Several years ago, while I was teaching Laban Movement Analysis at the University of Surrey, I encountered one of our Korean students outside the library. She approached me, cradling something in her hand. When she opened her hand, I saw it was a small leaf.

“Look,” she cried with delight. “Doesn’t this have a beautiful shape!”

We had, earlier in the day, been doing a class on shape. I had to agree, the leaf did have a lovely shape. But what was even more beautiful to me was the student’s delight.… Read More

Effective communication and critical thinking are often cited as goals of general education at the university level. Movement study can contribute to the development of both these skills.

It is widely acknowledged that communication has two parts: the verbal and the nonverbal. As the anthropologist Edward Hall explains, words make up only a fraction of any message. The movements accompanying speech convey more significant information. Nonverbal behavior “stresses feedback on how people are feeling, ways of avoiding confrontation, and the inherent logic that is the birthright of all people.”… Read More

“The first inner vision of a choreutic shape and the first inner vision of any architectural creation or an abstract drawing have a great resemblance. The invention of an architectural, plastic or pictorial form is, in reality, a choreutic phrase.”

Rudolf Laban, Mastery of Movement, p. 115

Over my years in the field of dance and movement studies, I became increasingly curious about exploring the relationship between architectural practice and movement.

For some, this may seem an odd pairing. Architects design and create solid, tangible structures that are more or less unchanging over time; dancers articulate liminal traceforms that vanish before your eyes.… Read More

Over the past three centuries, knowledge has proliferated. At the same time, knowledge has become increasingly specialized. At the university level, this has led to a proliferation of departments, with courses of study carefully demarcated along disciplinary borders that are not particularly permeable. Indeed, the departmental structure of most universities makes it difficult for inter-disciplinary initiatives to succeed.

Nevertheless, it is the mission of the university to educate, and an educated person is supposed to know a little something about all fields of human knowledge.… Read More

Courses in Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) have become core curriculum, primarily in university dance and dance therapy programs. However, LMA courses are also appearing in other disciplinary areas such as theatre, music composition and conducting, computer animation, and even architecture – disciplines in which some understanding of human movement is relevant. Movement analysis helps future dancers, actors, and conductors move more expressively and creatively while enabling would-be animators, composers, and architects to observe movement more precisely. In all these fields, Laban’s work is appreciated for its utilitarian value.… Read More