Laban & Bartenieff Applications Classes

Monthly, Saturdays 3 PM EST

Virtual via zoom

FREE!

Facilitated by Alexandra Beller

Each of these monthly classes offers new insights into specific contextual applications of the Laban/Bartenieff system. These classes require active participation.

Upcoming:

• March 30: LBMA for Dancers and Choreographers

• May 4: LBMA for Actors and Directors

• May 25: LBMA for Pedagogy

• June 29: LBMA for Therapists and Bodyworkers

• July 27: LBMA for Social Justice

**Registration at the bottom of this page**

Laban & Bartenieff for Actors and Directors

May 4, 3 PM EST

This FREE one-hour class gives actors and directors a taste of how to use Laban’s Effort Theory to create vivid, clear, three-dimensional characters. Using Effort in speaking and moving is a portal to specificity, and a way to break the habits of the performer, at the service of the character. These ideas can also be used in larger, compositional choices, andto help design the flow and tone of a whole work. It is an extremely activated way to view and devise part of, or whole, performance. This Introductory class will provide students with a chance to analyze, speak, and move inside the various possible choices for expression, and offer them actionable new information that can be used to create a character, challenge their habits, and devise in a deeply specific, clear, and objective way. This is a participatory workshop, so please come prepared to both speak and move.

Laban & Bartenieff for Pedagogy

May 25, 3 PM EST

This one hour FREE Introduction to Laban and Bartenieff for Pedagogy aims to help you find yourself as a teacher and to create structures that allow your students to access the material in the most efficient and joyful way. We will use Laban’s coherent system to ask questions about aligning your vision with your class structure, cueing with clarity and purpose, attending to a variety of learning styles, finding rhythm and pacing, non-verbal communication, developing balance between Stability/Mobility, Exertion/Recuperation, Inner/Outer, and Function/Expression.

Laban & Bartenieff for Therapists & Bodyworkers

June 29, 3 PM EST

The work of Rudolf Laban is invested in understanding both oneself and others through analyzing body language, posture, gesture, quality, and the shapes created in space. This one hour FREE Introduction class gives therapists and healers of all modalities quick actionabe tools for seeing the body and its meaning through a new lens. For anyone that does one-on-one work with clients, be it through mentorship, psychotherapy, or hands-on work, this class offers some guidance and questions about how we might view our clients more clearly. We will discuss the Jungian States of Mind and how they relate to Space, as well as considering how things like the head to spine relationship can indicate holding patterns and trauma that is asking for support and witnessing. There will be gentle movement in this class, so be prepared to participate in easy clothes (camera off is fine!).

Laban & Bartenieff for Social Justice

July 27, 3 PM EST

We are living in an age of dramatic reckoning. Hierarchies, entrenchments, and patterns of belief that shaped us are unraveling and dismantling and we are slowly defining our values and contexts in ways that invite all humans to participate. But seeing the road can be difficult, and seeing our own biases and limited beliefs even harder. This one-hour FREE workshop uses Laban and Bartenieff as tools to zoom out and in on cultural contexts, and offers some strategies for recuperation and self-care for activists who are depleted by the profound, but exhausting, work of activism.

Laban & Bartenieff for Dancers & Choreographers

MArch 30, 3PM EST

This FREE one-hour classintroduces Laban and Bartenieff to dancers and choreographers in order to develop greater sensitivity and awareness of the body for both functional and expressive movement. We are working on the intersectionality of moving and making: to recognize the structure and instinct inherent to both dancing and choreographing. This class focuses on understanding both the subtleties of finding inspiration, and the craft of molding material towards an aesthetic end by using a few of the tools in the profound system of Laban and Bartenieff. We will practice breaking choreographic and movement patterns, using structured chance as a tool, and letting our inner critic take a break without losing attention to analysis, structure, or conscious creation.

Past Sessions