Relating Dance and Music with Dynamics: From Rudolf Laban’s choros to Kurt Jooss’ Tanztheater
Date Issued
2008
Date
2008
Author(s)
Hsieh, Chieh-Ting
Abstract
Influenced by Plato and Pythagorean, the German pioneer of expressionist dance Rudolph Laban (1879-1958) believes that dance could reveal the rhythm and harmony of movements in the cosmos, by which the independence of dance can be established. However, the existence of music in dance works, for Laban, merely excites the listeners and becomes the limitation of dance. Influenced by operas and Ballets-Russes, Laban’s contemporaneous choreographer Kurt Jooss (1901-1979), on the other hand, explores the meaning of dance rhythm directly without the application of mimesis or analogy, but through the elaboration on the rules of body movements. On the basis of body-ness in rhythm, Jooss establishes the formal relation between music and dance to bring out his Tanztheater as the form of dance work. Using Martin Heidegger’s interpretations of the concepts of force(dynamis) and movement(kinesis) in Aristotle’s Metaphysica Θ1-3, this thesis interprets the essential concept of choros(choros) in Laban’s dance theory and Jooss’s Tanztheater, in order to clarify the arguments about the relation of music and dance between 1910 and 1932. For Heidegger, Aristotle and Aristoxenus consider force as the origin of change. Force as force-with-regard-of-movement implies the meaning of technique and work and it is from force that art work is produced. Accordingly, musical work should be considered as res actio, and musical form should be based on dynamics. It is on this dynamic association that the relation between music and dance could be founded.
Subjects
Rudolf Laban
Kurt Jooss
choros
Tanztheater
Ausdruckstanz
Martin Heidegger
Dynamics
Aristotle
Aristoxenus
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