Inter-equilibrium Between

BMC and Paul Klee’s Fundamentals

as

Applied to Movement Lab and Dance Solo

 Dr. Adriana Almeida Pees

-        First Translation Angelica Costa

-        Final Translation Kate Tarlow Morgan

Picture 1: Der Seiltänzer, 1921[i]

The equilibrist discovers himself as a symbol for an idea do the balancing act, in which the artist in the entire image will be aware that the encounter between the subject and the object is born. The image of the equilibrist is between reality and abstraction, nature and thought, vision and idea, outside and explicit inside. In this dynamic equilibrium no antagonism between the opposite, no either / or, but an unquestionable centralizing and reciprocity to a whole.

                   Bernhard Marx  Balancieren in Zwischen (Balance in Between) (2007: 22)

The similarities between the Body-Mind Centering method and Paul Klee’s visual arts and pedagogical ideas bring to somatic studies new techniques for the facilitation of movement classes. Using these two modes of thought, I conducted a “movement lab” at the State University of Campinas, SP, Brazil (UNICAMP) in order to establish the important links between physicality, perception, and conceptualization in the making of a dance.  This essay embraces the similarities between Body-Mind Centering and Paul Klee’s work. Together, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, whose work spans 1970-present and Paul Klee, who died in 1940, share a unique orientation to theory and practice.

The somatic methods that characterize BMC and Klee’s visual arts studies are both based on the integration of theoretical, experiential and pedagogical fundamentals. Body-Mind Centering by its experiential nature opens new pathways towards the precise study of anatomy and physiology, and produces an evolutionary knowledge of the body that integrates new dynamics and qualities of movement.  The nature of the BMC approach directly reflects the quality of the tissue (s) viz. the study of the body systems and follows the changes that occur when that tissue or system is put called into action.

Paul Klee’s theoretical fundamentals on shape, color and line were utilized in both in his teaching and his artwork. These studies were specifically realized for the lessons that took place in the Bauhaus,1 based on issues related to the shape and definition of an image. Klee’s teachings, not unlike the demonstrative nature of BMC, were exampled by using his own sketches and drawings, which illustrated compositional stages that finalized his paintings. Klee was keenly focused on perspective, the presence of subjective space, the theory of structure, the influence of the rhythm of changing viewpoints and the synthesis between dynamic and static relationships.

During the course of this Movement Lab, students experienced the work of BMC and Klee in order to promote a personal growing process based on their own individual conscious artistic creation. The fascinating parallel between Klee’s visual investigations and Cohen’s development movement methods inspired myself and my students to work in worlds patterns and layers. 

Once more from a microscopic perspective we go back to the dynamic area, from the egg to cell. Thus, there is a macroscopic and a microscopic dynamic between them.[ii]

Both Klee and Cohen establish their work through a poetic relationship between theory and practice, whereby creating a symbology and a “fundamentals” (or principles) that create a working field in physical space and in the body.  For Cohen, it begins with the cell; for Klee, it is the dot. The cell and its movement is the first movement pattern in development. It also establishes a state of being or presence of self. The dot is the agent of movement as a visual unwinding process starts from the dot. The line and the arch come from the tension between dots and a continuous movement of the line launches the plane. The space where planes meet results in a tri-dimensional body (to be discussed later). 

Both Klee and Cohen begin with form and content that is propelled by an oncoming action that gives rise to new palettes. All action permeates and supports new movement that will either balance or unbalance the whole. With action come new qualities—colors, surfaces or body systems—which are established whereby creating new starting points for expressive, linear and spiralic pathways.

Movement Lab: Off-Balance

At the State University, I explored these theories with twenty-four students and myself.  Together we reflected on the idea of equilibrium using Klee’s idea of gradation, which considersthe line-element and how it works as a boundary for growth, for two-way direction tension, and as a mediator for oppositional movement. From Klee’s studies, the dance students gradually found themselves more confident to move, to perceive and vary tone, and to explore how a movement is molded and becomes unique.

I refer here to the word — inter-equilibrium — that may be defined as the potential space in which a dialogue can occur between one movement and another. It is in this between place that the gradations of movement are established and are able to reorganize for next action or even the choice to rest.  The image of Paul Klee's "De Seiltanzer" (with umlaut of over the "a") (1921) permeates my research, as it is through movement that the "equilibrist" finds his balance. In order not to lose his balance, he uses gravity, weight and counterweight. 

BMC allows the mover to experiment with what Klee's "equilibrist" does.  When instability emerges, there is the impulse to oppose on the supporting surface and the effect is perceived through thought, body, and environment. The motoric principle of being off-balance proves to be a driving force in movement, but it is only one part in the dialectic relationship to balance.  Ultimately the two forces (balance and off-balance) bring us to a new resolution. It is the process of getting to that new resolution in which inter-equilbrium is called to act, In fact, it is the thinking and acting body conducts the sensory search for our instability.

The conscious use of thoughts that are allowed to (dis)organize are, in themselves, a source of revelation. The process allows the new to emerge, creating new frames of reference to be observed 1) the primary element is proprioception and 2) the secondary element (somatosensory and visual, besides the use of several body systems) — all of which we become aware of from the experiential research of Body-Mind Centering. This allows us to institute a reference point established by one’s outer movement perceiving.

Movement Lab: Tri-Dimensionality

In searching for inner perceptions in movement and the rest state, and with this ever present dynamic of balance and unbalance new ways of understanding the perceptual circle of sensingfeeling and action are found and the transit between spaces brings us to a relationship with the environment and our surroundings. With a new frame of reference, the senses and our attention expand, thereby creating new information that leads us to perceive beyond our kinesphere. 

Paul Klee used the word "tri-dimensionality."

   "Three-dimensional is a piece in which internal and external are clearly distinguished. In height, width, length or depth we can measure them. " [iii]

During Movement Lab, the students were introduced to the fundamental vocabulary of corporal movement. Initially, we focused on inner vision using physiological flexion, which brings attention to the digestive system, the front part of the body and its tone modulation. In a counter movement, outward directed, we used physiological extension. The students noticed these basic aspects granted not only an allusion of contraction, and an approximation or expansion, but also brought the possibility to open new internal spaces.

The expression of modulated physiological movements between condensation and expansion, or the cell and cellular breathing rhythm, which is a fundamental movement pattern in BMC—leads us to shape of the circle and its “directional slopes” that Klee observed.  I started to subdivide the movements in relations of the levels of activity in horizontal and vertical axes to orient and coordinate the body in space similar to what Klee did in his studies. In this citation, Klee's ideas easily parallel "cellular breathing," a BMC fundamental:

What was in the beginning? Things moved so to speak freely, neither in straight nor crooked lines. They may be thought of as simple moving, going where they wanted to go, for the sake of going, without aim, without will, without obedience, moving self evidently, in a state of primal motion. There was just one thing — mobility, the prerequisite for change from this primordial state.[iv]

The "point," or Klee's Dot, is a primordial element to begin with the orientations of motion can multiply, whereby creating tension as in a line, and eventually a "plane" or a surface that will permit the essential structure  to grow, having an outside and an inside. The forces if this structure can grown centripedally (striving towards the centre) or centrifugally (striving away form the centre).  In BMC work we  may correlate it this to the early pattern of "navel radiation," which organizes the body (peripheral) around the center (navel).

BMC and Klee, each using a different modality, present similarities with regards to the practical and theoretical approach to inner- equilibrium and tri-dimensionality. Both launch the foundation for their work and studies of nature as Klee says: “ The artist is a man himself nature and a part of nature in natural space”[v]. when the point is set in motion to become a line or the cells start to breath freely, there exists many different gradations and nuances that flow  between the progressive orientations of motion between forms —on the surface, in space,  varying in function and perspective.

Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s consideration of orientations of motion into space are expressed in the following paragraph:

“Hearing, vibration, position in space, relationship to gravity, velocity, changes in velocity – those are all more primitive than vision, thus there is a faster, more total response from those sensations. In vision you use higher, more specialized cells, which allow for more articulability. (…) The next place to extend is into space. This movement into space becomes an extension of the force of gravity. To introduce prematurely would be to lose out on the richness of the process of going back to the base and allowing it the chance to complete itself before adding on to it”. 3

The three dimensions are present and become integrated in the vestibular system, supported by vision and the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR), which keeps our world stable while we move.  In the Movement Lab we integrated yielding into a horizontal base (ground) by pushing away from it and moving towards verticality. Then, we experienced rolling with full-body yielding or sequencing-body yielding in different body parts. Mobility to roll left and right only happens if verticality acts is an essential secondary element - a stability element - supporting and preceding movement.

From these physical patterns and rhythms, the vertical axis is visually established with its belonging elements: superior and inferior planes in symmetry or asymmetry. For this to occur, we need to have a base, a base of support is needed that allows the axis to exercise its potentiality. Notwithstanding, yielding to the ground, we allow gravity to act upon our bodies. Our inner ear registers information about our position in space. In doing so, it creates a referencing to the horizontal axis support that generates left and right side potentiality. Our frames expand upward and downward, until the axis starts to include visuality.

Every previous stage of movement can be used to reintegrate the dialog between stability and mobility, tension and relaxation, form and content.  Isn’t this what art is about? Therefore, for both Cohen and Klee, the focus on the art of movement appears in the relationship between balance and unbalance, as well as in the relationship between inner and outer, and the whole and its parts.  

CALL OUT BOX #1: The dance grows in its essential structure, the dialogue between the inner and outer space is activated. It is manifested between the contrasts and the boundaries of possibilities to move with new textures.

CALL OUT BOX #2: I begin the solo in the center of the space and it is from that point on that it is getting its shape until it notices the front and the back support (amniotic and yolk sack), and the embryonic development of my nervous system. From that image and supported by the cellular breath I slowly create the vertical axis. The cell movement com its subdivisions enlarges itself from the center to the periphery (naval radiation) always being possible to return to the beginning; I connect each one of my upper and lower limbs with the navel, so that movements and extremities are gradually allowed to be formed, mainly supported in the organs of the digestive tube. From this formation arises a soft spinal support until a verticality connecting the head axis to the coccyx comes. I imagine e build the movements in line with Klee’s poetry, and I visualize them almost embraced by the development of the movement from that point, those lines e these tensions which are transformed into arch and the foundation for the horizontal and vertical axes.

 CALL OUT BOX #3: When I am dancing, I try not to measure the space that I walk because my body has built the three-dimensionality that allows me to throw myself in all directions. If movement arises from a place, different nuances and directions cause the body to move in the plans, where lines are established and thus the shape of moving deepens into the room and drawings are composed with itself. We are driven by impulses that move us, disrupt us and then we move in an attempt to rescue or to balance the movement in space.

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______. Gedichte, Asche Verlag AG, Zürich-Hamburg. 4 Auflage arz, 2004.

______.On Modern Art: Paul Klee;preface e notes, Gunther Regel; tradução, Pedro Süssekind; tecnica revision, Cecília Cotrim. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Ed., 2001.

______. Osterwold. Bern: Hatje Cantz, [s.d].

______. The thinking eye. Trad. Ralph Manheim from german edition, Das bildnerische Denken with collaboration of Dr, Charlotte Weidler and Joyce Wittenborn. London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Co. Ltd, 1961.

______. The Diaries of Paul Klee. 1898-1918.Revised edition with Felix Klee’s introduction English translation from the German. California: University of Califórnia Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, Califórnia University of Califórnia Press, LTd., London England, 1997.

______. Die Ordnung der Dinge. Collected images and commented quotations by Tilman Osterwold. Stuttgart: Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1975.

______. Unendliche Naturgeschichte. 2. ed. Basel: Schwalbe AG, Verlag, 2007

______. Beitrage zur bildnerischen Formlehre. Facsmile edition of original handscript of Paul Klee’s first series of seminars at the Bauhaus in Weimar 1921-1922. Publication: Jurgen Glaesemer Paul Klee –Stiftung, Kunstmuseum Bern: Schwabe & CO AG, Verlag,1999

______. Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch. Edited by Hans M. Wingler. Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin, 2003.

Marx, B. Balancieren Im Zwischen: Zwischenreiche bei Paul Klee. Verlag Koenigshausen & Neumann GmbH, Würzburg, 2007.

PEES, A. A. Uma introdução ao método Body-Mind Centering(R) e os sistemas corporais. In: BOLSANELLO, D. P. Em Pleno Corpo: Educação Somática, Movimento e Saúde. Curitiba: Juruá, 2006.