Thematic Dualities

Fundamental patterns of duality are a key aspect of the Laban Bartenieff Movement Systems’ capacity to contain wholeness. They operate as a whole – for example Inner/Outer – and are used in that way in a shifting play of foreground/background that defines work of LBMS. These Thematic Dualities are models and representations of relationships – not the thing in itself. Unique individuality is explored through LBMS by a duality of Individual/Universal. The individual experience, or the personal, is not only framed but analyzed and synthesized alongside ‘universal’. When we remove either part (Universal or Individual) from the whole (Individual/Universal), synthesis is not possible and we are no longer working within the system. This duality is particularly useful in teaching LBMS to see our personal patterns against a universal norm in which ‘universal’ becomes provisional rather than absolute when cultural ‘norms’ appear also as variable.

LBMS encompasses both the individual and universal nature of movement. This is an ambitious claim without further explication. In LBMS, ‘universal’ operates in a similar way to that some geometrical absolutes are used. For example, the pure Diagonals and the pure Dimensional pulls are clear spatial examples that are never really there but visualized/imagined, but we can closely approximate them in/through movement. That our body exists as weight in gravity with a base of support is another shared, universal aspect through which movement is understood. It is critical for effective use of LBMS that a concept and its meaning only exists within a context. This ensures we avoid the pitfalls of one-sided analysis – which precludes synthesis. The fluid interplay of Thematic Dualities – especially Individual/Universal – is opened up even more by multilingual and multicultural learning communities. The constant shift of what is foregrounded and backgrounded is what allows the system to hold diversity and commonality simultaneously.

Individuality, culture, context

Each individual’s experience of themselves in the world is unique. We are aware of our own awareness such that no other could enter fully into that uniqueness, so each other is already a different being with individual ontology. I shall retain Descartes’s insistence on discrete consciousness as the ‘ontological essence of being human’ (Nigel Rapport, 2014: 332). In our individuality, we are always situated (as a body) in a certain time and space. Taking individuality and being situated together means that even if we ostensibly ‘share’ the same first language, differences in perception and deployment of concepts (both individually and culturally determined) nevertheless lend nuanced subtle variations or stark differences in how we move through life. We don’t necessarily share an understanding of a concept even if we do speak the ‘same’ language because our associations are unique. Observing comprehension and perception from this perspective of ‘shared language’ already presupposes a mono-linguistic normative paradigm that ignores those individuals who grow up in bi- or even tri-lingual families and contexts.

Let’s also start from acknowledging language is always an approximation, unfinished, the result of an embodied experience in relationship (with human/non-human agents) in the world. Following anthropologists Thomas Csordas (1994) and Marilyn Strathern (1996), culture does not just inform embodied experience; embodied experience is itself culturally constituted (Lawrence Shapiro, 2011). As anthropologist Anthony Wallace points out, ‘cultures do exist and societies do survive’ (Wallace, 1961: 131). And lastly, that translation from one language to another is impossible: something slips out, other things are added. It is interesting that neuroscientists can track and trace where in the brain such activity appears; though in the studio and faculty meetings, we must navigate the transformation of concepts produced through translation through practical action. LBMS is a particularly rich frame through which to explore individuality and the cultural specificities we bring into the room – as well as those generated in it. Even though we work in studios generally with little furniture, it’s not ‘empty’; the context is always specific and can change, or be changed, through our narratives and analogies.

Laban’s legacies, many narratives

LBMS, as a branch of the work of Rudolf Laban, is part of his wide-reaching legacy since the 1950s onward. ‘Laban’ exists as a ‘global’ idea, appearing ‘internationally’ in many professional, artistic and educational contexts. Such terms ‘global’ and ‘international’ can flatten specificity; each student is meeting it in a particular time and place, so what are the experiences in that encounter and how are they shaped? These are happening in a flow of time – not in a fixed concept of the ‘international’. In the multiplicity of approaches to Laban’s work, as well as the lack of consensus in these many branches over language, terms, concepts and so forth, are arguably a necessary part of its vitality. Languages that do not change or are not used tend to disappear or, at least, fade (Latin; Esperanto). Bodies of knowledge that are not found to have value or relevance, fade.

The increase of markets for ‘health and wellness’, or of community dance practices for example, are traceable to the movement researchers and pioneers of the start of the 20^th century in Europe and North America – of which Laban can be included. Taking a Foucauldian model of genealogy that eschews confident points of origin and instead appreciates a more gradual and messy process of accumulation and sedimentation (Franklin, 2014: 14; Foucault, 1984: 58-59), the point is less to split hairs on provenance than to work with this multiplicity of discourses and applications of movement observation and analysis, and to question so-called ‘norms’. Although as practitioners of LBMS we value, or rather, require, consensus in order for the system to function as a useful discourse and modality in our work, finding consensus need not negate the frequent dissensus found in our individual experiences and perceptions.

The concrete limitations of language afford insight into the complexity of movement. Language often serves as a privileged model of our experience to paraphrase theorist of economics Dani Rodrik (2015) however, models are never true – but there is truth in models. We can understand the ‘real’ phenomenon only by simplifying it, hence the provisional nature of language remains at the forefront of this discussion. The subtleties of language open onto the subtleties of movement and vice versa. Whilst language issues can become a problem in the negative sense, it is more generative to use ‘problem’ in the philosophical sense as a notion of opening possibilities (following dramaturg Bojana Cvejić’s Choreographing Problems, 2016). In this way, the problems of language are tied to the clarifying nature of language. Much like there are no fixed points in space, there are no concrete terms; we temporarily stabilize a concept in order to illuminate something (ie. a system for movement analysis such as LBMS), but already that sets the term off on a rhizome of associations and interconnections (how LBMS connects to other somatic modalities, therapeutic interventions, more established academic disciplines and so on and so forth). The point to make is that in the experience of debating semantics is the site of learning that LBMS opens discursively – and recursively – in pursuing an iterative process of movement embodiment and observation.

Languages as politically embedded and embodied

The specific LBMS language, tools and concepts work to encapsulate a particular facet for the clarification and consensus of observable movement and, to an extent, the experience of it. In training observers, we require increased embodiment of a range of subtleties in order to perceive and articulate the differences and to be able to enter into a wide range of possibilities in movement. We aim to facilitate the learning of these tools – not as dogma or reduction but as process and self-discovery. Learning how to use LBMS is creative and a life-long study; hence a debate on the flexibility and rigidity of language is one such way to explore this body of knowledge. In the studio, we find ourselves and our students sometimes using LBMS words interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. The words (and symbols: the system of Motif) can allow for both specificity and flexibility – which we consider particularly valuable for creating a bridge for communication – but also a boundary with some ‘fixed points’ in a co-created space.

‘Mobility/Stability’ – one of the Thematic Dualities of LBMS – immediately springs to mind in considering questions of malleability and fixity. Language, or to be more specific, words, can be considered containers for experience and words, like movement, reflect the choice(s) of the mover/speaker. These choices reflect their values and include habits related to background and culture. And as is true for all containers, they can serve to hold and support but can isolate and separate; it is this simultaneity of their formulation and use that is particularly dynamic. Different kinds of containers have different kinds of shapes and edges – for example, those that can/cannot adapt to the content (like a wine-skin vs a wine bottle) – or that have permeable boundaries (like a woven basket or fishing net). And indeed, decisions needed to be made whether we as a group of writers contributing to this article choose to adopt the British or American English spellings. Deciding ‘house style’ for journals and authorship is a practical one with geopolitical resonance.

Our experiences emerge from using spoken and written language and embodiment to facilitate LBMS; this is two-fold, hinted at in the term ‘facilitate’. Firstly, as stated, there are specific terms to teach – ontologically bound concepts – the ‘universal’ aspects of which precede cultural specificity or at least attempt to hold them in abeyance in order to be re-situated. Second, there are embodied experiences to elicit from the students. For example, specific qualities of moving might already be available for as individual and therefore not necessarily needing to be ‘taught’ as entirely ‘new’ concepts, but instead brought to conscious awareness of their subtly and distinctness through moving itself. Here the image of the moebius strip becomes particularly pertinent to emphasize this dynamic of how information from within and without resonates in a given context of learning with others. The facilitative process is interactive, and evocative other Thematic Dualities of LBMS – Inner/Outer and Function/Expression. There is more to be said that is beyond the scope of this article concerning facilitating LBMS with those with special needs, disabilities and a larger range of neurodiversity that what we have encountered on the modular programs.

Learning and using Motif symbols

Irrespective of the (dis)advantages of ‘shared’ language or contexts, comprehension still needs support through different tools. The significance of Motif writing – a tool used in teaching and learning LBMS – comes in here. Motif is a symbolic representation of movement and not the movement itself (a form of iconic sign, Eco, 1984: 16). The nature of Motif, by its design, shares aspects of both the verbal and non-verbal realms we value in movement analysis training – thus it can be a valuable tool in the process. Motif can be a bridge between movement expression/experience and the analytical process of describing/identifying movement patterns. This allows Motif to be a bridge between the analysis and synthesis ends of LBMS. Motif as a language attempts to avoid some of the pitfalls of linguistic verbal written languages. Though Motif can also serve as a tool for recording certain essences of movement, it is not only for such processes of creating an archive or document. More akin to sketching or note-taking, Motif can both reveal and represent movement patterns and can be facilitated through iterative partner observation tasks, for example. It can also be useful in challenging patterns (the process of re-patterning or expanding range). Though related to Labanotation, Motif is not a de facto branch of it, nor is it a shorthand version. Labanotation has a different historical development and different intent than Motif. Motif is a shorthand of the language of LBMS and is succinct – not only in the reduction of how much one has to say out loud. The Shape Quality and Effort symbols work in a modular format in which the choice of symbol can communicate, for example, three qualities of movement happening simultaneously. To say these aloud implies their succession rather than their simultaneity. In the studio, we and our students go from moving and talking to grabbing a piece of paper and scribbling some symbols then back to moving, making this process as fluid as possible rather than somehow separate, like splitting writing from reading or speaking from listening. The use of Motif, therefore, deployed in different ways as part of processes, overcomes several of the challenges not only of multi-language learning spaces but also of facilitating movement embodiment.