Movement Analysis: Enhancing Body Knowledge, Transcending Body Prejudice

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Rudolf Laban observed that movement can be perceived from three distinct angles:

the “biological innocent” — the person enjoying movement inwardly, as a bodily experience,
the “scheming mechanic” – the person who observes movement analytically and objectively from the outside,
the “emotional dreamer” – the person who seeks the meaning of movement in the intangible world of emotions and ideas

Laban asserts that these three perspectives operate constantly in all of us. Sometimes we favor one or the other view, and “sometimes we compress them in a synthesized act of perception and function.”

The synthesis of these three perspectives yields body knowledge. Body knowledge serves an important function, for it allows us to size up another person’s movement intent and react without undue delay. If a loitering stranger makes you nervous, it is prudent to get away rather than second guess impressions.

However, how we experience, perceive, and interpret movement also leads to body prejudice. Sometimes it is essential to separate these processes. And this is where Laban Movement Analysis becomes useful.

Laban’s analytic framework is value-neutral. It allows the observer to describe and differentiate elements of a movement event without immediately jumping to interpretive conclusions.

Taking the perspective of the “scheming mechanic” does not do away with body prejudice. But movement analysis can provide significant details that may alter the observer’s initial impression, allowing for more objective and reflective insights to emerge.

In the next blog I explore imitation and intuition as alternative tools for understanding movement.

Body Prejudice

Posted on March 10, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Like body knowledge, body prejudice originates from our capacity to categorize and generalize on the basis of personal movement experience. As I write in Beyond Words, second edition:

Over time, a positive or negative meaning comes to be associated with a certain type of movement. If this meaning is automatically projected onto all similar movements, regardless of context and modifying details, an inappropriate and prejudicial reaction may result.

Just because a movement is pre-judged does not mean it is judged wrongly, but this is always a possibility. When making sense of movement, the tendency to make prejudicial judgments is magnified because movement is very easily “tuned out” and handled subliminally. When making sense of movement becomes a subconscious process, it is all too easy to overlook contextual features that qualify the meaning of a given behavior.

The following anecdote illustrates how the easily unexamined movement perceptions can become prejudicial.

Once I was assigned to observe a fellow classmate. She was in the habit of slouching against the studio wall and staring into space — a posture and effort mood that I equated with being “out of it.” In fact, I was surprised that she seemed to be keeping up in class.

Once I examined her movement behavior more closely, however, a different impression emerged. I realized that my classmate’s staring into space, which I perceived as a Remote effort state of bound flow and directness, was actually an Awake state, of sustained time and directness. In other words, she was paying attention to what was going on in class, in a very prolonged and precise manner.

This realization made me aware of my own body prejudice. When I’m engaged in a class, I’m not prone to relax passively against the wall. And when I pay attention with the Awake state, I prefer to combine directing and indirecting with quickness.

Mies van der Rohe, was right – God is in the details. In the next blog I explore how Laban Movement Analysis can be applied to enhance body knowledge and minimize body prejudice.

The Anatomy of Body Knowledge

Posted on March 9, 2014 by Carol-Lynne Moore

Body knowledge develops gradually, as a combination of perception of our own movements and observation of the movements of other people.

Similar to all other forms of knowing and attaching meaning to human actions, body knowledge rests on three processes: categorizing, abstracting, and generalizing.

Categorizing is discerning related and unrelated movements; grouping those that are similar. For example hammering is one kind of movement and stamping is another.

Abstracting is leaving out particularistic details to generate broader categories. Hammering involves the hands and stamping uses the feet, but both hammering and stamping employ the same effort qualities and can be abstracted as belonging to the broader category of punching movements.

Generalizing is establishing associations with movement that are intellectually or emotionally meaningful. For example, based on the various contexts in which I have observed punching movements, I may come to interpret these as angry actions.

Each individual has unique movement experiences, and every person will sort, abstract, and generalize in a slightly different way to generate a private lexicon of movement meaning. This lexicon of body knowledge is very useful.

As I write in Beyond Words, second edition:

Once the categories and associations in my body knowledge lexicon have been established, I can perceive a type of movement and fabricate a response rapidly, without having to reflect on the matter very much. So, if I am walking down the sidewalk and I see a man and woman punctuating their conversation with abrupt, forceful [punching] gestures, I may cross the street, simply because I do not want to get too close to two angry people.

Of course, the couple might not be angry; they might be simply impatient or excited. Or, they might belong to a cultural group that expresses many different feelings with abrupt, forceful gestures. Like the Roman god Janus, the meaning of any given movement is inherently two-faced. First, there is the “import” (Langer 1957: 129), intended or unawares, of the expressed form of the mover and, second, there is the “ascription,” again conscious or unconscious, on the part of the observer, interacting or just watching. Thus, it is practically inevitable that our body knowledge sometimes leads us to misjudge the meaning of movement behavior of others. When we misinterpret the meaning of a given movement behavior, and start generalizing, body knowledge becomes body prejudice.

In the next blog, I explore the topic of body prejudice further.