While line, mass, and colour form the cornerstones of Sogetsu Ikebana; ‘ma’, movement, and asymmetry, are also essential for creating beautiful and interesting ikebana arrangements.
My youngest daughter is all too familiar with movement, she is an avid football (soccer) player and struggles to sit still for extended periods of time. In between school pick up and football practice, we decided to create an ikebana arrangement.
I was struggling to explain the concept of movement in ikebana to her. For a child the concept of movement implies physically moving. Grasping the concept of movement in a still arrangement was providing a bit of a struggle.
As football practice loomed closer, I had an epiphany. In football, my daughter’s coach often draws a game plan for the children, so that they understand how and where they should move around the pitch. I explained to her that movement in ikebana is like a football game plan. The plan is static, but you can feel where each player must go because of the lines and movement on the paper.
Once I explained this, the concept of movement became clear to her and she created her own game plan using liriope.
She told me that the single carnation was a ball, with which she scored a goal.
