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SESSIONS Labanotation and Technique: Bridging the Gap to Build Articulate Dancers by Julie Brodie, USA Workshop Labanotation can be a powerful tool for building articulate dancers—both physically and intellectually. Whether or not students continue with Labanotation beyond the Elementary level, the concepts they learn in a beginning course can improve the clarity of their dancing by giving them a method for analyzing movement and providing them with a consistent vocabulary. In my experience as a student and as a teacher, dancers are sometimes alienated by notation, and Labanotation is being fazed out of some dance programs. As such, we need to demonstrate to students, colleagues, and administrators why Labanotation should be included in the curriculum. This workshop class will demonstrate how Labanotation concepts can be utilized in teaching dance technique and provide practical reasons for including Labanotation in the training of our dancers. Dancers often understand movement on a kinesthetic level. Indeed, the more gifted the dancer, the more intuitive their understanding of movement often is. Other students need teachers that can break movement down into its component parts and describe every action in detail. In either case, students that have had notation become more aware of what it is that they are actually doing, and this awareness is reflected in, and can improve, their performance. Teachers and choreographers with notation training can access this kind of specificity in their analysis of the body moving in space, so Labanotation is equally important in educating future artists and educators. In addition to understanding movement on another level, Labanotation offers us a consistent vocabulary, which can assist in communication of ideas and concepts. As notation teachers, we are trained to make Labanotation about movement, using physical examples of the concepts and getting to readings as quickly as possible in notation classes. It needs to be a two-way dialogue, however, with Labanotation being applied in the technique class as well. We can facilitate the transfer of notation concepts by using the language and methods of analysis consistently across the curriculum, making conscious connections for the students. Working with other department members, sharing and discussing concepts and terminology can assist with this transfer when different people teach notation and technique. This in turn, can provide a program with greater continuity and consistency, and can also educate colleagues about the many uses of Labanotation. Once dancers realize what they stand to gain from the study of notation, the subject can take on a new meaning, moving it beyond the land of theory to overlap with the “sexier” land of practice. Emphasizing connections between the various aspects of dance education is vital in creating thinking, aware dancers, as, after all, we are training minds and bodies in all of our classes. Julie Brodie is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Kenyon College, where she teaches modern, ballet, dance kinesiology, Labanotation, and choreography. Brodie received her B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Dance at the University of Illinois and completed her Labanotation studies at The Ohio State University. She is an active choreographer and performer, and her research explores ways of integrating dance science and Labanotation principles into the dance curriculum. Brodie has presented at national and international conferences and has published in The Journal of Dance Education. Her most recent project was an interdisciplinary, site-specific work exploring issues of identity for women and utilizing dancers, non-dancers, and children, including Brodie’s six-year-old son.
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