When I trained, movement analysis was meant to be descriptive, not interpretative.  But no one wants a movement analysis.  Clients want to dance better, eliminate back pain, or understand their own movement patterns.  In other words, they want our movement analyses to yield meaningful results.

Consequently, I have come to believe that the job of the analyst is not over until he/she has made sense of what has been observed.

In fact, we do this all the time, for our movement impressions inevitably influence the informal judgments we make about other people (whether we are aware of this or not).… Read More

Movement analysts have a range of options for recording the movement parameters they have chosen to observe.  As I describe in Beyond Words, recording options include written descriptions, stick figures and do-it-yourself notes, coding sheets of various types, and simplified and formal notation systems.

While there are plenty of choices, recording methods either help or hinder the process of making sense of what has been observed.

For example, in my first job as a movement analyst I was asked to analyze videotaped improvisations as experimental subjects responded to different colors.… Read More

“It’s not what you look at that matters,” Henry David Thoreau wrote, “it’s what you see.”

As movement analysts, we often want to look at every BESS movement parameter.  But it is not necessary to see everything to produce meaningful results.

In Movement Pattern Analysis, we look at every movement the client does.  But what we see are the effort and shape qualities that are consistent through the body as a whole.  That is, out of a seemingly random tangle of actions, we tease out the moments of integration. … Read More

Time plays a big role in observation, because how long you look affects what you can see.

Let me explain.

The vividness and indelibility of first impressions is well documented.  But from a disciplined movement analysis perspective, an observation of only a few moments can only reveal a unique sequence of unique acts.  Such a short sample can hardly be predictable.

In the practice of Movement Pattern Analysis we have found it takes an interview of about two hours to collect enough observations to capture an individual’s characteristic decision-making profile.… Read More

Movement is everywhere, and most of the time we are perceiving it either directly or subliminally.  Consequently, we are usually in one of two roles as observers.  We may be watching an event in which we are participating, such as conversing with a friend or teaching a dance class.  Or we may be watching an event in which we are spectators, such as a sporting event or a video recording of a concert.

When I make a Movement Pattern Analysis profile, I am conducting a face-to-face interview while simultaneously observing and recording the client’s movements. … Read More

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.… Read More

Any movement analysis system must address the question of whether or not two trained observers can see the same thing.  LMA stands up to this test.

Over the course of my career, I have been involved in various inter-observer agreement tests.  From the Laban/Bartenieff Institute’s Concensus Project, a study conducted by Dr. Martha Davis in the early 1980s, to more recent studies conducted by Brenda Connors, Dr. Tim Colton, and Dr. Richard Rende in this century, LMA has proven to be reliable tool for decoding movement parameters of many sorts. … Read More

One of the things I value about Laban Movement Analysis is its elegance, parsimony, and consequent level of abstraction.  Let me explain.

Body movement is concrete, immediate, but at the same time ephemeral.  Moving is one thing; thinking about it quite another.

Laban’s efforts to record movement in symbols have provided just enough “fixed points” for movement to be remembered, reconstructed, and analyzed.  The elements of his system are limited in number (parsimonious).  Because they are limited in number, salient motion factors must be abstracted from movements that do not look alike.… Read More

Rudolf Laban was a polymath who worked in a variety of fields – visual arts, dance, theatre, work study, education, and therapy. Each arena of activity provided different opportunities to study human movement.

Like a naturalist, Laban observed movement in the field, and developed his ideas on the basis of varied data.  His ideas continued to evolve.

Those who have followed have similarly tested his ideas through observations in different areas of endeavor. For example, Lamb studied white collar labor and decision making, Kestenberg examined infants and toddlers in interaction with their parents, Bartenieff  practiced physical therapy and researched dance patterns cross-culturally.… Read More