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

In The Power of Limits the architect Gyorgy Doczi examines some of the basic pattern-forming processes that, “operating within strict limits, create limitless varieties of shapes and harmonies” in both natural and man-made objects.  For Doczi, “limitations are creative,” for the “limitless emerges from limits.”

Rudolf Laban refers to various infinities in relation to human movement, noting that “innumerable directions radiate from the centre of our body and its kinesphere into infinite space.” He writes that directions of movement “follow one another with infinite variations.”… Read More

The fabulous performance of athletes during the Winter Olympics demonstrates the constant advance of physical skills and human movement potential.  As Michael Murphy, co-founder of the Esalen Institute, wrote, “The worlds of physical adventure and sport dramatize our capacity for self-exceeding.”

According to Moshe Feldenkrais, once one man was able to run a mile in four minutes, it was only a matter of time before more people could do the same.  Indeed, the capacity of athletes to keep breaking records seems almost infinite.… Read More

Body-based mechanisms – mirror neurons, matching qualities of flow, and synchronous rhythms – are increasingly recognized as the subliminal bases of interpersonal empathy and social cooperation.

Is it possible that these same body-based mechanisms also play a role in understanding the art and artifacts that human beings create?

This is exactly what some artists proposed in the early 20^th century.

In asking how a visual object – a painting, sculpture, or building – comes to have meaning, these artists observed that “physical forms possess a character because we ourselves possess a body.” … Read More