Rudolf Laban's Diagrammatics

Abstract

Laban makes extensive use of drawings and diagrams to elucidate and to think through his theories on body, movement and space. It will be argued that Laban’s use of a ‘diagrammatic methodology’, something that will be further defined in this contribution, goes beyond his understanding of pictorial practices. An engagement with Laban’s philosophical writings shows how the rationale for Laban’s use of diagrams can be found on the one hand, in his project of creating a ‘language of movement’ as an alternative to written language and, on the other hand, in one of the underlying themes of his work, which is the relation and co-penetration of form and movement. The diagram is an instrument that can be utilised both for scientific and artistic purposes, and its ambivalence will be explored in the essay through an analysis of texts by C. S. Pierce, Gilles Deleuze and their commentators. It will be shown how Laban’s diagrams, from Kinetography, to Choreutics models and Effort graphs, and his hand drawings, show different degrees of communion of the scientific and artistic aspects of the diagrammatic that make up Laban’s own very unique diagrammatics.