Every movement involves BESS – activation of the Body, Effort to move, and changes in the Shape and Spatial trajectory of the action. While the Laban system allows for these multiple factors to be analyzed, trying to “see it all” can be overwhelming for the observer.
For this reason, taking time to structure the observation process is essential. In this series of blogs, I will address five interdependent factors to consider when analyzing movement: observer role, duration of the observation, movement parameters, modes of recording, and making sense.
Making sense of your analysis is both the first and the last part of meaningful movement observation. That’s because the first step is to know why you are observing. Are you just people watching? Or trying to help a student improve her pirouettes? Or is it a formal study of parent/child interactions? Or???
Why you are observing is also the last step, the one in which you use your observational data to answer a question or solve a problem. But before addressing this last step, let’s look at those other four factors – observer role, duration of observation, movement parameters, and modes of recording.