The Green Table: Labanotation, Music, History, and Photographs (Language of Dance Series)

Book Description

This work brings together the complete dance score of The Green Table -- one of the most famous ballets of the 20th century -- in Labanotation, along with music notation for the piano accompaniment and a complete recording of accompaniment on CD. It also includes several essays about the work and its genesis, and many production photographs. This book is an important item for all colleges with dance programs to own in their libraries and for scholars interested in the study of contemporary dance.

Customer Reviews:

Valuable to the professional, fascinating to the amateur.......2007-06-05

First, a disclaimer: My interest in this book is as a ballet-goer and amateur musician, so I have nothing to offer about the Labanotation. But I found the history of the ballet intriguing, and the rehearsal notes and photographs helped recapture memories of past performances. The rehearsal music consists of a piano solo reduction from the 2 pianos/4 hands performance score. Though I had been vaguely hoping to see the original score, the solo version certainly facilitates my playing the music for my own enjoyment. The CD recording of the solo score is well-played, but the instrument appears to be an out-of-tune upright set in the middle of a dance studio. Quite a disappointment. I'd have thought that a decent concert grand and passable sound engineering would have been considered essential - and not hard to come by - for this important project. But I realize this book is aimed at professionals in the field of dance, who would probably find my criticisms less germane to the intended purpose of the book.

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Labanotation
Ann Hutchinson Guest
Manufacturer: Theatre Arts Book
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0415965624

Book Description

A definitive book for students of dance and movement studies, Labanotation is now available in a fourth edition, the first complete revision of the text since 1977. Initiated by the movement genius Rudolf Laban, and refined through 50 years of work by teachers here and abroad, Labanotation, the first wholly successful system for recording human movement, is now having the effect on ballet and other forms of dance that the prefection of music notation in the Renaissance had on the development of music. This book makes it possible to record accurately, for study and reconstruction, the great dance creations of the theater, as well as such diverse activities as time/motion studies for industry, personnel assessment and physical therapy. So comprehensive that it can indicate even facial expressions, the system is also simple enough for a child to learn easily as an integral part of athletic or dance training.

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A great resource for Renaissance French dance

Orchesography
Thoinot Arbeau
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0486217450

Book Description

Probably the most valuable book on 16th-century dances and dance music. Describes the galliards, pavans, branles, gavottes, lavolta, basse dance, morris dance, canary, etc., with detailed instructions of steps involved. Throughout the text are references to the practices of 16th-century instrumental music, in addition to 47 dance tunes with 16th-century barring and notation. 44 illustrations.

Customer Reviews:

A great resource for Renaissance French dance.......2000-04-27

A book to have if you're interested in Renaissance dance and which is especially useful for beginning dance reconstruction as it's quite accessible. It contains a translation of the whole text by Thoinot Arbeau (published in 1589) translated into English, plus notes and a set of modern notation for the dances. The text is structured as a dialogue between an old dancing master and his young student and contains descriptions of steps, various dance trivia and some social context info, and usually the music, coreography and possible variations (though not all of these for every dance). Many of these dances will be known to dancers of early music yet you could be surprised to learn that many so-called Arbeau dances do not follow his text much. Additionally there's quite a scope for improvisation along the guidelines given. The dances include many branles, a couple of pavanes and basse dances, tourdion and galliard variations, etc.

Themes and Variations from the Foot-Hook Rag

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GREAT book!

Themes and Variations from the Foot-Hook Rag
Georgette Weisz Amowitz
Manufacturer: BookSurge Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1419632922
Release Date: 2006-04-12

Book Description

THE FOOT-HOOK RAG by Georgette Weisz Amowitz was originally written as a reading exercise for Labanotation students. Staged for a trio, THEMES AND VARIATIONS FROM THE FOOT-HOOK RAG is its performance version. Suitable for Middle School age through middle age and accompanied by the music of Scott Joplin, the RAG features several foot-hooks and a few relationship pins. Following its conclusion, a brief introduction to Labanotation helps novices read the dance.

Customer Reviews:

GREAT book!.......2006-08-01

For anyone who wants a fun read on notation, this is THE book for you! Mrs. Amowitz creates a fun, upbeat dance that students of all ages should enjoy.

Beyond Dance: Laban's Legacy of Movement Analysis

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Beyond Dance: Laban's Legacy of Movement Analysis
Eden Davies
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0415977282

Book Description

Beyond Dance: Laban's Legacy of Movement Analysis offers students of dance and movement a brief introduction to the life and work of Rudolf Laban, and how this work has been extended into the fields of movement therapy, communications, early childhood development, and other fields. Rudolf Laban's landmark system of movement analysis has been applied to dance movement through both Labanotation (his system of writing down movement) and also through "effort-shape analysis," a system that was developed out of Laban's work by his followers to better understand how movement occurs. Laban's followers--notably Warren Lamb--used this as a basis to study movement in a broader context, from how to make work more efficient in agriculture and industry to how to better communicate through body movement and gesture.
While many dance students know of Laban and his work as it applies to their field, few know the full story of how this technique has developed and grown. For many who enter into the fields of dance movement therapy, performance, and communications, there are valuable lessons to be learned from Laban and his follower's works. Beyond Dance: Laban's Legacy of Movement Analysis offers a concise introduction to this world.
Refreshingly free of jargon and easy to understand, the work offers dance students--and others interested in human movement--a full picture of the many possibilities inherent in Laban's theories. For many who will pursue careers "beyond dance," this work will be a useful guidebook into related areas.
This will be ideally suited to students of Laban movement theory in dance and movement therapy, and will be used in advanced courses in these areas as useful, brief introduction to the field.

Handling of Objects, Props (Advanced Labanotation Series Vol 8)

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Handling of Objects, Props (Advanced Labanotation Series Vol 8)
Ann Hutchinson Guest , and Joujke Kolff
Manufacturer: Princeton Book Co Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1852730900

Labanotation or Kinetography Laban: The System of Analyzing and Recording Movement

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Labanotation or Kinetography Laban: The System of Analyzing and Recording Movement

Manufacturer: Theatre Arts Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000F6NYAM

Product Description

Illustrated throughout with drawings.

Elementary Labanotation (Revised 2nd Edition)

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Elementary Labanotation (Revised 2nd Edition)
Muriel Topaz
Manufacturer: Princeton Book Company Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0871272032

Hands, Fingers (Advanced Labanotation Series Vol 5)

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Hands, Fingers (Advanced Labanotation Series Vol 5)
Ann Hutchinson Guest , and Joukje Kolff
Manufacturer: Dance Horizons
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1852730862

Book Description

Hands, Fingers covers hand movements ranging from broad general statements for the whole hand to detailed descriptions that necessitate defining use of a particular surface or edge of a specific joint or segment. Specific use of hands and fingers, their placement and degree of flexion, is very important, for example, in sign language and South Asian dance. Examples of these forms of movement, as well as use of hands in choreographies by Léonide Massine, Ruth St. Denisand Paul Taylor, are given in this issue.

Floorwork, Basic Acrobatics: Advanced Labanotation, Issue 6 (The Advanced Labanotation Series)

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complex

Floorwork, Basic Acrobatics: Advanced Labanotation, Issue 6 (The Advanced Labanotation Series)
Ann Hutchinson Guest , and Joujke Kolff
Manufacturer: Princeton Book Co Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1852730935

Customer Reviews:

complex.......2007-01-04

I bit off more than I could chew. It says advanced for a reason. I have to go back and learn the premise of most of this material but I'll refer to it as I do.

Book Description

Human illnesses can be understood as damage to those adaptations that we took on at various stages in our evolution from pre-life molecules to modern Homo sapiens. Preventing these illnesses entails avoiding what causes the damage-- which too frequently are the everyday hazards of twenty-first-century life, as the chart below shows:

Level of Evolution	Cause of adaptive failure	resulting disease or problem
Pre-life	Environmental poisons	Certain birth defects
Single cell (bacteria and amoeba-like)	Viral infection	Colds/flu/HIV
Morula (sponge-like)	Cellular stress	Cancer
Chordate	Physical stress	Back pain
Fish	Excess dietary salt	Hypertension/heart disease
Amphibian	Tobacco smoke	Lung cancer/emphysema
Lower primate	Excess dietary sugar	Diabetes mellitus
Higher primate	Vitamin C deficiency	Scurvy
Ape	Excess dietary protein	Gout
Homo sapiens	Reduced dietary variety	Nutritionaldiseases/food allergies

Customer Reviews:

This book should be required reading in all the schools.......2007-09-30

This is one of the four or five best books I have ever read. It explains our most important health problems in their evolutionary context, and it explains why diet and lifestyle changes are far superior to pills and surgery. Everyone should read this book in their youth, so that they can prevent the health problems that come with a lifetime of bad choices and bad medical care. Buy this book, and buy more copies for all your relatives and friends --- and buy one for your doctor so that she can do a better job for you.

Evolution in Health and Disease.......2005-09-18

This is a fascinating book, written in clear, lucid, and descriptive prose, and written for the non-specialist and specialist alike, exploring the impact of evolution on health and disease. The book introduces "evolutionary medicine" to help the reader make informed choices about his or her own health. No one who wants to live a long, healthy life can afford to ignore the important insights gleaned from evolution in this book. What worked when we were hunter-gatherers on the African savannas no longer works in modern society, and the changes in our modern environments have caused Homo sapiens to adapt poorly.

One of the key evolutionary concepts is an entity's adaptation to its environment: When all the body's organs and systems are operating optimally under the ideal evolutionary environments, both internally and externally, our bodies are concordant. When our bodies are out of sync with either environment, they begin to fail, and our bodies become discordant. The former is homeostasis and health, the latter is disease and dysfunction.

After a very short introduction to the essential Darwinian concepts, excellently and easily recapitulated, the author turns to the seventeen stages of human evolutionary development, beginning with prokaryotes as stage one and ending with Homo sapiens as stage seventeen millions of years later, and describing all the intermediary stages in between. Although not difficult, it's the only place where the reader might become pensive, if not impatient, thinking the author is off course. But the key to understanding the rest of the book depends on understanding the material presented in Chapter Two. Here are some of the insights in columnar outline:

LEVEL OF EVOLUTION, ADAPTIVE FAILURE, CONSEQUENCE

Pre-life, Environmental poisons, Birth defects
Single cell, Viral infection, Cold/Flu/HIV
Morula (sponge-like), Cellular stress, Cancer
Chordate, Physical stress, Back pain
Fish, Excess dietary salt, Heart disease
Amphibian, Tobacco smoke, Lung disease
Lower primate, Excess dietary sugar, Diabetes mellitus
Higher primate, Vitamin C deficiency, Scurvy
Ape, Excess dietary protein, Gout
Homo sapiens, Reduced dietary variety, Allergies

This is a partial list. Each of the seventeen stages co-exist in humans; this complexity is both to our advantage, and can be our downfall. Understanding how each stage of evolution works within us unlocks a wealth of information.

Obviously, the emphasis is on prevention, not treatment, although there are constructive, non-medical, non-surgical options discussed. Some of the ideas are extremely valuable and helpful, others are highly speculative and dubious. For example, one particularly difficult concept advocated by Boaz is a return to a Paleo Diet that is high in animal products (especially gamey meats), while avoiding indigestible beans, grains, and dairy. It might be the "ideal" diet, but it's an impossible one to follow, and even more difficult to find. Still, the insights can help guide one to nutrition from an evolutionary perspective. The chapter on our musculoskeletal system was by far my favorite; I suffer from many of the system's dysfunctions, and now realize why. I knew it was a failure to adapt, but exactly how was new to me.

Nearly every anatomical and physiological system is evaluated in evolutionary terms. I'd run out of space just outlining them. Suffice it to say, this is not the only book on evolutionary medicine. This new field is literally exploding. Certainly an excellent alternative is Randolph Nesse's and George Williams' "Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine." Both are equally competent and informative, the only difference is a matter of style and approach. Take a look at both books and find the one that suits your temperament best. I truly enjoyed both. Ignore either to your health's detriment.

Excellent introduction to the ideas of evolutionary medicine.......2003-03-10

This works as a general introduction to the nascent field of evolutionary medicine. Note well the word "health" in the title. One of the central ideas in evolutionary medicine is preserving health, and in general looking at medicine from the point of view of the healthy instead of from an overweening concentration on the sick. An ounce of prevention in evolutionary medicine is worth a whole ton of cure.

Another important idea is to look, in so far as possible, to our adaptations as evolutionary beings to see what we might be doing wrong today. For example, grasses with plump seeds of carbohydrates were in short supply before the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. There were wheats and ryes, wild oats and such, but their seeds were relatively small and required a lot of labor to harvest. Consequently, our ancestors on the savannahs and in the woodlands ate grain carbohydrates in small amounts. Now, of course, grains--especially rice, wheat and corn--are the staple foods everywhere in the world and we eat massive amounts of them.

Is this a problem? As Professor Boaz points out, evolutionary medicine suggests that it is. We are "carbohydrate intolerant" (Boaz uses the term "glucotoxicity," page 133) and cannot shut down our appetite for all the carbohydrates so tantalizingly available to us. They are especially enthralling when served up with salt and fats.

In the prehistory there were no supermarkets open 24-hours a day. Instead there were freezing winters and droughts that might last for months or more, sure to visit almost every human eventually. So when there was a bountifulness in the land we chowed down big time. And those of us who had the ability to put on fat could live out the times of famine better than any prehistoric runway model. And so our chubby guy- or chubby gal-genes were favored. Boaz calls this the "thrifty genotype."

However that virtue has become a fault. What to do? Boaz recommends exercise, for one thing. In the pre-history our ancestors managed to walk all the way around the world. They had no cars or easy chairs. That we can solve our fat problem by looking at the way our ancestors lived and emulate them, is the somewhat bitter pill of this book. And, by the way, this "medicine" (hard to take, as we all know) also works against heart attacks, gout and other modern diseases.

Boaz has gone to some considerable trouble to associate various "diseases" with 17 evolutionary levels of human structure and function. (There's a table on pages 19-25.) These levels are like the idea that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" in that some of the levels are similar to those stages in the embryo's development from single cell through bony fish and amphibian to mammal, all the way to us. What Boaz is adding here is the idea that certain diseases are associated with each level of development. For example, emphysema is associated with the amphibian level of adaptation while viral infections go all the way back to when our ancestors were just single cells.

This scheme is useful in helping us to understand disease. It is even helpful in treatment. But Boaz's formulation is no magic pill or cure-all. For the chronic diseases that plague those of us in the developed world there is no easy cure. Boaz recognizes a "discordance" between our evolutionary selves and the modern environment that is leading to these diseases. He uses a concept he calls "adaptive normality" that can guide us away from the discordance.

This is a very readable book requiring no prior expertise. It is obvious that Boaz wanted to reach the educated lay person with his ideas. For those of you new to the idea of evolutionary medicine, this will be an exciting book. Boaz does an excellent job of teaching us is how to think from an evolutionary perspective, which is something we all need to do.

Another interesting book on this subject is Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine (1994) by Randolph M. Nesse and George C. Williams which I also recommend.

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