The imaginary lines of longitude and latitude make it possible to navigate on the open seas. In a similar way, Laban used the edges and corners of regular polyhedra to provide landmarks for tracking the pathways of moving limbs in the trackless space around the body.
This clever innovation allows for the movement of bodily gestures to be recorded as a line in space having a particular starting and ending point, with reference to a geometrical scaffolding of the kinesphere.… Read More
The limbs move through the space around the body, creating lines and shapes that disappear even as the movement is occurring. But what if the joints of the limbs, like little jet engines, left a vapor trail, allowing the movement trajectories to be seen, recorded, and studied?
This is what Rudolf Laban had in mind when he coined the term “trace-forms”to refer to the imaginary vapor trails inscribed by the moving limbs on the space around the body. His next challenge was to find a way to record these trace-forms so that they could be reconstructed from a notation score, just as the shape of a melody can be reproduced from a musical score.… Read More
There are three important values embedded in the practice of MPA that are as much a part of Warren Lamb’s legacy as his Seven Creative Concepts: respecting individuality, fostering diversity, and encouraging tolerance.
Lamb felt there was more than one way to do any job. Therefore, we do not have MPA profile templates for CFOs, or research heads, or other positions. Since each individual has strengths and challenges, there is no right or wrong profile at the individual level.
We do have a model for what makes an effective working team.… Read More
In his final book, Lamb noted: “The Seven Creative Concepts were formulated in the years immediately following Laban’s death in 1958, when I was focusing on finding a workable framework incorporating everything I had learnt during my apprenticeship with him.” Here is how Lamb delineated these creative concepts.
After his apprenticeship with Laban and Lawrence, Lamb set up his own consulting business in 1952. Over the next dozen years, he tested what he had learned in a variety of applications – giving advice on short-listed candidates, career counseling, even executive head-hunting.
Warren took Laban’s ideas seriously, but he was also capable of thinking about them independently.
For example, Laban and Lawrence had applied trait and factor theory to their industrial work — define the effort factors needed in the job, identify the effort traits of the worker, and see how they match.… Read More
Warren Lamb made two ground-breaking discoveries. First, he found that every individual has a movement pattern as unique as a fingerprint. Secondly, he confirmed that these patterns are related to cognitive processes used in decision making. This led to his creation: Movement Pattern Analysis (MPA).
The basis of MPA can be attributed to Laban’s insights, who seemed to have a knack for giving useful advice to workers and managers. Lamb had to provide more detailed explanations, leading him to admit that what Laban seemed to do through inspiration, he had to do through perspiration.… Read More
This month marks the centennial of Warren Lamb’s birth and a great opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of this very creative Englishman.
After serving in the British navy during World War II, a chance meeting with Rudolf Laban altered the course of Lamb’s life. Instead of resuming his pre-war career in banking, Lamb headed for the Art of Movement Studio in Manchester, to study dance!? His parents were deeply dismayed….
In addition to dance classes with Lisa Ullmann and Laban, Lamb soon found himself standing for hours in steamy weaving sheds, making lots of notations of repetitive labor for the industrial studies Laban and F.C.… Read More
Laban wanted readers of Mastery of Movement to engage both mind and body. Besides physical exercises, he provides observation prompts to engage performers in the study of everyday behavior, along with dramatic scenarios to be enacted.
Most of Laban’s scenarios include multiple characters, and this can be a bit daunting for the person reading the book alone at home.
However, movement imagination can be stimulated through movement observation. Mastery of Movement discusses mime as well as theatre and dance. I have found that contemporary mime provides great examples of how a single performer can create multiple characters without saying a word.… Read More
Mastery of Movement extends Laban’s notion of effort beyond functional work activities to notions of “incomplete efforts” and “transformation drives.” Laban had already explored movement expression in his own choreographies. But his effort theories were enhanced by the work he did with students at Theatre Workshop and the Northern Theatre School, fertile training grounds for some of England’s finest actors.
“You must not think of dance as steps,” he once told a group of student actors. “Dance is meaningful movement. You can dance with your eyebrows. … Read More
In the Preface to Mastery of Movement, Laban states that “every sentence in this exposition is written as an incentive to personal mobility.” He wants readers to get up out of their arm chairs and MOVE.
Consequently, the second and third chapters contain descriptions of 103 exercises for the reader to perform. Systematic exploration of bodily movement is valuable, but 103??!
In the forthcoming hybrid course, I have organized the exercises around 8 themes to be used as a basis for improvisational prompts or choreographed sequences. … Read More