Laban understood that the efforts we employ to move reflect the inner landscapes of what we are thinking and feeling. Consequently, he was working on a book about movement psychology and effort with a colleague, William Carpenter.
When Carpenter died unexpectedly, Laban handed the manuscript to Yat Malmgren, a former Jooss dancer who had become a movement-for-actors teacher. Malmgren devoted the latter half of his life to expanding Laban’s effort theories into a practical method for actors to develop realistic characters for stage and screen.
Malmgren’s application focuses heavily on understanding effort states as “inner attitudes” that reveal character through movement. Find out more in the August MoveScape workshop, “Incomplete Efforts (Mostly).”