2/17/2026 - Week 6 / Meeting 11: Self-Assesment / Midterm Quiz

 

 

 Assessment

 Theme: Mid-Term Quiz

 

 I

Introduction

Every semester I assess your understanding of the content covered so far. Just right before the progress report's dead line, you test your own abilities to retain some of the themes we have learned and experienced together.  Today's quiz evaluates how efficient I have been in communicating ideas about Modern Dance based on your responses to the questions below.

 

II

Objectives

• Understand the nature of self-assessment
• Make sense of the various concepts explored in class
• Gather an awareness of assessment that is conducive to further learning
• Experience what is like to put into practice the content learned in class
  

 

III

Review

Concepts Developed by Rudolff Laban

 

Choreutics: Laban defined choreutics as “the practical study of harmonized movement.” Latter day colleagues of Laban’s, such as Valerie Preston-Dunlop and Vera Maletic, have delineated Choreutics respectively as the “spatial organization for dance” and “the theory and practice of ordering movement in space.”

 

Kinesphere: “the sphere around the body whose periphery can be reached by easily extended limbs without stepping away from that place which is the point of support when standing on one foot” (1966, p.10). This spherical space around our body shifts as soon as we shift our weight. It is also the first area of movement exploration before going into “space in general”. It follows anatomical limitations, being actually more elliptic than spherical as constitutionally, the average body has a wider area of reach forward than backward.

Visibly speaking the kinesphere stays invisible until the moment we move within it and make it tangible by leaving our trace-forms, the spatial consequences of our movements (Preston-Dunlop, 1981, p.27).

 

Trace-forms: As an analytical study, choreutics delineates the natural paths that the limbs of the body trace on the space around the body. Laban calls these paths “trace-forms.”

 

Harmonic” Three-dimensional Patterns: Laban’s space harmony scales are similar. Laban has taken the curves of natural movements and geometricized them, creating “harmonic” three-dimensional patterns.

Breath Connectivity: Deliberately bringing your awareness to your breath as support for your movement is a precursor to whole-body coordination and virtuosity in movement. This is true for movers of all levels as breath allows the entire body to be supported from within in complex coordination.

Patterns of Body Connection:  With knowledge of Laban's concepts, Peggy Hackney identified six developmental patterns of body connectivity: breath, core-distal, head-tail, upper-lower, body- half, and cross-lateral.

Laban's Cube: Thee kinesphere is also the container of a cube (containing all diagonal directions and dimensions) and of an icosahedron made by three bi-dimensional planes: it contains angular geometry inside a round geometry.

Laban’s Four Components of Human Movement with their Respective Elements: 

•Direction – direct/indirect

•Weight – heavy/light

•Speed – quick/sustained

•Flow – bound / free

Laban’s Eight Effort Actions:   

The Eight Effort Actions help clients both physically and emotionally to embody and understand internal impulse while developing an expressive body. 

•Wring:

•Press

•Flick

•Dab

•Glide

•Float

•Punch

•Slash

 

II

 

 

Expressionist Dance

Expressionist dance was expressive, and show more spirit and emotion and less virtuosity. The dance would be improvisational, uninhibited and provocative. Future spiritual and bodily reform movements expressed themselves in a new "natural" dance.

Schools for expressionist dance had special philosophies and emphases for dance, such as naturalness, breathing, tension / relaxation etc. It was often associated with floor contact, "weight" of dance movements, and experiments with music. Body and physicality were strongly emphasized. 

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 IV

 

 

 

1. Which ideas created by Rudolph Laban are important for dance?

2. Which cultural movement influenced Laban's movement ideas? Why?

3. What was the main difference between Mary Wigman's approach to dance and Laban's approach?

4. Why was Wigman's dance expressionist?

 

5. Why was Kurt Jooss' piece The Green Table an important piece in the evolution of modern dance? (See the videos bellow).

 

6. In which way have these dance/movement styles influenced your own dance abilities? 

 7. List the phrases we have put together so far, both, for your ensemble piece and your solo piece.

 

8. Briefly reflect on your performance in this class by writing about your takeaways in terms of body movement, expression and relationships. 

V

A Note to Remember

Self-assessment allows students to evaluate themselves on their actions to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Self-assessment can help students to learn and improve in multiple areas related or not to dance.

 

VI

Case Study

Question 9 

Bonus: Read the Introduction to the book inn the link below.

 

 

The Dancer's World, 1920 - 1945; Modern Dancers and their Practices Reconsidered

Michael Huxley 

Read: Introduction

 https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Dancer_s_World_1920_1945/h2pECQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=modern+Dance&printsec=frontcover

Huxley, Michael (2015). The Dancer's World, 1920 - 1945: Modern Dancers and their Practices Reconsidered. Pelgrave MacMillan

 

On page 2, first paragraph, the author explains the main purpose of the book. 

a) What is the author trying to say?

 

 VII

Practice

 Question 10

Mary Wigman

She worked upon a technique based on contrasts of movement; expansion and contraction, pulling and pushing.

 

 Her technique is structured in five main groups:

1 - Striding and sliding

2 - Springs, vibrations and bouncing

3 - Momentum and oscillations

4 - Falling and dropping (floor technique)

5 - Tensions: relaxed, sustained and motor tensions

 

a) Create an individual phrase using Wigman's technique

b) Go to your ensembles and use the individual phrases of the group members to put together a phrase for the ensemble.

 

VIII

Today's Work