As I reflect on the seductive appeal of Olympic sports, I’m drawn to the notion that sport is play. It may be a livelihood and an obsession for the athletes themselves, but for spectators, a sport is still a game. But what makes an activity playful?
In his seminal book, Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga identifies key features of play as the following:
* All play is a voluntary activity; it is free; it is never imposed as a duty or a practical task.… Read More
Explaining exceptional athletic performance occupies not only coaches but inquiring spectators. The “Sweet Spot Theory” propounded by sports writer John Jerome provides some interesting insights.
To introduce his theory, Jerome uses the example of throwing rocks as a kid. He spent many hours by a river, tossing rocks at discarded bottles. He’d warm up his throwing arm by just lobbing rocks, noting that “there is a peculiar appeal in such rhythmic, repetitive activity.” But mostly he recalls “the haunting power I felt on that occasional throw when I knew as the stone left my hand it was going to hit its target.”… Read More
“Man moves in order to satisfy a need,” Rudolf Laban writes in the Introduction to Mastery of Movement. “It is easy to perceive the aim of a person’s movement if it is directed to some tangible object. Yet there also exist intangible values that inspire movement.”
Laban returns to the theme of tangible and intangible motivations several times in Mastery. In many ways, his notions of the motives that spur human movement echo Abraham Maslow’s theory of a Hierarchy of Needs.… Read More
As bipeds with mobile shoulder and hip joints, human beings have a wide range of motion available. Yet physical challenges, such as the force of gravity and our heavy heads, limit the extent to which we actively tap fully three-dimensional movement. And mental habits can also limit our access to space.
Rudolf Laban succinctly identified two cognitive maps of space. The first is the dimensional cross and the cardinal directions of up and down, right and left, forward and backward.… Read More
Choreutics (space) and Eukinetics (effort) are the two broad categorical headings under which Laban grouped elements of movement. He did not single out shape as a separate category. Initially, shape was a Gestalt concept for Laban, a combination of the lines traced by the body in space and the dynamic qualities observable in these three-dimensional sequences.
Laban’s first career as a visual artist and his familiarity with Art Nouveau and abstract Expressionist theories influenced his initial description of shape as an element of dance and movement.… Read More
In Meaning in Motion, I explain that Laban’s notion of the mover’s space has two aspects: one descriptive and one prescriptive.
To better describe movement, Laban created several “geographies” of space. These give definition to the bubble of territory adjacent to the mover’s body, which Laban called the “kinesphere.” Such geographies created landmarks in the kinesphere and make the systematic description of motion in three dimensions possible.
In addition, Laban designed highly symmetrical sequences of directional change that circle through different areas of the kinesphere.… Read More
Laban’s theory of the dynamics of human movement (effort) is deceptively simple. There are only four motion factors (Weight, Time, Space, and Flow) and eight effort qualities. But the theory becomes much richer because different combinations and sequences of effort qualities express very different states of mind.
It is difficult to convey this richness in a semester-long course. And I think that is okay. Students should not believe they have mastered all there is to know about Laban in only a few weeks. … Read More
In the early 20th century, before there were video cameras and smartphones, Laban recognized that dance, like music, needed a notation system to allow choreographies to be recorded. Developing a movement notation system necessitated two steps. First, the elements that make up the “alphabet of human movement” had to be identified. Secondly, symbols to represent these elements and their combinations and sequences had to be invented.
Like all good theoreticians, Laban wanted to control the number of elements so as to make his notation system as economical as possible. … Read More
Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) requires thinking as well as moving. Whether one is working with performing arts majors or a more mixed population, most students have never thought about movement and its component parts. In this month’s series of blogs, I explore how to deal with some of the challenges of teaching LMA at the college level.
Besides providing rich movement experiences that highlight key features of movement (Body, Effort, Space, and Shape), it is vital to help students connect these experiences with meaning. … Read More
“We live only part of the life we are given,” writes Michael Murphy in The Future of the Body. “Growing acquaintance with once-foreign cultures, new discoveries about our subliminal depths, and the dawning recognition that each social group reinforces just some human attributes while neglecting or suppressing others … suggests that we harbor a range of capacities that no single philosophy or psychology has fully embraced.”
Rudolf Laban would certainly agree. “Preference for a few effort combinations only results in a lack of effort balance,” Laban notes. … Read More