Studies of repetitive physical labor in British industry during World War II stimulated Laban’s conceptualizations of the dynamics of human movement. Initially, Laban was hired by the efficiency engineer F.C. Lawrence to notate workers’ actions. Soon they both realized that it was not what was being done, but how it was being done that was significant.
Within two years, Laban and Lawrence expanded the scope of their studies to examine white collar labor in clerical and managerial jobs. They found that mental activities also required effort. While the scale of the movements was smaller, dynamic changes could be observed.
These empirical discoveries undoubtedly supported Laban’s intuition that movement is ubiquitous in functional and expressive actions. Through later work with movement for actors, Laban extended effort concepts to incorporate many dynamic moods and expressions. Find out more in the upcoming MoveScape Center course, “The Transformation Drives.”