Just like peanut butter and jelly — “Effort goes with Shape organically,” Warren Lamb observed. “We cannot move in making an effort without an accompanying movement of shaping.”
To support this assertion, Lamb would give an everyday example: “It takes effort to get out of bed in the morning. But you must also shape your movement, or you knock over the bedside lamp.”
It is a curious fact that to rise from bed successfully, we need not painstakingly calculate either the amount of effort needed or the directional trajectory of our limbs. The two go together without conscious oversight.
If effort and shape cohere organically, there must be some principles governing their spontaneously occurring relationships. Rudolf Laban thought so.
Find out more in the upcoming MoveScape workshop, Harmonies of Effort and Shape, starting next month.