The thinking body-in-motion: Studio laboratory practice in researching Laban in Brazil

Abstract

What if I could use my body-in-motion as a research tool? From the understanding that movement can be a site of knowledge and the body a thinking soma, this article supports a practice of studio laboratory as a somatic method of research, working with Laban’s principles of thinking in movement to investigate the genealogy of Laban practices in Brazil. Based on embodied research perspectives and Rudolf Laban’s praxis that proposes a ‘movement-thinking’ as well as the merging between cognition and action, the laboratory is a way to employ movement practice in the research without focusing on an artistic product but using art as a means of research and not necessarily its end. In this article, I discuss and describe the use of laboratory practice as a method for embodied and somatic research, providing two examples of how this practice was implemented as part of the methodology for drawing the genealogy of Laban practitioners in Brazil.