Anything a human being can do involves effort.  And because we can do so many different things, human effort appears almost infinite.  Nevertheless, Rudolf Laban detected limits.

These limits have to do with the sequencing of dynamic qualities and combinations.  He notes that “effort follows certain rules, because the transitions from one effort quality to another are either easy or difficult.”

While Laban affirms that “Man has complete freedom in his choice and employment of action-moods,” he also adds that “In ordinary circumstances, no sane person will ever jump from one quality to a complete contrast because of the great mental and nervous strain involved in so radical a change.”… Read More

Laban makes the following observation in Choreutics: “Form is produced by the limbs of the body and is governed by their anatomical structure which permits only certain movements to be made arising from the functions of bending, stretching, twisting, and combinations of these.”

Based on these limitations, Laban identified “four formal elements as a basis for shaping.”  These four linear elements can be found in all alphabets and numerical symbols.  Laban delineates these as straight, curved, twisted, and round.

According to Laban, all trace-forms are built from these four basic shapes. … Read More

Leonardo da Vinci identified a “second form of the human body,” the one created by the limbs as they move through the space around the body.  Laban named these secondary forms “trace-forms.” 

These movement forms are limited both by the mover’s body and by the nature of the space we inhabit.

Bodily limits include joint structure, proportional relations among body parts, and range of motion.  These limitations govern where our limbs can move in the surrounding space.

In addition, we inhabit a gravitation field in a three-dimensional terrestrial space. … Read More

Figure drawing was the core of academic art training when Laban was studying at the great French academy, the École des Beaux Arts around 1900. He was able to employ this training in his later career as a dance and movement theorist in three ways.

First, artist’s anatomy includes the study of joint structures.  These joints bend, extend, and rotate in certain directions, and not in others.

Secondly, while individual bodies differ, there is a normal range governing the proportion of different body parts well-known to artists since the Classical and Renaissance periods.… Read More

In The Future of the Body, Esalen founder Michael Murphy writes: “The inexorable advance of athletic records provides dramatic evidence that the human body has great potential for several kinds of development.”  Rudolf Laban concurs, noting that in every bodily movement “both infinity and eternity are hidden.”

Nevertheless, Laban was fully aware that human movement is not infinite.  It is bound by certain limits.  He was also aware that limitations are not just restrictive, they are also creative.

Laban spent much of his career as a dancer, observer, and movement theorist identifying the underlying factors that limit human movement potential.… Read More

My third suggestion for summer reading in Jamake Highwater’s Dance: Rituals of Experience.

Originally published in 1978, this dance history treatise remains relevant today for its juxtaposing of indigenous dance practices (notably Native American) with Western European dance.

Ritual serves as the pivot point for Highwater’s discussion.  The book begins by positioning dance as “a separate reality.”  Subsequent chapters address Experience as Ritual, History as Ritual, and Ritual as Art.  Final chapters focus on dance as contemporary rites, drawing on examples from ballet, modern and post-modern dance, and opera. … Read More

Between crowds, weather delays, and baggage snafus, an airport is the last place I want to be this summer.  But it isn’t necessary to travel to take flight – an easy chair and a good book can also be transportive.

In the following blogs I suggest some interesting titles for Labanistas.  Old and new, fictional and not, these books will allow you to stay home and still travel through time and space.  Read on!… Read More

In visual art, combinations of lines create shapes.  In dance, combinations of trace-forms also generate shapes.  Laban’s basic theory of effort/shape affinities simply considered the direction of single lines.  Later he began to consider other more complex shapes and their organic relationships to effort.

Laban never published these later ideas, but a clear record exists in his archival materials.  In the upcoming MoveScape workshop, Harmonies of Effort and Shape, we will consider this more complex model.

Laban’s more complex model has proved intriguing to Miya Sylvester, movement and computational design specialist.  … Read More

The emphasis on two-dimensional stylization of natural forms led Art Nouveau artists to focus on the visual and kinesthetic qualities of different kinds of lines.

In his 1897 article in published in Decorative Kunst, the architect and designer August Endell detailed qualities of straight and curved lines, thin and thick lines, and the direction of these lines in terms of tension (light and heavy) and tempo (slow and quick).

By combining different types of lines to create shapes, Endell made the following claim:

“And because all sensations are only tempo and tension, form is able to awaken all shades of emotion within us.”… Read More

Laban identified 8 “Basic Actions” found in practical physical labor.  He also identified 8 diagonal directions, marked by the internal rays of the cube.  He combined these to conceptualize a cubic model of effort/shape affinities, writing “the eight fundamental dynamic actions evolve in areas of the dynamosphere which correspond approximately to the eight diagonal directions of the kinesphere.”

Laban’s model is a logical extension of his basic notions of relationships between effort qualities and cardinal directions.  And this model, embedded in a stylized physical practice, provides a clear structure for both effort and space.… Read More