Laban Is Good Company

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Laban photoI have been re-reading Laban’s autobiography in preparation for teaching “Mastering Rudolf Laban’s Mastery of Movement.”  Laban’s writings are evocative, and I always find him to be good company.

Laban and I have seldom met in the most luxurious of settings.  During my seven years of doctoral and post-doctoral research, he and I met in a windowless room in the top of the University of Surrey library.  Here he kept me company under fluorescent lights as I engaged with his handwritten musings on yellowing sheets of paper and tried to make sense of geometric sketches in colored pencil.  I’m sure this kind of social get-together would not appeal to everyone, but Laban always held up his side of the conversation, even when I did not entirely understand what he was trying to say.

There is an element of mystery in all of Laban’s writings.  I think this is because he is always ahead of the rest of us in his global understanding of human movement.  Nevertheless, Laban is not a snob.  He genuinely wants to share his insight, and this makes him a good companion.

Mastery of Movement is not an easy read, but it is a worthwhile one.  Find out more in the forthcoming  Octa correspondence course.

Mastery of Movement: Laban’s Other Masterpiece

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mastery of movement rudolf labanMastery of Movement is for body and effort what Choreutics is for space and shape – the most comprehensive treatment of Laban’s ideas in English.  The book has an interesting history.

The first edition was published in 1950, after Laban had published Effort and Modern Educational Dance, and after he had written (but not published) Choreutics.  Thus Mastery draws upon Laban’s endeavors in industry, education, and theatre.

The first edition is focused on movement for the stage, but Laban’s observations go well beyond this, addressing broader functions of movement in human life and evolution.

Mastery went out-of-print in the late 1950s, and Laban was planning a new edition, but he died in 1958 before this could be completed.  Lisa Ullmann, who was conversant with changes Laban intended to make, then took on the task of editing each of the three subsequent editions, both adding and rewriting material.

The 4th edition currently available in paperback was originally published in 1980.

Ullmann added Kinetography Laban notations to the two chapters outlining various actions of the body, marginal legends to highlight important points in the textual discussion, and an Appendix on Fundamental Aspects of the Structure of Effort drawn from an unpublished manuscript written by Laban before 1950.

Now that Mastery is back-in-print, I want to encourage Laban Movement Analysts to read or re-read it.  Hence, the upcoming MoveScape Center offering — Mastering Laban’s Mastery of Movement.

Correspondence courses may be “old school,” but having steady assignments, a guide for reading, and reading companions is a great way to study classics.  And Mastery of Movement is a classic.

Find out more…

What Makes a Successful Leader?

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leader movement pattern analysisIn his observation and analysis of thousands of business executives, Warren Lamb found that leaders come in many shapes and sizes.  That is, there is no single “leader” profile — successful leaders can approach decisions in quite varied ways.

However, Lamb discovered that the characteristic pattern of motivation tapped by the MPA profile has much to do with how a leader defines his or her responsibility.

For example, a leader who emphasizes Attending will believe it is his/her responsibility to analyze the situation, consider alternatives, and make sure there is sufficient informed preparation prior to taking any action.   A leader who emphasizes Intending will have a strong sense of mission, believing it is his/her job to instill discipline and stick with basic policies and plans.  The leader with predominant Committing motivation will believe it is his job to exploit opportunities strategically, to set the pace and beat the competition.

It is a principle of Movement Pattern Analysis that what is right for one person is not necessarily right for another.  Everyone has a distinctively individual way of moving and that way of moving in intrinsically linked with motivation and decision-making processes.  Successful leaders are people who act true their own way of moving.

What do your movement patterns reveal about your style of leadership?  Find out during the Introduction to Movement Pattern Analysis seminar.

MPA as a Teaching Tool, Part 2

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By Madeleine Scott, Registered Movement Pattern Analyst

teaching movement theoryThe application of Movement Pattern Analysis in building teams was not the focus of my experiment with making basic profiles of undergraduate dance majors for a seminar on career development.  However, I realized that an implicit team relationship clearly exists between student and teacher.

Students and teachers must work together, or they will fail to collaborate successfully in the educational enterprise.  The profile information about the group allowed me to re-assess the strengths and weaknesses of my own profile. This re-assessment of my own style helped me to be a more effective teacher and to respond appropriately to the “team profile” style that this group of students engendered.

In summary, the use of MPA as a teaching tool can improve performance for faculty in various ways:

1)  MPA can provide a novel and self-reflective way to analyze course organization and management, and to strategize meeting the needs of students with different learning styles;

2)  MPA can provide perspective on the academic advising activities required of the professoriate today;

3)  It can enhance mentorship practices required for new faculty and staff.

Find out more about Movement Pattern Analysis in MoveScape Center’s March introductory course.

MPA and Acting

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By Alison Henderson, Registered Movement Pattern Analyst

actingOne problem for an actor is character similarity — does each character portrayed exhibit the actor’s habitual movements? Having a Movement Pattern Analysis profile gives the actor an understanding of his own thought process so he can see how it differs from his character’s process. Moreover, he can learn his personal movement characteristics/habits that arise from this thought process.

Until now, movement training has looked at body habits separate from the thought process, rather than connected. Actors are taught to go to a “neutral” place devoid of natural habits rather than understanding their organic movement in the deep way that comes from the MPA profile experience.

As an actor and director, I saw a direct relationship between MPA and character development early in my own MPA training.  MPA bridges the psychological and physical. By analyzing a text for a character’s thought process (psychological motivation of the character), the type of movement shape and effort qualities from the MPA framework that will match the thought can be utilized by an actor for physical character transformation. With his MPA Profile, he will know which movements from his habits match the character and what he needs to change. As Laban stated, “It is of the greatest importance for the actor-dancer to recognize that such habitual inner attitudes (i.e. Decision-Making Preferences uncovered by MPA) are the basic indications of what we call character and temperament”  (parenthetical phrase mine).

Finally, MPA can smooth the transition for actors between movement in the studio and movement on the stage. By changing the intensity of the effort and shape discovered through MPA-based text analysis, actors can be fully embodied on stage in every genre without the fears of movement appearing “put on” or work in the studio not transferring well to “realistic” acting. My own MPA Training for Actors called TYPE (Transform Your Predictable Expression) is still in development.  However, I see a future where movement directors are part of every production because movement is crucial to creating the world of the play—moving all theater to include physicality rather than confining movement to the separate genre of “physical theater.”

MPA and Collaborative Choreography: Creating The Black Sea

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By Laurie Cameron, Registered Movement Pattern Analyst

choreography

My choreographic process has always involved collaborative research – studio time in which “problems” that I have invented (usually based on a theme) are solved in various ways by the artists who will eventually perform whatever eventually materializes.  As the director of the process, my job is to organize and orchestrate largely improvised material into some kind of coherent, presentable form.

With strong motivations in both Timing and Anticipating, it has always been important to me to move the process toward a “finished product” in a timely fashion, assuming that all involved trusted me to make sound artistic decisions and hoping to avoid hours of grueling studio work that might not necessarily produce more interesting results.

During my Movement Pattern Analysis training, I had the opportunity to profile three movement artists – a traditional, highly trained modern dancer, a B-Boy, and a Corporeal Mime practitioner.  I was impressed by the diversity of their skills, their interest in self-growth, and their willingness to dive headlong into the choreographic unknown with me.  I was even more intrigued by the profile initiatives that they shared, particularly high Investigating and Evaluating, and low-to-moderate Commitment.  At the time I anticipated the challenge of moving them out of the Attention and Intention stages to commit to a final product.  I did not expect to lose control of the process in such a meaningful and productive way.

I had anticipated three months of studio research followed by an informal showing, more editing, and eventually a fully realized performance about six months later.  Instead, the energy to dig deeply, evaluate, reinvent and reimagine took over.  All three performers seemed perfectly happy to mine material and critically assess for hours at a time with no performance agenda in sight.  For me, the satisfaction of watching the work grow deeper and more refined validated the assessment process.  I found my own moderate Evaluating being nourished while my urge to push the piece to completion seemed to relax. We worked in the studio for more than a year before my urge to set a finished piece took hold.

Of all the works I have directed, I am proudest of this.  The images suggested by the myths of the Black Sea are, to me, fully realized, and the performers are deeply in tune with each other and with the material they grew with for so long.  This process would likely have followed the same course regardless of my knowledge of MPA, but the awareness I now have of the potential for fruitful creative interaction based on decision-making preferences can inform my choreographic process in ways I had never predicted.

Beyond First Impressions

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first impressionThe very first time we encounter a stranger, we derive an impression based on the person’s physical attributes and body language.  Then rapidly and without conscious or logical control, we form a judgment  – is the person positive, negative, or neutral?

The capacity to make snap judgments is probably essential to our survival.  Yet first impressions are notoriously unreliable and often prejudicial.  The real character of an individual is revealed over time – not in a single encounter, not in a single action, but in a moving pattern and embodied way of being.

To me the genius of Warren’s Lamb’s Movement Pattern Analysis has to do with its emphasis on discerning patterns of movement behavior.  Movement is so slippery, disappearing even as it occurs.  I think this is why most movement perception occurs below the level of conscious attention.  However, although it is ephemeral and slippery, movement occurs in patterns.  And if we take the time to pay conscious attention, we can detect these patterns and begin to make judgments that go much deeper than the first impression.

Want to find out more?  Join the Introduction to Movement Pattern Analysis course beginning in March.

Movement Patterns, Expression, and Meaning

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movement theoryMovement occurs in patterns, and these patterns are both expressive and meaningful.  In 2017, MoveScape Center’s Red Thread offerings focus on the patterned aspects of movement behavior – in everyday activity, in effort, and in space.

Everyday patterns.  The Red Thread journey begins with the Tetra seminar, “Introduction to Movement Pattern Analysis.”  Based on the work of Warren Lamb, this three-day course, scheduled for mid-March in the Denver area, demonstrates how movement patterns reveal individual decision-making processes.   Participants learn how to observe and interpret movement patterns.  Moreover, by having their own profiles made by the instructor, participants emerge with deepened self-knowledge that can be used productively for career development and more effective collaboration with others.

Effort patterns. The Red Thread program continues with the Octa seminar, “Mastering Rudolf Laban’s Mastery of Movement.”  Mastery of Movement is Laban’s most accessible and complete exposition of the movement elements of body and effort. During this six-week correspondence course, offered in April and May, participants read selected parts of Laban’s treatise on movement for the stage.  Each week a set of study questions and movement explorations are provided. When the assignment has been completed, participants receive additional comments designed to elaborate on Laban’s stated aim, that “every sentence is written as an incentive to personal mobility.”

The Red Thread journey culminates in the Ico workshop, “Exploring the Dynamosphere.”  This three-day movement workshop, scheduled for mid-July in the Denver area, provides rich expressive experiences and new perspectives on Rudolf Laban’s effort patterns.   Workshop material includes effort phrasing, effort states and drives, effort modulation, and effort knots.

Space patterns.  In late summer and through the autumn, MoveScape Center will be offering correspondence courses and movement workshops exploring the many spatial patterns of movement that Laban discerned and designed. But this is the subject for future blogs!

Choreutic Practice – Healing the Mind-Body Split

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laban movementThe aim of choreutic practice, according to Rudolf Laban, is “to stop the process of disintegrating into disunity.”  In his view, bodily movement “can have a regenerating effect on our individual and social forms of life.”

In our upcoming Advanced Space Harmony workshop, Cate Deicher and I intend to “push the envelope” by exploring new frontiers in choreutic practice.  The workshop focuses on bringing seldom-taught space harmony sequences to life.  This requires, as Laban notes, “integrating the bodily perspective, the dynamic feeling and the controlling faculties.”  In other words, meaningful choreutic practice goes beyond just remembering and doing the scales.  It aims to discover “the unity of movement,” to bring together the physical, emotional, and mental aspects of being human.

These three aspects are often in conflict.  We muscle through fatigue or pain, ignoring what the body is telling us.  We suppress our feelings, in an attempt to be “rational.”  Or perhaps we give way to emotional outbursts that we later regret.

Nevertheless, we all experience moments of grace, when body, heart, and mind cohere and our intentions are seamlessly translated into action. Sports writer John Jerome referred to such moments as “a sweet spot in time – a coming together, a moment when what my mind intended was matched by what my body accomplished.”

Jerome goes on to call this “a momentary healing of the mind-body split… it haunts me still because it was magic.”  Laban agrees: “It is, without doubt, a fact that such a unity existed in ancient times in the paths of gestures which we have called trace-forms.  Because it could not be explained, it assumed a magic significance and it is curious that even now it remains magical, in spite of being analysed.”

Put some magic in your life.  Join us for the Ico workshop, “Advanced Space Harmony:  New Choreutic Forms for Movement Invention,” December 3-4, in New York City.

Exertion and Recuperation

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Untitled design (1)When the dancer Rudolf Laban began to study work movement in British factories, two concerns predominated.  The first was efficiency; the second was fatigue.  By the 1940s, of course, there were laws governing the length of the workday and providing additional protection for the health and safety of workers.  Nevertheless, repetitive activity of any sort is tiring.  Human beings are not machines.  We cannot repeat any motion endlessly without the need for variation.

In turning his dancer’s eyes to repetitive labor, Laban identified a basic rhythm.  He recognized that there is some form of preparation, followed by a more intense phase of effortful exertion, and concluding with some form of recovery and recuperation.  Laban found that the concluding phase of recuperation was often overlooked in the  “efficient” ways of working prescribed by the time and motion specialists.

Laban took a different approach. As I describe in Meaning in Motion, he believed that recuperation did not mean passive rest.  Rather he looked for effective ways for a worker to recover actively through effort variation.  For example, if the job function required downward pressure, Laban introduced an upward movement with released pressure somewhere in the movement phrase.  This allowed him to build recuperative actions into the job function itself.

Fatigue remains a problem in the workplace today, despite the fact that jobs are increasingly sedentary.  Nevertheless, the importance of building active recuperation into the rhythm of the workday remains a concern.  Find out more in the following blog.