Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies

Imagine two scenarios. In the first scenario, the director asks you to manifest anxiety. From where? How? From your past experiences, body memories, imagining something that would give you that feeling right now. Think of how different it would feel to have a director tell you to move with fast speed and shifting focus rather than to be told to express anxiety. ... In scenario two, a writer has written the word aggressive into a description. Must we stay with that word? What happens, instead, if we talk about weight, impact, and directness? What negative stereotypes and emotional triggers might be avoided with that simple shift in language? It opens up a world of shared vocabulary that does not need to trigger pain or ask that we divulge our personal emotional life every time we walk into a studio, classroom, or onto a stage. This is applying Laban’s Effort Theory, which allows you to... Find shared language that is unbiased, consensual, and specific. Find depth to characters by discovering the expressive and functional movement life specific to them. Extend your range of expressivity as a performer. Break habits as a performer, creator, teacher, writer. Have a road map to develop character without feeling that you need to either mine your personal life or reinvent the wheel each time you start a project. Create a safer space by removing the subjective language that often leaves people behind or triggers associations that don’t serve them or the process. Reach an audience with immediacy by creating vivid, concise imagery saturated with meaning. If you would like to learn more about how to catalyze instinct towards clarity, depth, and authenticity, Join me in a 3 week asynchronous workshop about Effort: Embodied Meaning: a course in Expressive Performance. Click here to find out more! https://labaninstitute.org/lims-e-learning/embodied-meaning For questions about the course, email [email protected] Cheers, Alexandra Beller Director & Choreographer Faculty, Laban Institute of Movement Studies and Princeton University CMA, MFA/Choreography

Do you know that scene in a play that is an emotional turning point? It’s essential for the play and exhausting to perform repeatedly in rehearsal? Why is it so exhausting, often triggering? How might we approach it to find the depth and authenticity without demolishing the performer? In working recently as Director and Movement Director for an upcoming adaptation of Macbeth, we hit a scene (Out, out) where Lady Macbeth is disintegrating, boundaries between her relationsh...ips, emotions, and choices are becoming increasingly blurry. She is exhibiting a loss of self, losing her groundedness, and having trouble distinguishing between contradictory aspects of her character. One of the challenges this poses is that the actor is one person approaching a character, who is also one person. But what we want to manifest feels more like multiple people. To use actions like seduce, threaten, excite, we still come from a singular sensibility, and those actions have a similarity to them (physical habits, postures, gestures). What we wanted was to feel Lady M had been inhabited by different people. So we cleared the field of the container of a single self and simply looked at dynamic qualities that contrasted with one another. This moment is light and sustained, like a plastic bag being picked up by the wind. This moment is direct, strong, and quick, like a Punch. This moment is bound and sustained, like slowly letting the air come out of a balloon through your pinched fingers. The result was that the actor let go of preconceived postures and gestures and found the particular qualities. She didn’t need transitions, which signaled more self-control than she was meant to have. She was able to dive from one quality to a completely different one on a dime. It was transfixing to watch and felt disorienting and disturbing in the best way. What we used, of course, was simply Effort. Verbs and images allowed us to get into the multiplicities without taxing the actor to go towards a place that felt like madness. If you would like to spend time diving into dynamics and learning structures that will allow you to safely, effectively, and clearly create character, Join me in a 3 week asynchronous workshop about Effort: Embodied Meaning: a course in Expressive Performance. Click here to find out more! https://labaninstitute.org/lims-e-learning/embodied-meaning Best, Alexandra Beller Director & Choreographer Faculty, Laban Institute of Movement Studies and Princeton University CMA, MFA/Choreography For questions about the course, email [email protected]

We are so excited to share this film! Monday March 22, check your time zones! Trailer Is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raWb5nli9Ig

Register for the workshop here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/139553114121 Saturday, March 6th, 20th, & 27th from 11 am - 12:30 pm ET, Nicole Perry will offer Creating an Ethics and Pedagogy of Teaching with(out) Touch. Course Description:... This three (3) part course examines consent and power dynamics in the studio, creating an ethics of touch for movement classes, and low-touch/no-touch teaching options. Combining knowledge of best practices of physical contact in dance and theatre pedagogy/creative process with Laban/Bartenieff Touch-for-Repatterning practices, the course encourages personal reflection and choice-making for effective teaching. Session 1: Teaching with Touch Session 2: Consent and Power Dynamics in the Movement Studio Session 3: Types of Touch and Alternatives to Touch Instructor: Nicole Perry, CLMA When: March 6, 20, & 27, 2021 Cost: $90 #lims #lbms #labanbartenieff #pedagogy #ethics #touch #consent #handson

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Upcoming Workshop!!! The Evolution of the Understanding of Fascia in Relationship to Bartenieff’s Movement Fundamentals and Connective Tissue Techniques with Jackie Hand MA, BFA, CMA. RSMT/E, CST-D... When: February 13, 20, & 27, 2021 Cost: $90 To register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/137655313749 Course Description: Bartenieff’s understanding of movement organically involved fascia, from her use of bony landmarks as reference points in establishing body connections, to the movement themes mobility/stability, function/expression, exertion/recuperation and inner/outer-all are related directly to fascia. Through ongoing research, our understanding of fascia has expanded. This course illustrates how Bartenieff was ahead of her time in understanding the importance of fascia’s role in the body and in movement. The objective of this workshop is to deepen your appreciation of the role of fascia in your own body and movement. Class 1. Perceptions of Fascia: Past and Present: This class concerns an overview of the evolution of the understanding of Fascia: its properties, inherent complications in perceiving and defining fascia and current fascia research. Class 2. Irmgard Bartenieff’s Fundamentals, Connective Tissue Techniques and Fascia This second class will continue with historical and theoretical relevance of fascia to Bartenieff Fundamentals in the work of Robert Schleip, Carla Stecco, Thomas Myers and others. Class 3. Connecting through Fascia Experiential: This final class involves a BF fascial movement warm-up. We will experience meningeal fascia through intention-based on my research, The Effects of Adapted CranioSacral Therapy Intracranial Membrane Techniques on Irmgard Bartenieff’s X-roll. * Can't make one of the sessions? Don't worry, we record each session for those who cannot attend all days. *Please note that this course is best suited for professionally certified movement analysts or non-certified individuals with some experience. #fascia #movement #jackiehand #connectivetissuetechnique #lbms #lims #laban #barteniefffundamentals #cma

January 23 & 30 and February 6 from 11am-12:30pm ET, Ellen Goldman with Kevin McGarrigle-Schlosser will offer Integrated Movement. This course will discuss and define what Integrated Movement is, how it is different from Posture and Gesture, what it says, and how it can be used. Our approach will be to explore Integrated Movement as a unique aspect of your everyday self, your art, your dance, your work. Together, we will analyze Integrated Movement as it is derived from the A...ction Profile System evolved from Rudolf Laban, Warren Lamb and Pamela Ramsden. Irmgard Bartenieff approached whole body action as Postural movement. Here we will identify postural movement as different from Integrated Movement. We will also explore gesture, posture and Integrated Movement and their relevance to your personal style and other aspects of your life. Class 1. Focus on the quality of Integrated Movement. Class 2. Create with Integrated Movement. Class 3. Support for applying Integrated Movement (IM) in areas of your choice. To sign up for the three-part workshop - https://www.eventbrite.com/e/134025773697 Cost: $90 *Can't make one of the sessions? Don't worry, we record each session for those that cannot attend all days. *Please note that this course is best suited for professionally certified movement analysts or non-certified individuals with a great deal of experience in LBMS. #posture #gesture #integratedmovement #communication #lbms #lims #labanbartenieff #labanbartenieffmovementanalysis

Laban Effort studies 1940s. national dance archives. Great video with Jean Newlove who was a pioneer in teaching movement for Actors. She is still active

Master choreographer, REGINA MIRANDA, MSc., CMA will offer a three-part workshop, Saturday, December 5th, 12th, and 19th at 11:00am ET, focusing on Choreographic Chords and how they are integrated in choreography through BESS and BSC. Chord is a term used in music for the combination of three or more notes that sound simultaneously. In mathematics, the term refers to the line segment that joins two points on a curve, thus creating a new space. Similarly, in choreography, the ...term is used by Miranda to indicate how "Body-Space Connections" (BSC) interweaved with Body-Effort-Space-Shape (BESS) has the potential to embody Space’s changing geometries and intensities, thus generating meaningful relationships and vibrant new spaces, which emerge simultaneously between, in, and beyond bodies. DAY 1: Experiencing the complexity of Body-Effort-Space-Shape DAY 2: From stable to the unstable space of Body-Space Connections DAY 3: Spheres of Intensity Participants will receive a certificate of completion confirming their professional development for 4.5 hours. Regina keeps Laban’s questions, but finds new and provocative answers!- VPD, Monte Verita, 2013 To sign up for the three-part workshop, https://www.eventbrite.com/e/128533121025. Cost: $90 *Please note that this course is best suited for professionally certified movement analysts or non-certified individuals with a great deal of experience in LBMS. #lbms #lims #reginamiranda #theoryworkshop #spaceharmony #choreography #topology #torus

We are initiating a new phrase of transformative change at LIMS, towards an organization that is more just and inclusive. Read about the work of our new DEI Committee and how you can help us realize this essential goal. https://conta.cc/2IN0ZDO... #diversityequityinclusion #aLIMSforALL #community #newphrase #repatterning