Laban - Aristotle - Towards a methodology for movement training for the actor and in acting

Kiki Selioni

Summary

The focus of this book rests on an investigation into the links between Laban and Aristotle and aims at proposing a new approach to movement training for the actor. In contrast to the standard Platonic reading, Laban’s development is best understood through the conceptual framework of Aristotle. This not only provides a more secure theoretical approach, but a practical one as well, which establishes the art of movement as a science. This investigation intends to establish Laban’s philosophical foundation upon a reading of Aristotle’s Poetics, and in particular, on the reading of the Poetics by contemporary Greek philosopher Stelios Ramfos in his two-volume book ΜIΜΗΣΙΣ ΕΝΑΝΤΙΟΝ ΜΟΡΦΗΣ Ἐξήγησις είς το Περί Ποιητικής τοῦ Ἀριστοτέλους (MIMESIS VERSUS FORM Exegesis about Aristotle’s Poetics) (1991-1992). What is significant about Stelios Ramfos’ exegesis is that he attempts an analysis and interpretation of the concepts of the Poetics in terms of theatre performance. Ιt is this emphasis on performance that makes the task I have embarked upon possible. The discussion will serve as a critical framework that will propose a new way of applying Laban’s movement concepts to the movement training for actors in practice. The research methodology is also practical. I will therefore also develop and present a performance that attempts to apply Laban’s terms, as these are discussed, in relation to Aristotle, and in relation to the new methodology as well as a syllabus of practical classes addressing actor movement training in both kinaesthesia and characterization. The ultimate goal of the project is to contribute an approach that can inform the way Laban’s concepts are taught and provide suggestions for structuring technical movement classes for actors.

Available since: 12/20/2020.

The Arts

Other books that might interest you

Self-Love Workbook for Black...

Dolores Maaike

How many times do you feel alone every single day? How many times do you feel like you are fighting an uphill battle against your surroundings? Why in your daily life do you always run into situations that make you feel inadequate or misunderstood? 
If you relate to these lines as you read them, it is possible that you find yourself trapped in a state of emotional blockage and you are struggling to find a way to achieve your inner balance. Perhaps you still have to live in a hostile environment where some outdated cultural expectations make you feel like an outcast. Or perhaps you simply want more from life and you are fighting to get it, but the sense of inadequacy or helplessness oppresses you so that you cannot go on as you would like. 
If you see yourself in all of that, the only way to get out of this spiral of malaise is self-love. Yes, you have probably heard a lot about self-love, but maybe you have never really understood what it means, how to actually achieve it, or you haven’t found the right tools that introduce you to it. This self-love guide, dear woman of color, is designed for you; it will not sell you magical solutions, but it will show you a way.Remember, loving yourself is not for everyone—it is a great act of courage and sincerity toward oneself. 
To love yourself and cultivate your uniqueness, you must start from your roots. You must know and re-evaluate them; to go where you want and make your star shine, you must first know where you come from. This guide was born exactly with the intention of reawakening the values of a community, making you feel like a part of it, and laying the foundations for your path of spiritual growth through this experience. On your journey through this book:You will rediscover and revisit the values that are innate in the Black culture and experience and gain an almost ancestral sense of community.You will finally realize why Black women in prominent positions seem to have something more, and why their way of being as well as their contagious empathy are so powerful and able to make all the difference.You will draw inspiration from stories of ordinary (and not) women of color who have achieved success starting from very difficult situations and rising through adversity.You will understand the real meaning of self-love, how to experience it, and the impact it can have on the subconscious to change your disempowering beliefs, help you regain inner strength and discover your true nature.You will find the single most practical techniques to reach self-love step by step and have access to a whole chapter of exercises that give you the opportunity to track your daily progress for a period of 12 weeks. 
The tools in this book can be small but effective supports in your daily life if you choose to embrace them. Take the book with you when you go to work, take a walk, look after the family or in all those situations where you feel alone or out of place. If you believe this is not necessary for you, give this guide as a gift or share it with someone—a mate, a friend, or a relative who isn’t doing so well or is striving for a better life.

Show book

Warhol

Eric Shanes

Andy Warhol was an artist who undoubtedly put his finger on the pulse of modern culture. Through pioneering a variety of techniques, but principally by means of the visual isolation of imagery, its repetition and enforced similarity to printed images, and the use of garish colour to denote the visual garishness that is often encountered in mass culture, he threw much direct or indirect light upon modern anomie or world-weariness, nihilism, materialism, political manipulation, economic exploitation, conspicuous consumption, media hero-worship, and the creation of artificially-induced needs and aspirations. Moreover, in his best paintings and prints he was a very fine creator of images, with a superb colour sense and a brilliant feel for the visual rhythm of a picture which resulted from his intense awareness of the pictorial potentialities inherent in forms. Initially, his images might appear rather simple. Yet because of that very simplicity they not only enjoy a high degree of immediate visual impact, but also possess the rare power of projecting huge implications through the mental associations they set in motion. For example, the visual repetition that Warhol employed within a great many of his images was intended, associatively, to parallel the vast repetition of images that are employed in a mass-culture in order to sell goods and services. This includes vehicles of communication such as movies and TV programmes. By incorporating into his images the very techniques of mass production that are central to a modern industrial society, Warhol directly mirrored larger cultural uses and abuses, while emphasising, to the point of absurdity, the complete detachment from emotional commitment that he saw everywhere around him. Moreover, in addition to employing imagery derived from popular culture in order to offer a critique of contemporary society, Warhol also carried forward the assaults on art and bourgeois values that the Dadaists had earlier pioneered; by manipulating images and the public persona of the artist he was able to throw back in our faces the contradictions and superficialities of contemporary art and culture. Ultimately, it is the trenchancy of his cultural critique, as well as the vivaciousness with which he imbued it, that will surely lend his works their continuing relevance long after the particular objects he represented – such as Campbell’s Soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles – have perhaps become technologically outmoded, or the outstanding people he depicted, such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Mao Zedong, have come to be regarded merely as the superstars of yesterday.

Show book

I'll Be in My Trailer - The...

John Badham, Craig Modderno

What do you do when actors won't do what you tell them to? Remembering his own awkwardness and terror as a beginning director working with actors who always had their own ideas, director John Badham has a bookload of knowledge to pass along in this inspired and insightful must-listen for cinema fans as well as actors and directors at all levels of their craft. You'll learn how to use proven techniques to get actors to give their best performances—including the ten best and ten worst things to say—and what you can do when an actor won't or can't do what the director wants. Also included are no-holds-barred out-of-school tales culled from celebrated top directors and actors, including Sydney Pollack, Michael Mann, John Frankenheimer, Mel Gibson, James Woods, Anne Bancroft, Jenna Elfman, and Roger Corman.

Show book

Abbott and Costello: The...

John Grant, Bud Abbott

Costello is now the mayor of North Hollywood. After a routine about battling Indians, the boys try to capture Cactus Pete.

Show book

Louise Nevelson - A Passionate Life

Laurie Lisle

Louise Nevelson, one of the most important American sculptors of the twentieth century, was a beautiful woman who lived so audacious a life that by the time of her death she was a legend both inside and outside the art world. Born Leah Berliawsky in Czarist Russia in 1899, she grew up in Maine, ostracized as a Jew and a foreigner. At twenty she escaped to Manhattan as Mrs. Charles Nevelson, eventually leaving her husband for a life devoted to art. She lived and loved with lusty abandon, often in poverty and obscurity, until she finally achieved fame and fortune at sixty. “This biography of a monstre sacre is a tale of hard-tacks heroism and heedless swipes at those who dared to love her,” said Interview magazine. Nevelson found inspiration in cubism, primitive art, and her own unconscious, creating a rich iconography of images. With black, white, or gold paint and perfect placement, she transformed old pieces of wood picked up on the street into powerful sculptures. In later years she appeared in mink eyelashes and flamboyant costumes, all the while going to her studio every day before dawn to add to the astonishing body of work now in collections of museums around the world. Laurie Lisle interviewed Nevelson before the artist’s death in 1988, as well as her lovers, family members, artist friends, and many others. This biography provides fascinating insights and information discovered in archives and public records, letters and diaries, and the artist’s own prose and poetry. Now in a revised e-book edition, Louise Nevelson: A Passionate Life is the only biography of this important American sculptor. It is “impressive in its thoroughness, which nonetheless results in ‘good reading’ by virtue of its interweaving of personal and professional information, its eclectic introduction of psychological analysis, and a phraseology that appreciates both the pain and the joy surrounding Nevelson’s eccentric behavior,” according to Woman’s Art Journal.

Show book

Whistler The: Blind Impulse

Sherman Marks

The woman's husband is disappointed enough to get a whistleresque idea while atop a mule going down the Grand Canyon! Steve was in his glory. Never in his wildest dreams had he ever believed a thing like this could come to pass. Here they were, just the two of them at Carol Crandall’s special table at the Top of The Mark in San Francisco. Through the huge plate glass window he could see the shining city stretching away to the east. Everything sparkled and across from him, Carol Crandall sparkled…

Show book