As Laban began to study the expressive lines of dance, he perceived relationships between form and the anatomical structure of human joints.
“The tradition of dance,” Laban writes, “enumerates four fundamental trace-forms which have the following shapes: straight, curved, twisted, and rounded.” All more complex shapes “are built up by these four formal elements.”
According to Laban, this limitation to four shapes is governed by the body’s anatomical structure, which permits only certain movements to be made by bending, stretching, twisting, and combinations of these actions.
Did our contemporary notion of “modes of shape change” arise from Laban’s observation? Find out more in the upcoming MoveScape workshop “Mostly about Shape.”