18.12.2013

We have been looking into different types of movement for a while now, but in this lesson, we focused on Laban movement analysis and different qualities of movement.

Laban movement analysis

Rudolf von Laban was a dance artist from late 1800's to the early 1900's. He created the foundation to the Laban movement analysis which is the method and language describing, visualising, interpreting and documenting all varieties of human movement. Laban movement is used my many, like dancers, actors, athletes and physical therapists, since it combines features from many fields, such as anatomy, kinesiology and psychology. Laban is usually divided into these groups:

"Body (Bartenieff Fundamentals, total-body connectivity)
Effort (Energetic dynamics)
Shape
Space (Choreutics, Space Harmony)"

Laban also looks at the groups in themes of opposites:

"Mobility/Stability
Inner/Outer
Function/Expression
Exertion/Recuperation"

Effort Graph

Effort, sometimes also described as dynamics, is the process of understanding the more subtle ways the movement is done to show its inner intention. Simply put, the Effort is used to decide the best way to move to show a certain emotion or intention. The Effort Graph gives you the list of types of movement you can use can combine to convey the wanted emotions. 

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Whilst in class, we did some exercises where we used the Effort Graph and the different descriptions of movement to our advantage. We were first divided into four groups, each group having their own quality of movement. By listening the the music provided for, we had to start moving in coherent matter. This, as it soon was pointed out to us, was more difficult that we thoughts, since a lot of people, including myself, had some difficulties with letting our inner walls fall down and not be embarrassed by our movements and how we looked like doing them. We were then divided into pairs, where our next task was to mirror each other, changing 'the leader' as we went on. Again we were following a certain quality of movement, like light or indirect. Me and my partner, Yunusa, in my opinion did relatively well, since I felt we were focus and tried different sorts of movement. Still, we could have been a bit crazier with our ideas. When we were grouped up with another pair, I felt that the movements became a lot more creative and since the whole group was focused, we were actually having fun with the exercise.