The Octa Is Coming

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In July, the Octa workshop, “Bringing Choreutics to Life” takes Laban’s space harmony theory into practice. This three-day workshop presents key Choreutic concepts in a way that is accessible for participants new to Laban’s ideas as well as experienced movement analysts.

Laban himself admitted that “our mental functions employ geometrical symbols to express orientation in space, but generally our feeling does not comprehend living movement within geometrical plasticity.” In other words, both understanding and embodying choreutics can be steep learning curve!… Read More

Decoding Choreutics – Key #1

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Another example of Laban’s double vision is his concept of the kinesphere and dynamosphere as dual domains of human movement.  To represent both domains, Laban utilizes the cube.

With regard to the kinesphere, Laban uses the cube quite literally.  Its corners, edges, and internal diagonals serve as a kind of longitude and latitude for mapping movement in the space around the dancer’s body.

 

With regard to the dynamosphere, Laban uses the cube formally to represent patterns of effort change.  This shift in how the model should be interpreted is complicated further by Laban’s use of direction symbols to stand for effort qualities and combinations.… Read More

Using Your Movement Pattern Analysis Profile

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I had my profile made by Warren Lamb almost forty years ago. So I think I’ve learned a bit about making use of the information in the profile.

In an earlier blog I noted that movement is a process of change. I can also say that learning to use your movement profile involves change. There are several distinct phases.

Phase 1:  You want to be 100 percent in every facet of decision making.
The relative magnitude of the different effort and shape elements in an individual’s repertoire comprise the movement pattern.… Read More

No One Wants a Bar of Soap

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There is a well-known marketing adage – no one wants a bar of soap. Customers want to be clean, have soft skin, or smell nice. By extension, no one wants a Laban Movement Analysis. Instead, our customers want to dance better, find a way to stop back pain, or gain insight into self and other.

Rudolf Laban called movement “man’s magic mirror.” He saw that movement reflects motivations, thoughts, and feelings. He drew analogies between the mastery of movement and the mastery of self.… Read More

Moving Beyond “Groupthink”

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“Groupthink” is a characteristic of overly cohesive groups. Symptoms of groupthink include overconfidence and risk taking, suppression of dissent, and collective rationalization. The old adage that “like hires like” has some truth in it. Unfortunately, any group composed of like-minded individuals is in danger of succumbing to groupthink.

Long before “diversity” became politically correct, Warren Lamb was encouraging diversity in working teams. His model of diversity was not based on age, race, creed, or gender. Rather it was based on decision-making style.… Read More

Movement and Managing Success and Failure

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In Ambition, Gilbert Brim observes that “we look for the challenges that are right for us, for what we can just manage, and in this way form and shape our lives.” For most of us, however, identifying the “right challenges” is a matter of trial and error. It involves not only assessing the situation, but also assessing our own capabilities.

The latter assessment is the more difficult, for as the novelist Thomas Mann notes, “Our consciousness is feeble; only in moments of unusual clarity and vision do we really know about ourselves.”… Read More

Movement: Becoming Versus Being

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Movement is a process of change. This seems self-evident. And yet, when the analytical brain is focused on motion and change, understanding breaks up the flowing continuity into successive and distinct positions and states. What was dynamic becomes static, what was becoming becomes an invariable being.

One of the things I most appreciated about Warren Lamb was his insistence that movement is a process of change. The dynamic qualities of effort and shape must be observed to vary. A movement is never simply strong – it is becoming stronger.… Read More

Embodiment: What Goes Around, Comes Around

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A wise man once observed that prayers are always answered. But what comes to you is not what you think you want, but what you embody.

Movement Pattern Analysis developed by Warren Lamb provides an objective picture of what an individual embodies and how individual patterns of movement are linked to decision-making processes.

Lamb found that all of us have a preferred pattern of taking action, and we will act in accordance with those preferences whenever we can. Power comes from understanding your preferred pattern and how to use it most effectively.… Read More

Effort, Shape, and Embodied Cognition

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In Warren Lamb’s schema, the individual can use effort and/or shape to give Attention, form an Intention, and make a Commitment. By observing a person’s movement patterns, it is possible to discern whether the individual tends to be Assertive, that is, to apply effort to get results, or whether the person is more concerned to gain Perspective by using shaping.

For example, individuals high in Assertion tend to feel that “nothing happens unless I make it happen.” Their embodied actions incorporate focusing to probe for information, applying pressure to support determination, and pacing time to implement a decision at the opportune moment.… Read More

Celebrating Meaningful Movement Analysis

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Thirty-five individuals from across the nation and around the world gathered in Golden, Colorado over Memorial Day weekend to celebrate the life and work of movement analysis pioneer, Warren Lamb (1923-2014) at a seminar sponsored by Motus Humanus.

Warren Lamb began his career under the tutelage of movement theorist Rudolf Laban and management consultant F.C. Lawrence.  Their ground-breaking work provided a basis for matching the movement traits of manual laborers to the motion factors of various factory jobs. Lamb took this work much further, to relate movement patterns to cognitive processes used in decision making at the managerial level.… Read More