Meaning in Motion at Lesley University

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movementby Nancy Beardall

At Lesley University we use Carol-Lynne Moore’s book, Meaning in Motion: Introducing Laban Movement Analysis in both our Dance Movement Therapy masters program and the Laban/Bartenieff Certificate program housed at Lesley. Students are introduced to and read the primary source material written by Laban, Bartenieff, Dell, Lamb, North, etc., however, students appreciate the concise and clear text as presented in Meaning in Motion. Moore’s guidebook was one I was pleased to offer students as many of them are learning the material for the first time.

Carol-Lynne’s expertise is vast and the LMA system is described comprehensively making it accessible for the students. There are also experiential exercises that assist them in their overall understanding of the material helping to integrate “meaning in motion.” The students find the book helpful in applying the LMA material to specific dance/movement therapy case studies or projects.

Students speak highly of Moore’s relatable style and often quote Moore in papers they write, an indication of their comfort and confidence in her mastery of the Laban Movement Analysis system. I highly recommend, Meaning in Motion.

Inside Meaning in Motion

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Capture“Meaning in Motion is one of the few, if not the only, contemporary texts to integrate historical, theoretical, and creative frameworks for understanding and studying Laban Movement Analysis,” writes Dr. Andrea Harris, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Dr. Harris has been using the text for several years now.  Her comment highlights key features of the book.  For example, Part 1 – History and Development of Laban Movement Analysis – discusses Laban’s career, the contributions of Irmgard Bartenieff and many others who have added to the Laban legacy.

Theory is covered with sections on Body, Effort, Space, Shape, and Movement Harmony.  Each of these sections incorporate Creative Explorations for use in the studio during class time or for individual study.

The book is richly illustrated with photographs, charts, and effort and space phrases.  Five different appendices provide additional material for study. These include bibliographies of various works by Laban, Bartenieff, and other major applications of Laban theory, along with more advanced space and effort sequences, and a section on relationship.  As Harris notes, “ I like that the polar triangles, girdles, axis, A and B scales are in the appendix, in case an instructor would want to incorporate them.”

She adds, “I have always wished for more information about Relationship (Appendix E).  I appreciate that you’ve fleshed out how the various Laban communities conceptualize relationship.”

In the next blog, learn how Dr. Nancy Beardall uses Meaning in Motion in two programs at Lesley University.

Writing Meaning in Motion

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LabanI didn’t start out to write an introductory Laban Movement Analysis text.  It began as a compilation of teaching materials I’ve developed over the last three decades, teaching in Certificate Programs in New York, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Berlin, The Netherlands, and England.

As the LMA teaching community knows, we have limped along for years with copies from a hundred different sources.  And so, it made sense to turn the compilation into a proper text, primarily designed for use in university movement analysis courses.

Meaning in Motion seems to be answering a need in the field.  To date, the text has been used in courses at the Universities of Wisconsin, Madison and Milwaukee; Lesley University; State Universities of New York, Brockport and Potsdam; Utah Valley University; Pomona College; Columbia College Chicago; College of Charleston; and Hope College.

Learn more about this new resource and how it is being used in the following blogs.

The Value of Movement Study

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LabanThe diversity of applications of movement analysis showcased at the June conference in Montreal was awesome.  And that is just the beginning….

As the sociologist Bryan S. Turner noted:  “The body is at once the most solid, the most elusive, illusory, concrete, metaphorical, every present and ever distant thing.”  Surely the same can be said of bodily movement – it is omnipresent in human life, yet elusive to perceive and interpret. Nevertheless, it has enormous potential.

According to journalist Olive Moore:  “This science of movement study is so remarkable that at first its significance is difficult to grasp.  But if we think of human movement as we should – as the outward and visible symbol of man entire, his spirit mirrored indelibly in every conscious and unconscious movement he makes – we have for the first time in human history a complete diagnosis which allows no error and cannot lie.”

It is true that disciplined movement study like Movement Pattern Analysis profiling can provide objective insight into human behavior; it can enhance the understanding of self and others.  But movement study can be more — it can bring us closer to something fundamental in existence, something of great intrinsic value.

As the philosopher Henri Bergson observed:  “Movement is reality itself.”  Once we recognize this, “What was immobile and frozen in our perception is warmed and set in motion.  Everything comes to life around us, everything is revivified in us.”

Embodied Decision Making

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movementIn my discussion of Movement Pattern Analysis (MPA) at the public lecture session in Montreal, I aimed to demonstrate how knowledge from the field of dance became relevant and valued in the business world.

After introducing the creators of MPA – Rudolf Laban, F.C. Lawrence, and Warren Lamb – I explained that body movement is different from body language.  Body language is based on interpreting gestures and fixed positions such as “crossed arms indicate rejection.”  In MPA, the meaning is in the movement.

In analyzing movement to assess individual decision making patterns, I explained that it is necessary to distinguish between two main categories of movement.  The first is gesture – an action isolated to a single part of the body.  An example is waving with only the hand.  Sometimes there are simultaneous isolated gestures – like the politician who was shaking hands with two different people while craning his neck forward to read a paper.  What do you get from these incongruous and empty motions?

Gestures are in contrast to actions that are consistent through the body as a whole.  Lamb called these integrated movements “Posture-Gesture Mergers.”  An example is a wave that animates the whole body.

Everyone has a distinctively different way of performing Posture-Gesture Mergers, and these patterns are linked with decision making.  What we have found is that successful teams – whether in business, personal relations, and sporting or artistic enterprises – are composed of people who act true to their own way of moving, neither trying to emulate someone else or merely making gestures.

Over the past 75 years, Movement Pattern Analysis has proven itself as one well-defined approach to the study of movement.  As a discipline, however, movement study is still in its infancy.  And like all babies, it has enormous potential.  We don’t yet know what it may be when it matures.  Find out more about the possibilities of movement analysis in the next blog.

Applications of Movement Analysis

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LabanThe Montreal event included a full morning of various presentations on applications of movement analysis for the public.  The formal lectures, delivered in French or English with simultaneous translation, covered a fascinating array of disciplines and approaches, both qualitative and quantitative.

Brigitte LaChance, a Canadian physical therapist, discussed what Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) contributes to her rehabilitative work with seriously injured clients.  Odile Cazes, a French psychometrician, described how she applies Functional Analysis of the Dancing Body (AFCDM) in training osteopaths in hands-on techniques.  Canadian doctoral student Marie Soleil Fortier shared her research involving movement analysis of four musicians – a violinist, a pianist, a guitarist, and a flutist.  French anthropologist Blandine Bril outlined her quantitative studies of posture and selected work movements drawn from various cultures.

In addition, French scientist Giles Dietrich demonstrated his biomechanical approach to analyzing pivot turns in ballet and Korean dance.  Canadian doctoral student Julie Chateauvert shared her research on sign language as an expressive system.

My lecture addressed the application of movement analysis in business.  Find out more in the next blog.

Observing Movement from Two Perspectives

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LabanThe June gathering in Montreal of American, Canadian, and French movement analysts provided many opportunities for moving, observing, and talking together.  This was a daunting enterprise, for not only were participants navigating between two systems of movement analysis but also two languages – English and French.

To facilitate this exchange, there was a full day of movement workshops based on the themes of flow, weight, and relationship to space.  On the Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) side, Kathie and Pat Debenham, Cate Deicher, Tricia Bauman, and Martha Eddy led sessions respectively exploring weight and flow, combinations of weight and flow, space effort, vision and fluid systems.  On the Functional Analysis of the Dancing Body (AFCMD) side, Emmanuellle Lyon, Teresa Salerno, and Soahanta De Oliveira led sessions respectively on the related themes of circulation of movement through the body, postural muscle tone and weight, and peripheral vision and the apprehension of space.

As one participant commented, the LMA sessions utilized improvisation to evoke expressive movement while the AFCMD sessions employed set exercises linked to dance sequences to facilitate more functional movement.  This only skims the surface of convergence and divergence between the two systems.  And indeed, the workshops and collegial discussion was videotaped and will serve as material for ongoing research by the team of Harbonnier-Topin, Dussault, and Ferri.

Comparing Movement Analysis Practices

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LabanAs one of 12 Laban Movement Analysts who participated in a 2014 research project comparing our observations with those of 12 experts in the French system of Functional Analysis of the Dancing Body (AFCMD), I was keen to hear the preliminary results of the study.

The presentation of the project by co-researchers Nicole Harbonnier-Topin, Genevieve Dussault, and Catherine Ferri at the Montreal conference in early June did not disappoint.  Here is a brief report on their findings.

The study focused on making explicit the “tacit knowledge” employed by expert movement analysts.   To clarify not only what experts see, but also how they accomplish skilled movement observation, Harbonnier-Topin utilized a structured, phenomenological interview technique while asking each analyst to respond to the same videotaped dance sequence.

Eight interviews from each analyst group were chosen and transcribed.  Then these transcriptions were coded as to the various observation processes each interviewee employed, such as describing, identifying, prioritizing, inferring, evaluating, constructing meaning, etc.  Some interesting differences in choice and frequency of process use emerged between the two groups of analysts.

A secondary aspect of the research addressed convergence and divergence between the analytic systems themselves.  Based upon emerging data, the areas of flow, weight, and relationship of space emerged as areas needing additional research.

The Montreal seminar provided an opportunity for additional data collection, as participating analysts were asked to run movement workshops focused on these aspects.  Learn more in the next blog.

International Movement Analysis Encounter

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labanDuring the first week of June, I participated in unique collegial exchange with fourteen other movement analysts from the U.S., Canada, and France. Hosted by the Dance Department of the University of Quebec at Montreal, the seminar provided an opportunity for comparative and comprehensive study of two approaches to qualitative movement analysis: Laban Movement Analysis and Functional Analysis of the Dancing Body, a system developed in France and little known in the English-speaking world.

The purpose of the Montreal seminar was threefold: 1) to renew perspectives and the analytical discourse about the dancing body, 2) to explore movement analysis’s potential to enhance and refine the narration of aesthetics in performing arts, and 3) to open up exchange and discussion on the contributions of movement analysis to the fields of dance, theatre, music, kinesiology, ethnology, nonverbal communication, and therapy.

The brainchild of Montreal dance professor Nicole Harbonnier-Topin, the five-day seminar incorporated various activities:  1) a preliminary report about comparative research on the two analysis systems, 2) movement workshops and collegial discussions, 3) formal presentations on various applications of movement analysis, and 4) a Roundtable open to the general public. In this final session selected movement analysts responded to “Mille Batailles,” an intense duet choreographed by Louise Lecavalier, which was a part of the concurrent Festival TranAmeriques.

In the following blogs I will share various aspects of my experiences as a participant in this unique international encounter.

Reflections on Decoding Choreutics

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Choreutics has always been my favorite book by Rudolf Laban.  Since first reading parts of it as an undergraduate, it has inspired and mystified me by its occasional and seemingly abrupt shifts between systematic description and cosmic speculation.  Laban hints at a deeper significance in human movement, but how he gets from A to B is elusive, thought-provoking, and exciting.

My most recent re-reading was occasioned by leading a correspondence course on Choreutics, accompanied by  21 curious and acute readers.  I have not dispelled all mysteries as the result of this experience, but I have come to terms with what Laban was attempting to do.  And I would like to encourage all students of movement to read this seminal work.  Because what Laban was attempting to do was to shed light on an ephemeral, omnipresent, and little considered aspect of human life – body movement.  And his work should be seen to be as ground-breaking and significant as Sigmund Freud’s explorations of the human psyche.

Great thinkers must also be great story-tellers.  That is, they must find some way to convey what they perceive in terms that can be grasped by others.  Freud’s approach was to divide the human psyche into three parts:  id, ego, and super-ego.  These are virtual or symbolic structures, for there is no part of the human body or brain that can be identified as an id, an ego, or a super-ego.  Yet these represent different aspects of psychological function and serve to explain, at least in part, why people act as they do.

Laban’s approach is to divide human movement into two parts:  choreutics (space)  and eukinetics (effort).  His mode of representation is geometrical – for patterns and sequences of both space and effort are coded on three-dimensional models.  These are both literal and virtual.  Movement in space can be captured as linear lines and shapes mapped on a 3-D crystalline grid.  Kinetic energy is less tangible, and Laban’s representations are more abstact.  Effort is a “fluid shadow.”  Sometimes it flows seamlessly from inside to outside and outside to inside, like a lemniscate.  Sometimes it circulates freely, twisting and untwisting.  Sometimes kinetic energy becomes knotted and stuck….

Like Freud’s psychological constructs, the kinesphere and dynamosphere are symbolic structures.  There is no geometric grid surrounding the mover, no inner cube of dynamic energies. Laban’s geometrical models represent different aspects of the human movement experience and serve to explain, at least in part, how and why people move as they do.