4.6: Modern Dance in Europe - Pedestrian Movement + Emotion

Hungarian born Rudolf von Laban (1879-1958) is considered to be the father of modern dance in Europe. As a boy, he had witnessed a touring performance performed by Isadora Duncan. Laban was inspired by her soul-inspired, free-flowing dance, and was also very interested in gymnastics, theatre, puppetry, and backstage operations. However, his obsession with efficiency and mechanization was an indictment against what he viewed as Duncan’s flowy superfluous interpretive movement. Laban called for mind-informed movement, declaring that dance must not be inspired only by the soul (Everett Gilbert, 1983), believing that dance should have intention.

Figure 4.7. Rudolf von Laban and his Laban Movement Analysis, a notation system for dance choreography. (File:Labanotation1.jpg - Wikimedia Commons; Source: http://archiv.ucl.cas.cz/index.php?path=RozAvn/4.1928-1929/36/358.png)

Laban’s analytical approach to choreography prompted his development of Laban Notation Analysis (LMA). Laban notation was a way of coding movement in a system of symbols before there were recording devices, though LMA is still used today for movement analysis. He visited school yards and parks frequently to study children at play and studied writings on dance design, striving for every day, human, organic, pedestrian movement rather than urban, non-natural dance techniques (Kant, 2004).

Definition: Pedestrian

Someone who travels on foot, considered to be drab or dull, as if plodding along on foot rather than speeding on horseback, by coach, or car. The term pedestrian is often used to describe a colorless or lifeless style (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). In dance, pedestrian movements are everyday body mechanics such as walk, run, hop, skip, jump, turn, roll, or bend.

Laban’s protégée was Mary Wigman (1886 – 1973). Starting dance later in her life, she participated in a summer session revering Laban’s notion of simple and intentional pedestrianism as dance and in replicating his choreographic devices, quickly became his choreographic assistant. She embraced pedestrianism as a base principle, but desired to augment the dance beyond mind-informed intentionality to add an emotional component to performance. Wigman’s staging of pedestrian movement paired to a specific emotional sentiment was a choreographic mechanism aimed at provoking a specific emotional response from the audience. She argued that dance lacking expressivity or a dancer’s inner experience is valueless (Wigman, 1983). Wigman toured Germany then later formed her own dance school. She amassed a following of dancers who were intrigued with her notion of Ausdruckstanzen, where existential individual expressivity through dance can facilitate the processing of emotional feelings, good or bad – something that became crucial for many during the war years, a precursor to Dance Movement Therapy (DMT).

Figure 4.8. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s (1926) Death Dance of Mary Wigman. (File:Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Totentanz der Mary Wigman, 1926-8.jpg - Wikimedia Commons; Source: Artdaily.org)

Nazi Germany hosted the 1936 the Olympic Games. Hitler saw this as a chance to demonstrate the supremacy of National Socialism (Cox, 2018). Conscripted to choreograph the opening ceremony, Laban and Wigman felt social and political pressure from the National Socialist Party to create a monumental piece. They chose to feature more than a thousand dancers in Vom Tauwind und der neuen Freunde (translated as “Spring Wind and the New Joy”). Though at the final dress rehearsal, Hitler and Goebbels abruptly declared the work had nothing to do with the national ethnic Völkisch deeming it too abstract, intellectual, and poorly choreographed (Hanley, 2004). Having fallen out of favor with the Nazi Reich, Laban’s popularity declined and Wigman was denounced as a Jew-lover who created ‘degenerate dance’ (Kew, 2017). She put on the Nazi blacklist by the regime (Sorrell, 1975).

Interactive Classroom Activity: Laban-Wigman

5 Pedestrian Movements: Compose a Dance Phrase

Take 25 small pieces of paper and write pedestrian movements - one on each paper - that are everyday body mechanics. Suggestions are walk, run, hop, skip, jump, turn, roll, bend, wrap, unwrap, lean, lunge, glide, twist, squeeze... etc.

Round 1: Dancers form groups of three and randomly choose five pedestrian steps. Next, cocreate pedestrian movement for each randomly selected step, in an order that can easily feed one move into the next, taking level and shape into consideration.

Round 2: After the first dance phrases have been performed in class, each group meet up with another group of three dancers and collaborate to coalesce the two movement phrases, creating a choreography with 10 distinct steps, that flow in, and out, atop and below one another in a creative way.

Round 3: Perform the phrases to a variety of music genres, serious or comical, add emotion to the pedestrian movement, taking on different tempos for dancers, and different - perhaps more evocative - meanings for observers.