LMA and Improvisation

by | Jan 3, 2017 | 1 comment

The purpose of this group is dialogue and sharing about how LMA is being or has been applied to the exploration of improvised movement within any context.
WHY IMPROVISATION?
Having practiced movement improvisation for many years, in many contexts, I know how it supports awareness and the development of one’s own ways of moving and of being in communication. Laban’s frameworks offer signposts for exploring unknown territory; they stimulate creativity and help us to be confident as we navigate change from moment to moment.
WHAT KINDS OF PROJECTS?
This group can encompass artistic, therapeutic, or research contexts – any context at all that works with/from improvised movement.
I am particularly excited by interdisciplinary links, and how these may contribute to the development and emergence of new kinds of experiences, new understandings, new expressions. By this I mean, how our pursuit of other kinds of movement work, or other pursuits entirely, can shed light on and grow our practice and application of LMA.
Personally, I have applied LMA in performance work, in teaching movement for actors, in movement psychotherapy with individuals and groups, and in presentations to therapists, as well as to the research data for my PhD and book, The Embodied Self: Movement and Psychoanalysis.
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM THE GROUP?
The group itself is an invitation to improvise. I do not know what will follow from opening this space. But I am curious enough to host and curate it. It can be a platform for sharing what you are doing, have done, or are thinking about doing – a place to open a conversation. It can be a place to solicit partners or collaborators for exploring ideas for working with LMA in different ways. Collaboration, whether in person or online, can support the growth and development of our community.

1 Comment

  1. Juliet Chambers-Coe

    I am thinking a lot about the relationship between Laban’s theory of movement harmony and the ‘doing’ of the practice of using it’s ‘sign-posts’ . When I am moving for myself, but more when I am teaching perhaps because of the ‘charge’ of learning, I feel a huge shift in my choices and the direction the works takes me and my students into which often reveals a ‘transcendence’ or certainly a luminosity in the actors I am teaching. This is ALWAYS through improvisation – when we ‘set’ too rigidly, this often disappears. Does anyone else have a similar experience?….

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