Laban did not choose the term “harmony” in the common sense of something that is euphonious, attractive, or pleasing to the senses. Analogous with music theory, Laban’s notions of harmony incorporate dissonance as well as consonance.

Consequently, for Laban harmonic movement is not necessarily “beautiful movement” according to any kind of social standard. While access to a rich range of movement provides a foundation for movement harmony, Laban affirms that “there are considerations such as individual expressiveness or taste which can influence the personal conception of harmony in movement.”… Read More

As a military cadet, Laban was assigned to the railway workshops to learn to handle machinery. Initially thrilled by the power of the locomotive, his sentiments soon changed – “I saw with growing clarity how man will come under the domination of the machine.” For the rest of his career, he was concerned to differentiate natural human action from mechanical movement.

For example, Laban recognized that human movement is a psychophysical phenomenon – a coming together of intention and action, mind and body.… Read More

In A Leg to Stand On, neurologist Oliver Sacks recounts his uncanny experiences when he severely tore the quadriceps, tendons, and ligaments in his left leg during a hiking accident. Bedridden for weeks following surgery, he lost all sensation and access to voluntary movement in the leg as it was healing. Even when the cast was removed, he confessed that the left leg “looked and felt uncannily alien – a lifeless replica attached to my body.”

While the surgeons had successfully reconnected and repaired the damaged flesh, Sacks found that “what was disconnected was not merely nerve and muscle but, in consequence of this, the natural and innate unity of body and mind.”… Read More

Today Laban is recognized primarily for two accomplishments. The first is his notation system, which allows dance works of varying genre to be recorded and reconstructed from a symbolic score. The second is his taxonomy of human movement, known as Laban Movement Analysis.

Both notation and Laban’s taxonomy provide the means for breaking a stream of bodily action into component parts, either for purposes of documentation or for study. Consequently, Laban’s name has become synonymous with movement analysis.

However, breaking a movement apart into its various body, effort, shape, and space elements was only part of Laban’s theoretical project.… Read More

According to Rudolf Laban, “Between the harmonic life of music and that of dance, there is not only a superficial resemblance but a structural congruity.” Laban’s insistence that movement has a harmonic structure is usually interpreted as a wishful by-product of his mystical worldview. But this is a misinterpretation.

Instead, Laban is employing harmony as an analogic metaphor. An analogic metaphor is a controlled comparison in which the analog model (in this case, dance and movement) shares with the original (in this case, musical harmony) the same structure and pattern of relationships.… Read More

Biological motion research investigates the visual perception of human patterns of movement by human observers. Point-light stimuli are used in these experimental studies. These are reduced visual displays in which most identifiable features of the human mover are masked. Here is how it works.

In a classic point-light display, the head and each of the major joints of the human figure have been replaced by single points of light against a black background. When placed in motion, the points trace the position of each body part in time, clearly depicting the underlying action.… Read More