Laban Movement Analysis as a Framework to build Dance Literacy

1

Literacy and the Arts

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

2

Who is Laban?

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

3
Without literacy dance would never be taken
seriously by the cultural elite. (Laban, Rudolf)
Emphasis on Dance Literacy

• Rudolf Laban's 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.

4

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 Laban's death by his
  students. LMA has four main categories Body,
  Effort, Shape, Space.

5

Movement Vocabulary and Symbols

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

Body
6

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
7

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
8

Movement Vocabulary and Symbols

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

Space
9

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.

10

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.

11

The End