Making Connections

Total Body Integration Through Bartenieff Fundamentals

Peggy Hackney

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781135300661
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Artes escénicas

Human movement influences an individual's perceptions and ability to interact with the world. Through exercises, illustrations, and detailed anatomical drawings, this remarkable book guides the reader toward total body integration. An experimental approach to movement fundamentals involving the patterning of connections in the body according to principles of efficient movement, the process of total body integration encourages personal expression and full psychological involvement.

CHAPTER 1

Personal Memories of Irmgard Bartenieff

Before we dive into a discussion of the principles or actual movement experiences which are used in the study of Fundamentals, let’s return to the person who developed this area of study, Irmgard Bartenieff. Rudolf von Laban’s seminal work in the first half of this century identified and illuminated the concepts of Effort¹, Space, Shape, Action of Body Parts, and Group Relationships as elements which describe how human beings express themselves through movement. But until his student, Irmgard Bartenieff, brought the perspective of her own work from physical therapy to the Laban framework, the Laban work lacked a full body component. Emphasizing the importance of internal body connectivity in making movement come alive both within the individual and out in the world was Irmgard’s unique contribution to this work.

The field of Laban Movement Studies has broadened immeasurably since her pioneering work, but it was certainly her “touch” which initiated in some proprioceptive or kinesthetic way the desire to explore all the possibilities of interconnection: self to self, self to other, and self to world. She ignited the exploratory fire. And because “information” does not exist without the filter of the person through which that information is given, Irmgard’s own personal qualities become part of what one values and studies in Fundamentals. Since I am not a historian, I will provide personal memories from my own insight and others, rather than attempt a strict historical approach.

Irmgard was a spry 67 years old when I met her. Because I was a psychology major, Lucy Venable, then president of the Dance Notation Bureau where I had gone to finish my certification in Labanotation, said, “If you’re interested in how people express themselves, you should study Effort-Shape.”² And so I essentially apprenticed myself to this sprightly young-old woman for the next 15 years or so, until her death in 1981.

I am reminded again and again of a typical scene…

In my mind’s eye I see Irmgard with her gray hair tied back by a pastel chiffon scarf at the nape of her neck. My memory lens opens more and I see we are involved in one of our ongoing discussions about movement, exploring connections within the body. Suddenly, she springs alive with a new thought. Her seemingly frail body becomes immensely energized as her expressive hands begin opening, gently touching a multitude of places in the air. She says, “Well, you see, there are many possibilities! …” Her eyes are twinkling and her head is tilting expectantly, as if the complex interrelationships indicated by her round, all-encompassing gesture are enough to convey the totality of her thought. She is waiting for me to respond, eager and childlike, waiting for me to “take the ball and run with it.”

Irmgard Bartenieff.

At these moments I felt inspired, ready to open myself to take in more, to feel the mystery, the potential, the moving connection between things, thoughts, bodies—whatever we were discussing. She would elaborate, I would follow, playing in her swirling thoughts.

We had a delightful, accepting relationship. We were like grandparent/grandchild colleagues. Each of us was allowed to be who we were in our eccentric, imperfect way yet with maximum love and appreciation. I came into the Laban work young, at age 18, and was already steeped in the structural notation by the time I met Irmgard when I was 22. Other people in the early Effort-Shape training group were older and viewed Irmgard as a mother, sometimes good, sometimes bad, with all that term could imply in the way of resistance and need to break away. What they saw as the “Bad Mother” (the one who was confusing and somewhat non-revealing and non-validating yet always implying “You can do more…there is more to learn.”) only spurred me on to find my own personal clarity to bring to co-teaching with her. She could then be free to pursue her global thought wander ings (following her rich intuitive indirect process through the class), and I could be counted on to follow up with pin-pointed questions or succinct explanations. Now, 30 years later, I find myself reveling in the broad implications of movement training, wanting to work at the meaning level, and being less interested in specific drills or one-facet descriptions. Perhaps it is a stage in the creative process or perhaps it is an inheritance—part of the “genetic line.”

Irmgard was an integration of what might at first seem to be a mass of polar opposites—a magical child springing into the air unexpectedly and a wizened old woman padding around the Laban Institute in house shoes…a delicate, frail-looking assemblage of bones capable of yanking students around with fierce power…a highly poetic spirit delving into analysis of specific joint functions. She was eager to know all, and impatient that all was not already known. Her eyes were alive, bright and sparkling in one moment, her face drained, in need of replenishment, in the next. She was highly discriminating yet all-embracing of diversity.

Her lightness and indirectness masked her inner intensity on first viewing. She was not “easy” yet she was also non-confrontational. To Irmgard the point of an exercise or a discussion was always obvious from the movement itself. When skeptics would bring up baiting questions about either the movement or the philosophy behind the movement, rather than engage in a discussion or argument, Irmgard would begin to move and say something like, “But you see if you do it this way…(while moving either herself or the questioner).” If the question still remained she frequently raised her eyebrows, shrugged her shoulders and waved away the webs of disbelief with her hands as if to say, “Oh well, you can think that if you want…since you haven’t yet found your answer in the moving.”

For Irmgard, movement, not more pondering, was what brought new knowledge. I have come to see this as the activation of preconscious knowledge and have myself recognized that our bodies contain knowledge which is not accessible by ordinary linear intellectual probing. Moving, and a willingness to perceive the movement, brings access to bodily knowledge—particularly the feelingful connection between thoughts. Frequently, moving reveals the nature of the relationship between ideas—the pattern of the contexture, or the interweaving of parts.

In her manuscript, The Art of Body Movement as a Key to Perception, Irmgard states, “The main object of all this material is to suggest additional modes of perceiving yourself and the world around you, using your live body totally—body/mind/feeling—as a key to that perception. The heart of that ‘liveness’ is movement and, therefore, it is the movement itself that we have studied. How your body functions in movement—Body/Effort/Shape— and what that means to your perceptions and expression”

“Activate and Motivate,” the words of her first physical therapy teacher, the late George Deaver, were passed on to us as a motto for teaching. Yes, Irmgard was action oriented. She could get almost anyone moving, yet her teaching was certainly different from traditional dance training. Without explaining why we were to do the movement or really how to do it, she might explode full force, do three stamps into the floor, run lightly forward, and end in a low, wide stance with a loud “Ha!”

We would stand incredulously watching this strange lady commit herself totally and we would be almost dumbfounded when she would turn around in eager expectation, wondering why we weren’t already moving. (Most of us dancer-types were waiting to get the counts and be told some technical aspect to attempt. These were not forthcoming.) Then she would yell, “Well, do it!” and we would be galvanized into action-stamping, running, and jumping into a squat, “Ha!” At this point we were still mystified as to exactly what all of this would do for us, but were somehow willing to attempt it in the belief that there was an underlying method to be discovered. We had been trained to imitate, but Irmgard discouraged that. “My movement is not for you to imitate, but to speak to you, to get you started.”³ She motivated us through Effort—through images and the dynamic quality of her voice—but she might not at any given moment indicate what connections to notice. For example, why, in terms of “body connectivity,” were we using the Strong/Direct/Sudden Effort “Ha!”? Only gradually did we make the conscious association that using the Weight Effort facilitates the process of finding the heel-sitzbone connection. This connection, in turn, facilitates a stable grounded state, which provides a foundation for the integration of the Lower Body and Upper Body.

Years later in a certification faculty meeting Irmgard enjoined us as teachers to provide a class that is “fully rich in experiencing contrasts rather than sorting out concepts. It (the class) should be evocative in the moment rather than ‘teaching’ theoretical material. It should send high energy into a physical concentration.”⁴

Irmgard’s classes were full of large total body movement. Later teachers of Fundamentals stressed the floor exercises as the prime definers of Fundamentals, but I almost never experienced an entire class lying on the floor. We took time to go “inside,” but then we worked with moving through space, experiencing shape change in each plane, while using our voices in rich Effort support. We definitely spent time on the floor, but we always “played” in a very effortful way with our own expressions in the environment. Irmgard knew that adults need time to go back to the “baby” patterns, but that the real change is in the personal phrasing that occurs within the context of one’s own life, integrating the new connection into larger movements in the “real world.”

Effort, Shape and Space are all inroads to neuromuscular repatterning. In almost every class that Irmgard taught there was wide variation in dynamic range and in spatial complexity. We were vibrating with sound, and we were flying and falling! I was astounded the first time I saw Irmgard come from a running start and dive into the floor on a diagonal (down, forward, left). She claimed that she was “riding the kite tension” and added, “the space will hold you.” I had my doubts, but decided that if someone nearly 50 years older could do it, so could I. After a couple of bruised knees, I discovered that, indeed, clear spatial intent to ride the diagonal would open pathways to a motor pattern for my body to fulfill that intent. I was hooked into this way of training—Action! Moving with intent is the key.

I entered Irmgard’s classes as a dancer, but there were many therapists, anthropologists, and educators who also came to study. We all wanted to move and know about movement in a way that connected us to ourselves and to other human beings.

Irmgard was a founder of the American Dance Therapy Association and acutely aware of the psychological implications of movement. After watching a client/therapist interaction from behind a one-way screen she was frequently able to astonish the doctors at Albert Einstein Hospital by predicting new progress in therapy several sessions in advance of its conscious emergence in the verbal client/therapist interaction. Observing the movement of oneself or others is a touchstone to knowledge. This is a simple statement with profound implications for our society. Irmgard was constantly learning, because she was constantly perceiving movement. She taught us to do the same, to do as Laban said simply, “to pay more attention to human movement—bodily and mental—which is obviously at the basis of all human activity.”⁵ This enchantment with perceiving movement led to her willingness to experience what was happening with a particular client and be excited about what was there to work with, rather than conceiving in advance what “should” be there.

When I asked George Bartenieff, Irmgard’s son, what he thought set Irmgard apart, he said, “Well, other therapists are always trying to fix people. She never tried to fix anyone. To her, working with someone was like an adventure the two of them were on together. She was fascinated and curious about what would happen.”

Practitioners of Fundamentals who are also psychotherapists frequently utilize movement within the context of a verbal therapy session. Conversely, movement therapists often spend quite a bit of time within a session encouraging the client to verbalize feelings which are coming up in the process of moving. I do not practice psychotherapy, but in the Fundamentals classroom, I encourage students to bring movement-engendered feeling to a conscious level either to share out loud or to record in their own journals. I believe in integrating the pre-conscious and the conscious. Irmgard, however, rarely did this, either within a class or a private session. When I once asked her what she did with psychological “aha’s!” which came up during a session, she said in a deliberate, slow voice, “We go back to the movement.” This dedication to action over verbalization was ever present. Activate and Motivate!

Irmgard’s motivational skill has already been mentioned, but it needs further discussion. In talking with fitness trainers and aerobics teachers from the NY Sports Training Institute⁶, Irmgard stressed the importance of stimulating the movement motivation for repetitive skill-oriented tasks—not just warming muscles or falling into “the mistake of the machines.” In jumping, for instance, for it to be effective body training there must be “the desire to jump like two-year-old children—really jump with joy! Animate people more to move and out of that comes the desire to jump.”

And how is that done? One nearly sure-fire way is to involve more of who they are—for some people this may mean involving vocalization to engender full breath and effort aliveness. For others it might be finding a poetic image that feels personally right. For others perhaps it might be the proprioceptive inroad of touch. Still others need to be told the principle they are working on and then be left alone to problem-solve. Irmgard’s motivational gift was to know instinctively which to use. Sometimes I feel her semi-secretive nature was also a form of motivation. Psychologists say an incomplete drawing of a circle invites completion by the viewer. By not quite totally revealing an answer (which infuriated some students) she also provided a chance for students to complete the circle themselves.

Irmgard Bartenieff and Peggy Hackney demonstrating Bartenieff Fundamentals.

Irmgard also motivated through movement which was clearly phrased, and therefore easier for the neuromuscular system to perceive. In my memory I hear her “Te, te, te, te, DA” (four light upward steps, one open strong downward step). Phrasing was clarified through singing it. Poetic images and metaphors were abundant…“Your palm is the heart of your hand. Use it with free flow and let it caress the air.”⁷ Or when students were having difficulty with sustained strength, “You are a slow Chinese Monster!”

I can still feel the strength and pointedness of her touch in the classroom. She yanked, pressed or pulled until I was willing to experience something new. For instance, she didn’t want me to miss the delightful rotary change in the shoulder joint that happens when progressing through a sequence in space from back and up

to up and left

⁸, so she yanked me through it—a bit like a Balinese master teacher who is determined that the student will do the movement. With other people she guided gently. Each was different.

In individual work with patients Irmgard also employed connective tissue massage, a manual technique of “therapeutic pull” as originated by Frau Elizabeth Dicke (1929). It aims at reworking the elastic movability of different tissue layers against each other (dermis, subcutanea, and facia). This aspect of actual intervention in the tissue could release habitually blocked tension and relieve pain, thus freeing the neuromuscular pathways for being receptive to new patterns. The clarity of Irmgard’s strokes could also leave proprioceptive messages about pathw...