SESSIONS - WORKSHOP


Notating concurrently movements and words
Agustí Ros, SPAIN

The session is a workshop who invites the participants to read some scores in which movements and words are notating for the same interpreter. There are three examples where Kinetography Laban /Labanotation bring forward the relationship between movements and words in a manner as accurate as possible. Two different contexts have been chosen: in daily life and in performing arts such as theater and dance; examples in which the performer speaks and moves at the same time were selected, in an integrated double-verbal and kinetic action. 
 
In everyday life, speaking and moving are two actions which interweave constantly. We do this in a natural way. But, what do we project: the movement first or the word? What is the relationship between the verbal and the kinetic accent? We can expose a slow movement with a long paragraph of words or vice versa. All these issues appear when we come across verbal and kinetic phenomena implemented by a single person. 

The notation of words and movements becomes a versatile tool in contexts where talking and moving relate constantly in a meaningful way in the sphere of everyday life as well as in the realm of performing arts. In the first case, it is natural and responds to the vital need to communicate. The notation can be a tool for the study of semiotic verbal and non-verbal communication, where the moving body is an important factor. In the second case, in the artistic context of theater and dance, where the words and movements are actively involved, it is very helpful to write, and build the design of the movements in accordance with the words. In the artistic process of composing, expressing, and communicating meanings, notation allows to define precisely the temporal relationship between movements and words.

Whilst the timeline is an element which can be noticed, the fact of the embodied word and movement association becomes the corporal actions that make the expression emerging.  The vowel emphasis, the modulation of the voice out of the text, breathing, diction and phonetics, which articulate themselves with the body actions and its qualities, emerges an interpretation more conscious, more precise, thanks to the guidelines provided by the notation. 
The notation of the temporal relationship between movements and words could be measured and investigated as a complement tool to compose, analyse, and generate the expression of the interpreter. 

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