Balance plays a significant role in Rudolf Laban’s thinking. This emphasis is understandable. As I note in The Harmonic Structure of Movement, Music, and Dance, “balance is a significant aspect of somatic experience… health, both mental and physical, is said to depend upon balance.”
Indeed, as Laban observes, the human body has to withstand a variety forces that can throw it out of balance – not only forces that arise in the outside environment but also those that come from within. Congruently, balance in movement has both kinespheric and dynamospheric aspects.
Balance for Laban is an oscillation between opposites. In physical space, a movement forward is counter-balanced by a movement backward. In effort, shifting between a forceful action and a gentle one sustains equilibrium and a balanced range of movement expression.
Laban applied this simple principle to develop much more complex spatial and dynamic sequences. One of the most interesting dynamospheric models is a lengthy sequence of effort phrases that oscillate rhythmically between completely contrasting action drive moods. This complex dynamic sequence seems to represent a model of almost perfect effort balance. In contrast, the effort “knots” Laban charted provide models of effort imbalance that are rich with dramatic and psychological implications.
In the August Octa seminar, “Discovering the Dynamosphere,” we delve deeply into Laban’s notions of effort balance and imbalance.