Many online discussions have occurred to initiate collaboration and interaction between practitioners who share similar aims and work in the same professional field. If you would like to connect to these hubs, please do get in touch with each separate organiser. You may decide you wish to create an autonomous group to focus on another area of dance and movement and bring others together on a shared theme or topic.
Darren Royston (LGI Trustee overseeing Hubs)
Movement Choir Hub
The group plans both online and face-to-face events to bring people together to explore themes in a creative way, using various elements of Laban’s harmonic theory in practice. Using the online forum Zoom, participants respond in their own way to tasks directed by leaders. Some sessions are conducted as large groups, with opportunities for smaller break-out rooms, before coming together to create a continuous performance to recorded music at the end of the event. Contact susithornton38@gmail.com for more information
Movement for Wellbeing Hub
This Hub recognises the importance of Dance and Movement as part of the current focus on Wellbeing, considering physical social contact, mental health and rejuvenating the human spirit as we look to a future after the pandemic. Susi Thornton explains the current activities of this Hub: “The members of this hub are exploring aspects of creativity which enable us to feel motivated, excited and give us a sense of purpose and well-being. We have been able to see wonderful work with children in Austria and to share our experiences. We have been pondering what we want to give and receive from this Hub. It is a vigorous meeting place for people interested in how movement, story and spirituality relate together. This is proving to be a privilege and delight. We have a group of six regulars, from the UK, Scotland and Austria, meeting every two months.”
Darren Royston has had opportunities while being employed in Bangkok, Thailand to develop movement training using the “thyrsus” (sticks made from bamboo canes) to interpret Laban’s sequences within spatial scaffolding. Based on Laban’s choreutic scales and inspired by stick-dances performed by demon-characters in Thai Khon classical dance-drama, this work develops awareness of social distancing and finds architectural connections through the extended kinespheres of participants. Participants work together in one group yet maintain a 2-metre distance around each other. He has termed this ‘Harmonic Interactive Healing’.
This Hub is looking at ways to use the funds ring-fenced for training and practical courses with The Sesame Approach (Drama-therapy). It is hoped that a training event, a wellness workshop, can occur later this year or in 2023, and that this event can pay homage to the work in therapy by Walli Meier. For more information on the Well-being hub contact susithornton38@gmail.com
Movement Notating Hub
(Motion Capture, LMA, recording and reconstruction)
Raymundo Ruiz González has agreed to coordinate this newly formed hub, with the aim of considering projects that continue to explore Rudolf Laban’s focus on how movement and dance can be analysed and recorded, using different media and technologies as well as the internationally recognised Labanotation. Raymundo worked for many years as assistant to Ann Hutchinson-Guest and was a contributor to her new book Body Variations, Number 10 in the Advanced Labanotation series (London: Dance Books, 2022). Raymundo is currently based in Paris, researching new technologies and motion capture, in order to analyse and record UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. Initially, the hope is to connect those individuals working as notators, reconstructors, movement analysts, and researchers in the history of notation systems. Contact Raymundo Ruiz González rayrojo3@hotmail.com for more information on this hub
Moving Actor Hub
(Dance and Movement as a Dramatic Art)
We have now started to connect people together who are using the Laban approach in theatre, TV, film, opera, musicals and all forms of dramatic performance, as well as those involved in drama training for professional actors, youth theatre, and school drama curriculum. Online communication has enabled practitioners to share their experiences. We would like to hear from you if you use Laban-based ideas in your work in drama as an actor, director, choreographer, teacher or theatre practitioner. Current hub members are busy: Olga Blagodatskikh is continuing online Shakespeare play reading, and developing a one woman show as an actress, using Laban’s Approach as developed by Brigid Panet; Sue Dunderdale, former Head of Masters’ Courses at RADA, has recently published her book Directing the Decades: lessons from fifty years of Becoming a Director (London: Routledge, 2021) – Sue, who worked with Jean Newlove and supported the work of Rudolf Laban in actor training, will contribute to Movement Dance & Drama later in the year; Jonathan Parr is currently studying for his M.A. in Acting at the Theaterakademie, Munich and is working on a movement project, incorporating effort study; Cecilia Dorland, Artistic Director of Scena Mundi, will direct a production of Shakespeare’s Richard II for the “Staging Royalty” Festival at the Sorbonne, Paris, France in April 2022 – the rehearsal process will use Laban-based movement training to explore character, develop moving tableaux and re-imagine the medieval idea of the “danse macabre” as a physical motif throughout the tragedy; Dr Kiki Selioni (Affiliate Research Fellow, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London) continues to consider the value of Laban-based ideas in actor training in her research and practical events and Darren Royston plans to involve Laban-based workshop at the forthcoming Bangkok World Theatre Festival in 2023.
At the “Acting Methods Reconsidered: New perspectives in Acting Practice in a Metacovid World” Conference, in Marathon, Greece, (14-30 July 2022), the Moving Actor Hub is proposing to present sessions to consider Laban’s legacy in actor training, with a focus on significant Laban Guild individuals, such as: Marion North – Dramatic Personalities (actors awareness of the meaning in shadow movements); Geraldine Stephenson – Historical Styles (using a Laban approach to create period dance and movement for performance); Jean Newlove – Dramatic Dynamospheres (using the scales in actor training);Gordon Curl – Platonic Modes (creating crystal structures as stagecraft); Walli Meier – Psychological Types in Effort (therapy and drama link); and Warren Lamb – Shape/Effort interactions (shaping the character). The Hub hopes also to consider concepts such as the Movement Choir in developing ideas of the Satyr Plays as ancient dance theatre performance, using a Laban approach to dance drama. (Physical exploration of the Satyr Plays was initiated by Professor Yangos Andreadis at the University of Athens in 2009, when Darren Royston was invited to direct a movement project based on Sophocles’ fragmentary satyr play, Trackers.) Actors interested in being involved should contact Darren directly, as should those interested in any aspect of this hub. darrenroystondance@gmail.com