By the mid-1970s, the Effort/Shape program was recruiting lots of students and had become the “cash cow,” supporting the Labanotation Department at the Dance Notation Bureau.  This led the Effort/Shape faculty to break away and start a new organization, the Laban Institute of Movement Studies.

By 1978, we had premises, a Board, and a non-profit organization dedicated to the vision of Irmgard Bartenieff – the first person in the U.S. to recognize the potential of Laban’s movement analysis as a means of studying human behavior.… Read More

In addition to Labanotation classes and dance documentation services, the Dance Notation Bureau added the Effort/Shape Department in 1965, under the direction of Irmgard Bartenieff.

Initially, training in Effort/Shape took the form of a series of different classes, mostly taught by Bartenieff.

By 1975, when I started training, Effort/Shape classes had become a year-long Certification Program, with a trained faculty in addition to Bartenieff.  The program proved so popular that it was attracting more students than the notation programs.

This popularity led to a rebellion. … Read More

In her 80^th year, Irmgard Bartenieff finally published Body Movement: Coping with the Environment.  She worked on the book for years, but it would not have come into being without the labors of her editor, Dori Lewis. As Lewis explained, Body Movement was “Irmgard’s life and my book.”

While Body Movement is wonderful in many ways, I never quite hear Irmgard’s voice when I read the text.  This has motivated me to look for other things that Irmgard wrote.  I am not only seeking her “voice,” but also a deeper understanding of her perspective and contributions to movement study.… Read More

When I met Irmgard Bartenieff, she was in her 70s.  Although obviously elderly, her hands were remarkably strong.  They appeared large, almost out-of-proportion with her slender figure.  Since she had been a masseuse and physical therapist, it is perhaps natural that Irmgard had strong hands.  Yet it is their expressivity that I also remember keenly.

Irmgard did not dwell in the past, and her younger American students never asked much about what her life had been like in Germany. Yet Irmgard was a young adult when the Weimar Republic was created. … Read More

Early in my LMA Certification Program, I was stretching before class when Irmgard Bartenieff approached me.  “You must understand,” she said rather fiercely, “that the greatest muscular tension does not equal the greatest movement!”

The crystal-clear logic of the statement forever altered the way I view exercise.  As a young dancer, I somehow came to believe that pain was part of good practice.  Slowly, under Bartenieff’s tutelage, I began to understand that good practice does not necessitate tense gripping and sore muscles.… Read More

During the period when the Effort/Shape Certification Program was based at the Dance Notation Bureau in New York City, Irmgard Bartenieff characterized the program’s foci as “seeing, doing, and writing movement.”  This trifecta offers three avenues for understanding movement – objective, third person analysis; subjective, first person experience; and symbolic representation using Kinetography/Labanotation.

July 2025 offers a chance to revisit these three different avenues of understanding during the joint conferences of the International Council of Kinetography Laban and the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies at the Ohio State University.… Read More

Much of Irmgard Bartenieff’s reputation rests on “Bartenieff Fundamentals” – the somatic practice she evolved during her rehabilitation work with polio patients.  In my 20s, Bartenieff Fundamentals altered how I approached dance technique.  Now, as I experience conventional physical therapy in my 70s, I start to see how radical Bartenieff’s practices were, and are.

Irmgard received conventional training in physical therapy, graduating from New York University.  But early in her work with patients recovering from paralysis, she started to see limitations to existing practices.… Read More

When I began to study with Irmgard Bartenieff in 1975, she was 75 years old.  Her age was just a number – what mattered was the depth and breadth of her many experiences.  She was an icon of possibility for her younger students, a living example of the many ways Laban-based movement analysis could be used in artistic creation, therapeutic intervention, and behavioral research.

By 1975, the Effort/Shape program at the Dance Notation Bureau had an established curriculum: theory (effort/space/shape); observation; Bartenieff Fundamentals; and seminar (a weekly reading and discussion class). … Read More