Ha Ha

Describing the sensation of movement is as difficult as describing the wetness of water. We can take the biomechanical approach and discuss almost certainly have to make use of literary terminology and use methaphors, imagery and have recourse to the common ground of personal experience.
For example the pull of gravity, the surge of energy, the lightness of being. A task which can at best describe the symptomatic outlines of the experience. Filling in the gaps is a personal mission which we all participate in and it is the process of life itself, life being almost synonymous with movement.

Fundamentally movement is a molecular disturbance which spreads along specified channels of association. These channels can be visualised as line of fracture which mimic the hard core shape structure provided by the skeleton. So the standing wae pattern of the vertebrae, for example, is mimicked in the typical gestures of extension and flexion of the torso.

Identifying and developing these features has been the core of my work for the last few years. What started off as an attempt to identify key features of my personal technique of the last two decades has become an investigation into the bio-cultural signal of human movement. I call this work PRIMAL MORPHIC MOVEMENT PATTERNING (aka. Primorphic Technique). the first shape/form building blocks organised into kinetic units of sensation and structure.

"Ha Ha' is composed on Primorphic principles. I must acknowledge a debt to all my teachers. To Mary O'Donnell (Fulkerson), Steve Paxton, Kanetsuka Sensei and Julioo Hovarth. To the pioneers of the modern dance and the work of Mabel Todd. To the anatomical illustration of the Renaissance anatomists Versalius and Albinus, and to my students and clients who with great good humour regularly venture into the unknown terrain of extreme human behaviour with optimism and curiosity.

'Ha Ha' is also the work of the wonderful and eccenric German composer/artist Hans Peter Kuhn. We have worked many times and this is a great reunion.

© Laurie Booth 2008