SESSIONS - WORKSHOP


Movement and signs
Johan Borghäll, DENMARK

Rudolf Laban was a master in combining art forms and theories of psychology and philosophy into a genuine comprehensive whole.  
With his background in architectural studies he mastered the creating of symbols and graphic images. Today we gain from his physical and graphic approach in our movement studies.

Let’s start with another approach:

Rudolf Laban was in his earlier life concerned with expressive movements, actions that were too complex to systematise. But through time, with his genius for structure, he started to classify movements and to use geometry and signs to guide the understanding of movements. The interest in systematising overtook him and made the ambiguity suffer!

In this workshop we will explore the creation of signs, like Laban. We will physically experience the movement principles of Laban and the concrete creation of signs on paper, to study the combination of movement sensation and sign creation.

When Andy Warhol as a young and unknown artist was asked to illustrate the eight basic actions of Laban, he created a little circle with two “leg a like” forms in different positions. He was adding symbols, not only signs.
We will explore signs and symbols in relation to movements.

Could we learn something about the significance of signs by being involved in creating them? Will we read Laban Movement Analyses differently after being involved in creating signs ourselves?

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