DOCTORAL THESIS Rudolf Laban in the 21st Century: A Brazilian Perspective Scialom, Melina Award date: 2015 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 30. Sep. 2021 Rudolf Laban in the 21st Century: A Brazilian Perspective By Melina Scialom BA, MRes Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Department of Dance University of Roehampton 2015 Abstract This thesis is a practitioner’s perspective on the field of movement studies initiated by the European artist-researcher Rudolf Laban (1879-1958) and its particular context in Brazil. Not only does it examine the field of knowledge that Laban proposed alongside his collaborators, but it considers the voices of Laban practitioners in Brazil as evidence of the contemporary practices developed in the field. As a modernist artist and researcher Rudolf Laban initiated a heritage of movement studies focussed on investigating the artistic expression of human beings, which still reverberates in the work of artists and scholars around the world. Thus my research is shaped by an investigation into the experience of the field’s practitioners, and how their activities shape the materialisation of Laban’s discourse nowadays. In this sense, not only their experience but also my own (as a Laban-practitioner myself) were the main materials and sources for my investigation. From this material I asked questions regarding the landscape of Laban practices in Brazil and the contemporaneity of Laban’s discourse. To develop this study I initiated an oral history project (collecting narratives from Brazilian practitioners), which evolved into an ethnography of the international and Brazilian field of Laban studies. In fact my intense participation and individual exploration of Laban praxis shaped my methods to articulate an embodied debate of the field. As a ‘history of the present’ based on individual and collective experiences, this study draws on Foucault to drive a critical perspective on the material and to finally debate the authorship of Laban’s discourse. This thesis thus starts with an overview of Laban studies. It then narrows down to consider the scape of Laban practices in Brazil, detailing the work of three local artists. While submerging myself in the field’s practices and theories and the lives of the Brazilian Laban- practitioners, I found that the work that is developed outside the United-States and European circle of practice and research may provide clues for a valuable understanding of the materiality of Laban’s discourse in the twenty-first century. Thus, this study proposes that practitioners who are engaged with the (constant) development of Laban studies can potentially be considered as (co-)authors of Laban praxis as it emerges in Brazil and worldwide. i Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................... i Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................. vi List of abbreviations ............................................................................................................ vii Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 1. Research Territory ........................................................................................................... 2 2. Research Timeframe and Problem .................................................................................. 4 3. The Nature of Laban Praxis as a Knowledge System ..................................................... 5 4. Repertoire Transmission .................................................................................................. 8 5. Questions of Method ...................................................................................................... 10 6. Structure of the Thesis ................................................................................................... 12 Chapter One: The Laban Heritage ...................................................................................... 17 1. Introducing Rudolf Laban ............................................................................................... 17 2. The Artist-Researcher .................................................................................................... 18 3. The Persona .................................................................................................................. 23 4. Publications and Source Materials of Laban Praxis ...................................................... 27 4.1 Primary Sources ...................................................................................................... 27 4.2 Secondary Sources ................................................................................................. 30 4.3 Sources of Praxis and Dance Theatre .................................................................... 35 5. Laban Praxis .................................................................................................................. 38 6. Laban Discourse ............................................................................................................ 42 Conclusion: Understanding the Laban Heritage ................................................................ 44 Chapter Two: Methodology and Theory - Frameworks to Voice Laban Praxis ............. 48 1. Setting methodological Grounds ................................................................................... 48 2. Combining Methods and Drawing a Critical Perspective .............................................. 50 3. Engaging with the Past: Methods and Critique .............................................................. 52 3.1 Oral History and Data Collection ............................................................................. 52 3.2 Genealogy as a Critique .......................................................................................... 56 4. Engaging with the Present: Ethnography Practice ........................................................ 59 4.1 The Field .................................................................................................................. 60 ii 4.2 The Insider/Outsider Perspective ............................................................................ 61 4.3 Experiencing Laban Praxis through Participant Observation .................................. 63 4.4 Narrative Interview .................................................................................................. 67 4.5 Grounded Theory Analysis ...................................................................................... 69 Conclusion: Oral History, Ethnography and Experience ................................................... 70 Chapter Three: Genealogy of Laban Praxis in Brazil ....................................................... 74 1. Establishing Grounds – Brazil in Context ...................................................................... 75 2. General Picture of Laban Praxis in Brazil ...................................................................... 76 3. The Sources................................................................................................................... 78 3.1 Sources to Locate Laban Practitioners ................................................................... 78 3.2 Contextual Sources ................................................................................................. 79 4. The Pioneers: Chinita Ullman, Maria Duschenes, Renée Gumiel, Yanka Rudzka and Rolf Gelewsky .................................................................................................................... 81 5. Late 20th Century: the Multiplication of Laban Praxis .................................................... 88 6. A profile of Laban in Brazil: Voicing Local Practice ....................................................... 93 Conclusion: General Picture of Laban Praxis in Brazil ...................................................... 98 Chapter Four: Transmission and Migration of Laban Praxis - Brazil in Context ........ 102 1. Euro-American Heritages of Laban-Practice ............................................................... 104 2. Embodied Transmission – Laban Praxis from a Body to Another ............................... 108 3. Migration of Practice – Memory and Forgetting of Laban Praxis ................................ 112 4. Practices of Memory and Forgetting of Laban in Brazil ..............................................