Laban Movement Analysis is an objective system for describing human movement, and in this sense it is gender-blind. However, certain male and female associations arose as Laban developed his Choreutic and Eukinetic theories and created space and effort sequences.
Some of the sexual associations can be found in Part II of Choreutics. This section of the book was written by Gertrud Snell Friedburg in the late 1920s and presented as a gift to Laban. Much later, when Lisa Ullmann edited Laban’s original Choreutics manuscript, she translated and added Friedburg’s section to the book.
In Part II, gender comes up in the discussion of the A and B Scales. Based on their relative relationship to the cubic diagonals, there is a “deficiency of natural vigor” in the movements of the A Scale. Consequently, the character of the A Scales tends to be “soft and moderate.” In contrast, the B Scales “have a much more active character.” Movements of the B Scales have a “strong and impulsive expression.” Because of this, according to Friedburg, “we sometimes refer to the scales thus:
A = female scales
B = male scales.”
Friedburg’s comment demonstrates how pervasive stereotypic notions of virility and femininity must have been in the 1920s!
Male and female differences and the characteristics attributed to each sex continue to be dominant constructs even today. Rather than simply falling in with these stereotypes, it seems to me that Laban Movement Analysis can be used to investigate male-ness and female-ness more objectively. Warren Lamb certainly thought so. Find out more in the next blog.