In 1994 Warren Lamb wrote: “Twenty years ago I began to be aware of consistent differences between men and women in movement, and was intrigued also to find that these differences were cross-cultural; they appeared to transcend social, religious and economic considerations.”

This is a bold statement, but one that could shed light on some of the complexities troubling male and female interactions. Lamb claimed to have hard evidence for the flow patterns he observed, but sadly, his notations have been lost.… Read More

Laban investigated matching and clashing relationships between effort qualities and shape qualities. Lamb dug deeper, examining relationships between effort and effort flow and shape and shape flow. He found that men and women tend to manifest different flow patterns.

According to Lamb, men tend to combine bound flow with fighting efforts and free flow with indulging efforts (matching patterns). Women do the opposite – combining free flow with fighting efforts and bound flow with indulging efforts (clashing patterns). Lamb provided a practical example based on watching male and female soccer teams.… Read More

Warren Lamb set out to use his skills in movement observation and analysis to tease out differences in how men and women perform the same physical tasks. Before discussing what he observed, it is necessary to review some core concepts in Laban theory.

Rudolf Laban delineated four motion factors:  space, weight, time, and flow. Each motion factor varies between contrasting dynamic qualities that Laban conceptualized as having either a fighting or indulging quality.

Fighting effort qualities include directing (space), increasing pressure (weight), accelerating (time), and binding (effort flow).… Read More

In an unpublished manuscript, Warren Lamb recalled: “When I was at the Art of Movement Studio in the late 1940s Laban taught that women did light movement and men strong movements. This seemed to me at the time to be completely wrong and symptomatic of thousands of years of conditioning which set up men as ‘macho’ and women as ‘little flowers.’”

Lamb continues: “There were plenty of women, fellow students, around and my observations revealed that they did do strong movement as much and to as great a degree as men, only their strength of movement looked different; it was performed  differently from men.”… Read More

Laban Movement Analysis is an objective system for describing human movement, and in this sense it is gender-blind. However, certain male and female associations arose as Laban developed his Choreutic and Eukinetic theories and created space and effort sequences.

Some of the sexual associations can be found in Part II of Choreutics. This section of the book was written by Gertrud Snell Friedburg in the late 1920s and presented as a gift to Laban. Much later, when Lisa Ullmann edited Laban’s original Choreutics manuscript, she translated and added Friedburg’s section to the book.… Read More