Body, Effort, Space, and Shape have been identified as the four major categories of Laban’s analytic framework.  Each factor can be seen as discrete and categorically different.  Nevertheless, all four factors are simultaneously manifested in every physical action. As Laban writes in Choreutics, these different movement elements “are entirely inseparable from each other.”

This inseparability led Laban to look for some underlying principles to explain the tie that binds these elements and allows them to seamlessly cohere with undue mental calculation on the part of the mover. … Read More

Anything a human being can do involves effort.  And because we can do so many different things, human effort appears almost infinite.  Nevertheless, Rudolf Laban detected limits.

These limits have to do with the sequencing of dynamic qualities and combinations.  He notes that “effort follows certain rules, because the transitions from one effort quality to another are either easy or difficult.”

While Laban affirms that “Man has complete freedom in his choice and employment of action-moods,” he also adds that “In ordinary circumstances, no sane person will ever jump from one quality to a complete contrast because of the great mental and nervous strain involved in so radical a change.”… Read More

Laban makes the following observation in Choreutics: “Form is produced by the limbs of the body and is governed by their anatomical structure which permits only certain movements to be made arising from the functions of bending, stretching, twisting, and combinations of these.”

Based on these limitations, Laban identified “four formal elements as a basis for shaping.”  These four linear elements can be found in all alphabets and numerical symbols.  Laban delineates these as straight, curved, twisted, and round.

According to Laban, all trace-forms are built from these four basic shapes. … Read More

Leonardo da Vinci identified a “second form of the human body,” the one created by the limbs as they move through the space around the body.  Laban named these secondary forms “trace-forms.” 

These movement forms are limited both by the mover’s body and by the nature of the space we inhabit.

Bodily limits include joint structure, proportional relations among body parts, and range of motion.  These limitations govern where our limbs can move in the surrounding space.

In addition, we inhabit a gravitation field in a three-dimensional terrestrial space. … Read More

Figure drawing was the core of academic art training when Laban was studying at the great French academy, the École des Beaux Arts around 1900. He was able to employ this training in his later career as a dance and movement theorist in three ways.

First, artist’s anatomy includes the study of joint structures.  These joints bend, extend, and rotate in certain directions, and not in others.

Secondly, while individual bodies differ, there is a normal range governing the proportion of different body parts well-known to artists since the Classical and Renaissance periods.… Read More

In The Future of the Body, Esalen founder Michael Murphy writes: “The inexorable advance of athletic records provides dramatic evidence that the human body has great potential for several kinds of development.”  Rudolf Laban concurs, noting that in every bodily movement “both infinity and eternity are hidden.”

Nevertheless, Laban was fully aware that human movement is not infinite.  It is bound by certain limits.  He was also aware that limitations are not just restrictive, they are also creative.

Laban spent much of his career as a dancer, observer, and movement theorist identifying the underlying factors that limit human movement potential.… Read More

My third suggestion for summer reading in Jamake Highwater’s Dance: Rituals of Experience.

Originally published in 1978, this dance history treatise remains relevant today for its juxtaposing of indigenous dance practices (notably Native American) with Western European dance.

Ritual serves as the pivot point for Highwater’s discussion.  The book begins by positioning dance as “a separate reality.”  Subsequent chapters address Experience as Ritual, History as Ritual, and Ritual as Art.  Final chapters focus on dance as contemporary rites, drawing on examples from ballet, modern and post-modern dance, and opera. … Read More