Rudolf Laban, Painter and Dancer

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Rudolf Laban is known as a significant figure in 20th century modern dance. Yet he was 40 years old before he began to make a name for himself as a dancer. Prior to this time, Laban had been seriously engaged in the visual arts. And this first career as an artist decisively influenced his second career.

Laban studied art in Munich and Paris at the height of the popularity of the Art Nouveau movement. His surviving art works demonstrate his mastery of artist’s anatomy, proportion, and rendering in perspective – all staples of a traditional art training.… Read More

Humane Effort

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Human effort is rich, complex, and quite variable. Nevetheless, every individual develops effort habits over time. One’s effort “personality” is the product of individual temperament. It is shaped by social circumstances and developed through movement training and the other activities one engages in – whether voluntarily chosen or not. Thus nature, nurture, and movement experience combine to generate an individual’s ingrained effort habits.

While much of our movement behavior is habitual, we are also able to think about how we move.… Read More

Effort and Virtuosity

Posted on August 11, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

It takes a special event to awaken us to the awesome variety and potential perfection of human effort. A virtuoso performance on the musical saw did so for me.

A recent concert by the Colorado Symphony included the “Habanera” from the opera “Carmen,” in which the well-known aria (usually sung by a soprano) was performed by soloist Caroline McCaskey on a saw. By holding the handle of the saw between her knees, bending the blunt metal tip with her left hand, and bowing the straight edge, she was able to replicate the tones of the human voice.… Read More

Effort and Consciousness

Posted on July 28, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

(This excerpt is taken from my book, The Harmonic Structure of Movement, Music, and Dance According to Rudolf Laban.)

As noted earlier, Laban initially perceived two fundamental psychological attitudes: one of resisting or fighting the physical conditions influencing movement, the other of yielding and accepting these conditions. These attitudes were used in the construction of bi-polar qualities for each of the four motion factors. In later years, Laban hypothesized correlations between these four motion factors and the four functions of consciousness theorized by Jung: sensing, thinking, feeling, and intuiting.… Read More

Human Effort and the Four Motion Factors

Posted on July 21, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

(The following passage continues the introduction to Rudolf Laban’s ideas about human effort. It is taken from my forthcoming book, Meaning in Motion: Introducing Laban Movement Analysis.)

Because movement is a psychophysical phenomenon involving the whole person, how someone moves reveals something about how they are feeling. The individual’s inner attitudes become visible through effort. Rudolf Laban characterizes these inner attitudes as “fighting or resisting” and “indulging or yielding.”

Movements are bound to evolve in space as well as in time, and in this evolution of movement the weight of the body is brought into flow.… Read More

Human Effort

Posted on July 14, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

(The following passage is taken from my forthcoming introductory textbook on Laban Movement Analysis, Meaning in Motion: Introducing Laban Movement Analysis. The following excerpt is from the chapter on effort.)

First and foremost, human effort is volitional. “Man moves in order to satisfy a need,” Rudolf Laban asserts. The voluntary motions we make require energy. Not only can we be more or less energetic when we move, we can also change the quality of energy applied. We can alter at will how we move.… Read More

The Mobius Body/Mind

Posted on July 10, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Generally, we think of surfaces, like a strip of paper, as having two sides. But a strip of paper can be twisted and its ends glued together to create a Mobius strip, a surface that has only one side. This means that if you start tracing a line on the outside of the Mobius strip, you soon find yourself tracing the line on the inside of the strip without having to lift your pencil. In other words, the outer becomes inner and the inner becomes outer.… Read More

Effort Balance

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Balance plays a significant role in Rudolf Laban’s thinking. This emphasis is understandable. As I note in The Harmonic Structure of Movement, Music, and Dance, “balance is a significant aspect of somatic experience… health, both mental and physical, is said to depend upon balance.”

Indeed, as Laban observes, the human body has to withstand a variety forces that can throw it out of balance – not only forces that arise in the outside environment but also those that come from within.… Read More

The Dynamosphere: Mapping Human Effort

Posted on July 1, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

According to Rudolf Laban, human beings move not only from place to place but also from mood to mood. The visible movement of the body from place to place occurs in what Laban called the “kinesphere” – the space immediately adjacent to the body. The movement from mood to mood is more subtle and must to be inferred from how an action is done. Is it vehement or gentle, leisurely or abrupt? Does it build in intensity or gradually wane? Laban developed a system of “effort” terms to capture these various dynamic qualities and the moods they suggest.… Read More

Rudolf Laban, The Miser

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Colleagues’ recollections depict Rudolf Laban as a man possessed by creative energy, proliferating rough ideas and then rushing on without completing a line of thought, leaving the elaboration of his creations to someone else.

Laban’s private papers reveal a different picture. Archival traces show that Laban was steadily developing a grounded theory of human movement and utilizing consistent methods to develop hypothetical models. Moreover, archival materials also show that Laban was concerned to control the sheer number of elements in the systems he was building.… Read More