Laban Movement Analysis as a Framework to build Dance Literacy

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Literacy and the Arts

• Laban Movement Analysis as a Framework to build
  Dance Literacy
• By Hye Won Hwang

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Who is Laban

• Rudolf Laban (1879
• -1953) was born in Austro-Hungary.
• Laban was a dancer
• a choreographer and
• a dance / movement theoretician.

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Without literacy dance would never be taken
seriously by the cultural elite. (Laban Rudolf)
Emphasis on Dance Literacy

• Rudolf Labans passion was to establish
  dance as an art of equal standing to its sister
  arts a place it had never held. It had to
  establish a medium through its own literacy
  hence in his burning desire to find a notation
  for dance.

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Laban Movement Analysis

• Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) is a system and
  language for understanding observing describing
  and notating all forms of movement.
• Devised by Rudolf Laban LMA draws on his
  theories of Effort and Shape to describe
  interpret and document human movement.
• LMA was developed after Labans death by his
  students. LMA has four main categories Body
  Effort Shape Space.

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Movement Vocabulary and Symbols

• The body category describes structural and
  physical characteristics of the human body while
  moving.

Body
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Movement Vocabulary and Symbols

• Effort or what Laban sometimes described as
  dynamics is a system for understanding the more
  subtle characteristics about the way a movement
  is done with respect to inner intention.

Effort
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Movement Vocabulary and Symbols

• It is ill suited to discussing the way the
  body changes shape during movement.

• Shape Flow of
• Growing Shrinking
• Arc-like Directional
• Spoke-like Directional
• Shaping

Shape
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Movement Vocabulary and Symbols

• This category involves motion in connection
  with the environment and with spatial patterns
  pathways and lines of spatial tension.

Space
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Ways of Notating

• Labanotation Detailed description of movement so
  it may be reproduced exactly as it was performed
  or conceived.

• Motif Description Depicts the most important
  elements the essential aspects of the movement
  sequence.

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LMA and dance literacy

• Laban Movement Analysis
• is a movement framework that can help not only
  teachers to strengthen their teaching skills but
  also students to build up dance literacy in the
  process of making performing and appreciating.

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The End