We are very intrigued by Ann Hutchinson Guest's article "Early Development and Publications in Kinetography Laban/Labanotation," which was published in the DNB Library News Volume 10 Number 1. We approached Ann again and also Valerie Preston-Dunlop, two pioneers in Motif Notation, regarding how Motif Notation started. Each provided insightful information.
MOTIF NOTATION – A HISTORY
By
Ann Hutchinson Guest
Motif Notation, originally called Motif
Writing, is a system for graphically recording movement concepts using symbols
derived from Labanotation. The need to
allow freedom in the performance of a movement concept, for instance the choice
of any direction, any part of the body, any kind of transference of weight,
etc. led to establishing additional symbols not found in Labanotation.
My personal need for such freedom arose
after I had published two children’s books using the structured, three-line
Labanotation staff. Having spent two
winters in Europe observing the teaching of dance to children in different
countries, I produced Primer for Dance,
Book One which was followed by Book
Two. In 1959 I tried out Book One while teaching a group of five
year-old children at the 92nd Street YMHA. Each child had a book to take home which
delighted the parents, especially the fathers who reportedly commented “Now I
can see that dance is not all airy-fairy; it has form, structure!” During the first two sessions I did not refer
to the book, but put basic signs on the board, the children trying out the
movements indicated. Thus they were familiar
with the signs when they came to using the book.
It was when I started drafting ideas for Book Three in this series that I
suddenly realized - this was all wrong!
Children want to move, to try out their own movement ideas. At age five they do not have the physical
coordination or experience to “step forward on the right foot on count one,
step to the side on the left foot on count two” and so on. While children pick up the elements of
Labanotation easily enough, before long the structured movement patterns become
too much. Laban had been strongly against
children being taught notation because he saw it as inhibiting their
creativity. In contrast, I believed that
they should encounter notation early on, it was a matter of how it is presented
to them. Had Laban developed Motif
Notation and seen the results, I am sure he would have had a very different
attitude.
At the International Council ofKinetography Laban (ICKL) conference in 1961, I spoke to my colleagues about my
need to use the symbols ‘out of context’, as I called it. They could not imagine what I was talking about,
and, meeting that attitude, I found it difficult to explain. However, within the next few years Valerie
Preston-Dunlop began using the individual symbols during her courses on Laban’s
Modern Educational Dance for physical education teachers. It was one of these teachers who suggested
the name Motif Writing. In 1967 Valerie published Readers in Kinetography, Series B, Motif
Writing for Dance. In 1971 I was invited by Keith Lester to
provide a course on movement exploration and analysis for the Teacher Training
College at the Royal Academy of Dancing.
For this course I used the Motif symbols and found an increasing need to
develop them further. I had previously
been in touch occasionally with Valerie in discussing symbols, but by then she
had become much involved with other things and was no longer interested. As there was no appropriate textbook
available, each week I produced sheets for the RAD students. By the end of the second year I had the
makings of a book. Thinking to give it
the catchy title Your Move, to
interest the students, it was published in 1983 as Your Move – A New Approach to the Study of Movement and Dance. Use of this book as a textbook for our Language of Dance® (LOD)
training courses made us aware of where it needed revision. The revised edition, for which Tina Curran
was co-author, came out in 2008. It is
currently being translated into Spanish and Japanese.
Everyone welcomed the advent of Motif
Notation because use of the symbols seemed so simple and self-evident. It was commonly thought that no rules were
required - you performed the movement stated
and then went on to the next. With
different people using Motif symbols in different contexts, this openness soon
became a problem. In addition to the
organization established in the Your Move book, a very comprehensive book on the subject by Charlotte Wile, working
closely with Ray Cook and with me, is nearing completion*.
Motif Notation is used as a prescriptive
tool, the movement indications being open to being realized physically
according to the reader’s choice. Motif
is also used as a descriptive tool in observing and identifying the main
features in movement sequences.
Because it stems from root actions, that
is, the basic building blocks of which all movement is made, Motif Notation is
applicable to all styles of dance, indeed, to all forms of movement from
swimming to acrobatics to ice skating, etc.
It is used productively by participants of all age levels and
skills. Used in conjunction with a first
exploration of movement, the visual symbols provide a valuable introduction to
dance/movement literacy. In LOD Motif
usage also incorporates terminology that is clear, logical and as
universally-based as possible.
*Note from Mei: Charlotte Wile's Motif Notation book Moving About was already published in 2010.
MOTIF WRITING
*Note from Mei: Charlotte Wile's Motif Notation book Moving About was already published in 2010.
MOTIF WRITING
By Valerie Preston-Dunlop
The idea came to me for a new version of Laban’s notation
the year that he died 1958, a version that allowed for structured improvisation
since that was one method of choreography that was increasingly prevalent. I
consulted him and he replied, as he often did, “You do it”.
I had experience of using the notation in new ways from 1947/8 when Warren Lamb and I were sent into Pilkington’s tile factory to assist Laban in his analysis of the workers’ movement patterns on the power press machines. My task was to write the women’s movement in notation and that was not at all straightforward. The prime question was “where was centre”? from which all directions might be judged. Centre was not in any of the places centre normally is for a dancer. For the worker it was the centre of her work area about a foot or so in front of her waist with her press, her handle, her pedal, her conveyor belt, her pile of sand and her stick situated in relation to that centre. From there she judged all directions. Was I writing exactly what her body parts did or how she conceived of what she was doing? So for me the distinction between intention and action raised an issue for a movement notation as early as 1948.
I had experience of using the notation in new ways from 1947/8 when Warren Lamb and I were sent into Pilkington’s tile factory to assist Laban in his analysis of the workers’ movement patterns on the power press machines. My task was to write the women’s movement in notation and that was not at all straightforward. The prime question was “where was centre”? from which all directions might be judged. Centre was not in any of the places centre normally is for a dancer. For the worker it was the centre of her work area about a foot or so in front of her waist with her press, her handle, her pedal, her conveyor belt, her pile of sand and her stick situated in relation to that centre. From there she judged all directions. Was I writing exactly what her body parts did or how she conceived of what she was doing? So for me the distinction between intention and action raised an issue for a movement notation as early as 1948.
Using this distinction became a norm for my writing since
much of my dance work was creative of the structured improvisation type. I recall using intention in writing the
Transversal 7-rings card for Laban’s 70th birthday celebrations,
1949, he having just ‘found’ these 7 ring families and wanted the Laban
diaspora to know what they were. I recall a letter of utter confusion coming
over the pond from Ann Hutchinson since clearly what I had written could not be
danced. No, but it could be intended and the dancer’s technique and
understanding of how to embody directional instructions ‘for the body as a
whole’ would enable him to find the phrase. That is what Laban wanted and that
is what I wrote. I understood Ann’s frustration completely.
Glancing through old letters I found one from Laban dated
1953 that related to my helping him with his book Principles of Dance and Movement Notation. His mind was on quite
other topics at the time particularly movement observation of behaviour and
personality so he leant fairly heavily on my assistance. The action stroke
appears in that book indicating that a flow of movement is occurring. Ann’s
first edition of Labanotation came
out at mich the same time and I have her gift to me of a signed copy in my
study.
In 1958 the question I put to Laban was not out of the blue
but simply one step further in developing a method of writing that accommodated
basic creative activity. The idea for Motif Writing was already born but not
yet formulated or named.
1962 is the next evidence (in the Laban Guild magazine) I
have of how my thinking was developing where I taught a class that uses the
basic ideas of Motif Writing without having yet come up with a name ie a simple
vertical staff for the whole body into which or onto which symbols for movement
intentions or motivations can be written. In 1963 my Handbook for Modern Educational Dance was published although I
recall writing the first draft in 1959. As is common knowledge it sold widely
not only in the UK. The text is packed with descriptions of structured
improvisation. The connection between the 1962 class and this book is obvious.
I was introducing people to the idea that notation could serve their purpose as
teachers of creative Modern Educational Dance.
By 1963 Paddy Macmaster started to work for me as I opened
Beechmont Movement Study Centre. Together we worked on what was to become Motif
Writing, a name suggested by Paddy. I
published a booklet An Introduction to
Kinetography Laban in 1963 introducing the ideas of Motif Writing and the 2nd
edition, tidied up and better produced by Macdonald and Evans, came out in
1966. Classwork documents exist of the courses we both led, and a
correspondence course we started for overseas students, dated 1966/7. Readers
In Kinetography Series A, writing short dances using the full notation,
came out in 1966 and Series B, writing dances in Motif Writing, came out in
1967. One of our criteria was that we
should only introduce new signs if absolutely essential. For example it was
essential to formulate the new sign to jump, and to distinguish twisting a body
part and rotating the whole body.
Dance was at that time in the Physical Education departments
of schools and colleges with Laban’s ideas being integrated into not only dance
but other PE activities. I was asked to
produce a Reader on the popular Educational Gymnastics, creativity on
apparatus, that had started at I.M.Marsh College in the UK and spread to
colleges in the USA, Canada and Australia.
Paddy and I started to write it and it soon became apparent that new
signs and symbols would have to be created. I decided against it and the
preparatory materials sit in my archive uncompleted. By now ICKL had started and I was in the
unenviable position of arbitrating between two warring Titans, Ann Hutchinson
and Albrecht Knust both of whom I knew well.
As the systems developed the ideas that had come up in Motif, such as
whether a sign indicates motion or destination, found their way into
developments of the full notation.
About the same time I was approached by Cambridge
University, who had somehow heard of Motif Writing, to help with a test on
ambidextrousness for pilots, it being judged that decidedly right or left
handed pilots were safer in a crisis than those who had a second or two to
chose which hand to use. Although not really my scene I collaborated and wrote
all manner of daily activities, threading a needle, a golf swing, cutting paper
with scissors… It taught me a great deal about movement and what our notation
systems can and can’t, do and don’t write. Shortly after I was asked by London
County Council to use notation to plan the work schedule for school cleaners,
emptying waste paper baskets, cleaning black boards, sweeping corridors et
al. The idea of Motif Writing was
getting out of hand and I declined. The next request was from a drama school
where emotional and narrative intentions were to be included. I declined again
for new signs would have to be invented and I was not going in that
direction.
So for me Motif Writing serves its purpose as the creative
sister system to Laban’s notation essentially structural in nature and open to
interpretation. Of course Ann Hutchinson has taken it in a further direction in
her Language of Dance literature where I decided not to go, but that is her
choice. At Trinity Laban our postgraduate Choreological Studies dancers use
Motif Writing’s principles primarily to help them clarify what is structurally
significant in their created materials. They do not learn it as a system. We
call that part of their writing simply ‘symbology’. It is taught by Melanie Clarke, a first rate
notator and director from the score, so any student who wants to can learn more
from her.
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