The Kinesics of Infinity
Laban, Geometry and the Metaphysics of Dancing Space
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20458265 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Colin Counsell (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 105-116 |
| Publication date | 2006-10-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Dance Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0264-2875 • E-ISSN: 1750-0095 |
| Publisher | Edinburgh University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.3366/dar.2007.0001 |
| OpenAlex | W2055396792 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 7 |
ion is not the only product of choreutic training, however. Although they do not genuinely trace any metaphysical order, the geometries that choreutic theory projects onto space are eminently useable, cubes, planes and octahedrons providing a practical means of conceptualising the dancer’s medium. The featureless space surrounding the body is thereby ‘mapped’, striated by coordinates and lines with which performers can chart and plan their own movements. This makes for considerable kinesic precision, training dancers to reach not ‘behind’ but exactly high-right-back, etc., a spatial accuracy that ultimately results from the binary logic underpinning Laban’s theory. As we noted, direction in choreutics is either high or deep, conforms to the essential actions of rising and falling, or advancing and retreating, and is experienced as stable or labile. In the farther reaches of choreutic theory, body shapes are defined as ‘symmetric’ or ‘asymmetric’, and deemed to correspond to the ur-forms of ‘scattering’ (beginning close to the body and moving outwards) and ‘gathering’ (proceeding from the outside in) – or, elsewhere in Laban’s writing, ‘tying’ and ‘untying’. Space is highly defined in choreutics, but it is more specifically defined by its opposite. While these simple binaries describe movement, they also work to shape it. For they require that dancers ‘think’ their actions as high or deep, open or closed, etc., and so build work out of those qualities. As a dance is developed, spatial polarities inevitably accumulate, with backward movements visibly posed against forward, gestures into high-forward-left forming symmetries with those into high-forward-right, and ‘gathering’ actions allied with other ‘gatherings’, or contrasted with those that resemble ‘scattering’. What emerge are spatial and directional relationships, patterns of polarities that reflect the very way choreutics demands space be mentally modelled. This is evident in the work itself, 24.2 02 pages 075-184 18/12/06 12:44 Page 113
Aesthetics · Art · Dance · Epistemology · Geometry · Gesture · Metaphysics · Visual arts · Computer Science · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Mathematics · Philosophy · Artificial Intelligence
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |