “Suit the action to the word, the word to the action,” while considering the ephemeral quality of rhythmic trace-forms in the transient performance space.
Isabella Duvivier
(FAV, Brasil)
Romantisches Tanztheater Bartenieff: Archive and History
The workshop proposes to present research on Irmgard Bartenieff's journey as a choreographic performer in the company Romantische Tanztheater Bartenieff, founded with her partner and dancer, Michail Bartenieff in 1933, and their popular community dance school, Volkshochschule Stuttgart. During the class we will share contemplations and discussions based on the exhibition of the available digital collection belonging to the Special Collections in Performing Arts (SCPA), located in the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library on the College Park campus of the University of Maryland, in the care of Professor Doctor Susan L. Wiesner. In addition, we will present a political and social reflection on the Tanztheater Movement, starting with Bartenieff and her innovative relationship with peasant folk dances, and the return of the Tanztheater nomenclature by Hans Weidt and choreographer Tom Schilling at the Komische Oper in Berlin, German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1966.
JoAnna Mendl Shaw
(The Equus Project, Estado Unidos)
Physical Listening and Interspecies Investigations
In this workshop I will bring my equine lens into studio investigation, helping workshop movers explore their own capacity for a greater range of noticing and expressive communication - both in service of effective partnership. I am interested in: How clarifying MY ASK, using considered weight effort, choosing gentle weight and scanning indirectness can serve as effective partnering tools. These efforts are essential elements of compassionate and effective human communication in our movement lives as well as in our spoken language.
Frederick Curry
Teacher Identity and Laban/Bartenieff
In this workshop, through dialogue and reflection, participants will examine the role and intersectional positionality of the teacher in courses where the focus is on facilitating learning Laban/Bartenieff content.
Mônica Emilio
(UFRJ, Brasil)
Body-Image: sensitive space of creation
The workshop Body-Image: sensitive space of creation aims to offer an environment of experimentation of the body in movement from the perspective of embodied imagination. A body affected and updated by the relationships it establishes with the world. The work seeks to raise sensibility in the bodies through imagination, stimulating perceptual and connective awakening, and the free manifestation of expressive movement. The practice highlights aspects also advocated by Laban, such as the value given to: the artist's engagement with the movement itself; the perception of the body's states and the internal activity related to actions; and imagination as one of the elements that constitute the body, therefore, involved with movement. For this proposal to work with imagination, Laban's theory of Effort played a significant role in the construction of a methodological path. Laban/Bartenieff's theories cross my practices as an artist, teacher, and researcher as knowledge built in the body through experiences. And they guide a way of thinking about the body in movement with freedom and autonomy.
Sandra Sok, Zangreb
(UPPU-PULS/HUP-SUP, Croácia)
Embodied Flow in Motion
This paper explores embodied flow in motion and somatic voyages of ego, Self and freedom of thinking body in motion and fluid movement expression by developing mind awareness and activating embodied thinking and accepting vulnerability, equality and diversity through listening and observing as a main tool to encourage to the movement. These movement has its own inspiration, discoveries and pathway. My philosophy and embodied fluid movement ranges through themes in theory of perceiving and aesthetics combining methodological approaches from life experience, modern metaphysics, phenomenology, somatics, meditation, Buddhism and Indian philosophy. Describing movement through LMA/Bartenieff concepts and terminology I am engaging into experiences that leading us to reflect what really does it mean being in the lived body and to heighten awareness of our ‘identities in motion’. Involvement in that kind of movement language introduce us with a lively and intimate interplay with the body and its limbs, environment, emotional, social and historical aspects of myself and the audience, which produces ongoing whole body dynamical motion expression.