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In this engaging and practical text, author Colleen Wahl presents a detailed and clear discussion on how to best use Laban/Bartenieff movement analysis (L/BMA), a system for observing, teaching, and analyzing human movement.
Laban/Bartenieff Movement Studies: Contemporary Applications offers a framework for understanding movement as it influences our perceptions of ourselves and others. In moving through that framework, Wahl explains what the movement analysis is, how it works, and how readers can use it in their lives.
“On the most fundamental level, L/BMA seeks to help you address how movement is relevant in your life,” Wahl says. “The text is designed to develop your knowledge of the Laban/Bartenieff lens and cultivate it in meaningful ways in your life.”
That knowledge is useful in a wide range of activities, passions, and pursuits—developing a fuller range of movement and expression in your moving body, developing choreography, coaching and teaching movement, observing and describing how movement is meaningful, and more.
Wahl has been practicing and teaching the L/BMA framework to undergraduate and graduate students since 2006, when she became a certified integrated movement studies analyst. In her book, she
• brings a contemporary voice to L/BMA in a way that evokes the senses and the felt movement experience;
• grounds readers in the theory and provides numerous practical applications, showing readers how to apply L/BMA in all facets of life and in any career;
• incorporates a rich diversity of experiences in the dance field and beyond from other certified Laban movement analysts who apply L/BMA in their careers and lives; and
• provides tried-and-true tips for applying L/BMA in your life.
The text is organized into three parts. Part I offers an overview and historical look at Laban/Bartenieff movement analysis and details the organizing themes and guiding concepts of L/BMA. You’ll also learn about the origin of the L/BMA concepts and how they have changed and grown over the years. Part II presents the five categories of the L/BMA framework: body, effort, shape, space, and phrasing. This section provides an understanding of the elements of movement and focuses on why each element is useful. Part III helps you take what you learned in parts I and II and use it in meaningful ways in your life. It includes chapters on integrating L/BMA into your life and on first-hand experiences from a diverse group of people who use L/BMA in the dance field and beyond.
“The process of using this material to shed new light on what you already are interested in and to expand your perceptive and expressive skills is challenging and exciting,” says Wahl. “You can make changes in how you move in your life to be more effective, easeful, and whole. You can become more skilled in movement observation and description. You can teach and coach others in movement with greater clarity and possible inroads.”
Throughout the text, Wahl offers suggestions for experiencing and cultivating L/BMA in your life. “I’ve designed it to help you perceive human movement with greater nuance and specificity, to talk about movement with greater clarity and precision, to coach movement with a greater rangge of possibilities, and to evoke the movement experience with a greater range of options,” she says.
“Ultimately, I’ve designed it to organize your perceptions of movement and shed new light on its role in your life.”
Part I. Foundations of Laban/Bartenieff Movement Studies
Chapter 1. Overview of Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis
Movement is multifaceted and can be perceived in many layers and through multiple perspectives
Chapter 2. Guiding Concepts and Organizing Themes
L/BMA allows the underpinnings of desire, intention, and expression to be part of the frame of understanding human movement
Part II. The Lens of Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis
Chapter 3. Body
The physical body—the tangible, graspable body you live in, complete with its muscles, bones, and sinew
Chapter 4. Effort
The dynamic qualities, energy, or feeling tones present in movement
Chapter 5. Shape
The form and forming processes of the body; the edges and curves of the body and how they change in relationship to the environment
Chapter 6. Space
How the body moves through the space around it, and how that is meaningful
Chapter 7. Phrasing
Address individual uniqueness in movement, and see patterns and relationships in movement as they emerge and unfold over time
Part III. Integrating and Applying BESS
Chapter 8. Using L/BMA in Your Life
Shedding new light on your interests
Chapter 9. L/BMA in Action
Contributors share how they use L/BMA in diverse ways in their lives and careers
Colleen Wahl received her Certified Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst (CLMA) certification in 2006 through Integrated Movement Studies (IMS). She has been a core faculty member at IMS since 2013.
Wahl has taught many graduate and undergraduate courses in Laban/Bartenieff movement analysis, including at State University of New York at Brockport, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and most recently at Alfred University, where she is a visiting assistant professor of dance. She also served as a guest Laban faculty member for Bill Evans Dance Intensive in 2011, 2017, and 2018.
Wahl has written articles about Laban/Bartenieff movement analysis (L/BMA), including a series of fitness columns for Epoch Times, a section of Karen Schupp’s text Studying Dance: A Guide to Campus and Beyond, and a chapter in Inhabiting the Meta-Visual: Contemporary Performance Theories. She also coauthors the monthly IMS newsletter with Janice Meaden.
Since graduating from IMS, Wahl has focused on applying the Laban/Bartenieff material in many areas. In 2007, she founded her own L/BMA-based somatic fitness business, Move Into Greatness, which has allowed her to apply Laban/Bartenieff concepts in various contexts. In addition to her fitness focus, she has applied L/BMA in sports, business, and performing arts in diverse settings, including Cornell University (with their football team and the graduate school of management) and the Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technology Institute for the Deaf.
Wahl holds a master’s degree in fine arts in dance from State University of New York at Brockport, a master’s degree in liberal studies from State University of New York Empire State College, and a bachelor’s degree in dance and arts education from William Smith College. In addition to her certification through IMS, she is a registered somatic movement educator through the International Somatic Movement Educators and Therapists Association and a personal trainer certified by the National Academy of Sports Medicine.
“In Laban/Bartenieff Movement Studies: Contemporary Applications, Colleen Wahl offers readers a text that is richly informative as well as readily accessible. Theory and practice are woven together in ways that can speak to a wide array of people, ranging from established and emerging movement educators and dancers to choreographers and bodywork practitioners. As a result, the possibilities for effectively and creatively engaging in the study of the theories and practices of Rudolf Laban and Irmgard Bartenieff (L/BMS) become illuminated.”
—Sherrie Barr,Journal of Dance Education, doi:10.1080/15290824.2019.1627690
Perceiving Movement Through Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests.
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests. In any context, the Laban/Bartenieff lens is especially useful for observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning from, and experiencing movement.
Observing Movement
Movement happens quickly and is constantly in flux. As soon one movement ends, another has already begun, making comprehensive and accurate observations of movement difficult. Observing what is happening in movement is a common use of the Laban/Bartenieff framework. Using L/BMA to observe movement allows the observer to be precise and specific about what is happening, it also encourages the observer to recognize how movement calls forth feelings and associations that make it expressive. This is facilitated by the multiple aspects of the L/BMA lens, which enable the observer to comb through movement for its elemental parts and then integrate those parts together towards a larger whole. The ability to be precise in one's observations of movement, despite the movement's complexity, is important to many fields that study and address movement.
Describing Movement
Translating movement into words can feel like juggling two disparate systems of experience. Movement is felt, kinesthetic, and constantly morphing. Language is verbal, intellectual, and relatively durable—words do not change in the same moment they are spoken. Yes, language evolves and words change meaning overtime, but not so fast that we cannot keep up with them. Movement is infinitely faster and more difficult to “pin down”; as soon as you realize what is there, it has passed. Finding words that convey the experienced and changing nature of movement while being precise, accurate, and evocative can be a challenge. In many fields that involve movement, the ability to accurately describe what is happening is essential to conveying how movement is manifesting and how it is important in the context. L/BMA offers a specific lexicon for articulating human movement; explaining these terms makes up the majority of part II of this book. Of course, the L/BMA terminology is probably unfamiliar to those who have not studied this material, so part of using L/BMA is knowing how to translate the specialized language into words that inspire movement, no matter how much or how little L/BMA terminology the other person knows.
Coaching and Teaching Movement
For those who coach and teach movement, the act of facilitating growth and improvement involves many aspects of perceiving movement. The coach or teacher analyzes what is happening in relationship to what is desired, and then communicates that information, confirming what is serving the mover and offering strategies for growth. That information is then integrated into the movement, and then, the cycle begins again, including observing how the new information impacted the movement. This complex process is aided by the clear framework for observation, description, and analysis provided by Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis.
Making Meaning from Movement
The biological body is the basis for movement; it produces and makes movement possible, and is itself formed by movement. Yet, the picture of movement in human life is far more complex than that of a biological body moving from synaptic impulses. From the moment of conception, the body is molded by movement, and movement informs the ongoing and shifting perceptions of the self (Bryan 2018). Throughout the human life, movement is meaningful. Movement arises to meet needs: to get closer to what is desired or to create distance from what is not desired, to express inner thoughts and desires, and to accomplish the tasks that maintain and give meaning to life. Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis allows those who use it to address the meaningful aspects of movement while honoring the context and sequencing of movement.
Making meaning from movement is different from interpreting movement, and there is a time for both. People are always making meaning from movement, usually unconsciously—for example, someone might interpret how her father moves when he is tired or when he is angry. Making meaning emphasizes the influence of the observer in how movement is understood. Interpretation is about seeking to understand someone else's meaning, as if an observer could use movement in order to “read the mover's mind.” In the former, the observer is an active participant in making meaning; in the latter, movement is interpreted without recognizing the influence of the interpreter, potentially leading to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. For example, crossing the arms or nodding the head means different things to different people, in different cultures and contexts, and any interpretation one might place upon either of those actions will necessarily change with each mover and each context. I highlight this distinction to emphasize that L/BMA does not provide a dictionary or one-to-one correlation between a movement and “what it means” in any general sense. Movement always happens in a context, and our analysis of any particular movement must honor the particular mover within the particular context, as well as the complexity of what happened and how it happened in movement.
Experiencing Movement
Movement is a constant. Experiencing movement within the Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis framework can heighten and refine your awareness of a movement as you do it, and can help you recognize your preferences in movement. It can also help you gain new options in your movement. The specificity of the Laban/Bartenieff framework heightens sensation to bring greater clarity in movement so that you can manifest what you intend. When you bring your L/BMA knowledge to your lived experiences, you will notice new things about your movement, gaining a greater sense of presence, a sense of being “in your body.” As you work through the Laban/Bartenieff system you will generate awareness of your personal preferences and patterns for movement. As you learn what you like to do, you can also “style stretch,” that is develop movements that you have been less likely to inhabit, thus expanding your range of physicality. You'll increase your expressive range and functional skills.
All of the above—observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning, and experiencing—are ways of perceiving movement. The Laban/Bartenieff framework is fundamentally about creating conscious and effective inroads to the heightened perception of movement. As you use L/BMA to perceive movement in your life, you may feel as though you are learning a new language, and in some ways you are. Your understanding of movement will shift as you apply the Laban/Bartenieff framework to your life. You may notice that you can see movement with greater distinction and that you have new words and approaches to talking about it. You may also notice that you are better able to organize and frame your pursuits around movement, and that you have new options for being creative with your movement goals. Finally, you may notice that as a mover you are more prepared to increase the range of movements you execute and enjoy.
Total Body Connectivity—Breath Patterning
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop.
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop. It is fundamental to life and among our first experiences upon entering the world. Before an infant's first breaths, the fetus practices the movements of breathing in utero, as the mother breathes for the fetus by sending oxygen through the umbilical cord.
Figure 3.1 Breath symbol.
For an infant, breath affords sensation of the inside of the body, including the body's inner volume. Through breathing you feel the internal body growing and shrinking through the swelling of the inhalation and the contracting of the exhalation. The gentle expansion and contraction of the breath's rhythm provides the basic material of human life, oxygen, and the important release of carbon dioxide.
Breath patterning assists the coordination of the internal body that is vital in human movement. Functionally, every inhalation and exhalation is a complex event. Upon inhaling, the five lobes of the lungs expand to engulf the heart and welcome oxygen. The diaphragm is pulled downward toward the pelvis by the central tendon, filling up like an inverted hot-air balloon (see figure 3.2). Oxygen is taken into the body via the lungs, where it is transferred through small air sacs called alveoli into the blood, which is pumped throughout the body by the heart—a process that allows every cell in the body to respire. Carbon dioxide is released via exhalation, eliminating waste products. As you exhale, the central tendon releases, the diaphragm contracts upward, and the pelvic floor moves up, back, and in. Deliberately bringing your awareness to your breath as support for your movement is a precursor to whole-body coordination and virtuosity in movement. This is true for movers of all levels as breath allows the entire body to be supported from within in complex coordination.
Figure 3.2 Lungs, diaphragm, and central tendon, at the height of exhalation and inhalation
Illustrated by Sydney P. Celio.
As long as there is life, breath is present; it is the baseline of life force, the river on which all movement and expression runs. As an adult, revisiting the breath pattern is a useful way of connecting with sensation. Tuning into sensation within the body offers a way of becoming present within yourself and identifying what is needed in the moment. As a way of checking in with yourself, you can revisit the breath pattern when you are overstimulated, exhausted, or stressed; observing your breath can sooth what feels overwhelming. You may notice your breath changing with your emotional states. Agitation may shorten or truncate the breath, and rest may deepen it. You can alter and shift “emotional tone” by inviting the breath. The breath pattern is a reminder that you have the choice to affect your feelings and thereby your responses. Paying attention to the sensation of breath with its wave-like, rolling inhalations and exhalations can release muscle tension associated with stress.
Notice how the breath pulses inside of your body. Sensing the breath may bring you home to yourself. Many spiritual and centering practices, like meditation and stress reduction, use a focus on the breath as a key principle because it brings centeredness. It is a way of returning to a fundamental aspect of being alive. When stressed or feeling distanced from yourself, connecting to the breath can help you reconnect to yourself and feel calmer and more present.
Breath also provides access to the sense of yielding, bonding, and being with that will be discussed in depth later in this chapter. Imagine that as you attend to your breath you can soften the surfaces of your body and bond with the surfaces of support around you.
Breath brings with it a sense of the connection between one's inner and outer worlds, an experience that can be life-giving and profoundly essential. The exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide changes the torso as it expands and contracts. Allow this internal to growing and shrinking to support and fill your movement. Breath support is a concept used by Irmgard Bartenieff to illustrate the breath's ability to support and enliven full-bodied movement.
Visiting the breath pattern can provide another way of getting ready for activity. Breath supports movement. To accompany and support movement, the breath can be activated and vigorous, or soft, sustained, and elongated. Beginning an activity by getting the breath going is like preparing the insides of the body for what will later become activated outwardly. By using breath as part of a warm-up, you activate sensations of the internal three-dimensional support for movement, and you recruit the tissues of the body to be responsive and pliable.
For many adults who lead sedentary lives, the torso can feel tense and stuck, while their attention is directed outward. Attending to the flow of breath by directing attention inward can help them find movement and ease in the torso. When tension headaches or fatigue arises due to limited and contained movement, a person can deliberately deepen the flow of breath to nourish tissue and find new movement potential throughout the torso. To help you visualize the flow of breath, imagine a surfer riding a wave into shore. Like the wave that catches the surfboard, “catch” your exhalation and “ride” its undulating pattern through your body, noticing how and where it moves. You can also explore the feeling of being filled and expanded by the inhalation.
Bringing breath patterning into the forefront of your movement gives you the opportunity to let breath guide and initiate and influence the movement. In this way, the breath stimulates support of the core, the supple undulations of the spine, and massages the connection between upper and lower body. Fully receiving the exhalation allows for the area around the belly button to gather and hollow inward toward the organs, providing the first inklings of what will come next in movement.
As an expression of inner life, breath patterning has an audible nature, revealed in sounding and speaking. Every verbal or sounded expression rides on the breath; we can either use it fully or diminish and stunt it. An example of breath support in sound is the grandeur of passionate song or chanted liturgy; an example in which breath struggles to support us is hyperventilation. As the expression of inner life, another person's use of breath allows us to perceive the states of his or her thoughts and feelings. Listening to someone talk and sensing the congruence between breath, voice, and body gives the sense that they are coming from a grounded, centered, and committed place. We sense them as believable.
Finally, breath patterning supports big, exuberant, and virtuosic movement. It increases the strength of a boxer's punch or the quick burst of a swimmer's takeoff. The horseback rider uses her breathing to control and communicate to the horse, and the dancer exhales as he prepares to turn.
Explore the Breath Pattern
Check in with your breath. No need to boss it around. Bring your attention to what is currently happening with your breath, and allow it to change as it will. Notice the movement your breath is inspiring in your body. Can you send breath to areas that feel tight or bound up to change the tension of your tissues? Follow and ride the breath pathway like you might follow and ride a wave. Notice where in your body the organs and tissue grow with your breath, and where your internal world is softening or shrinking. Take some time here, and notice how you feel and what this experience has brought. Try singing or sounding the song of your breath. Have your feelings shifted? Where might actively focusing on your breath patterning be useful for you? How might your awareness serve you in your daily life?
Key Points for the Breath Pattern
- Connecting to breath is a way of connecting to and centering the self.
- Breath brings oxygen to the blood and tissues, and releases carbon dioxide waste.
- Breath is the infant's first experience of the inner volume of the body.
- The end of the exhalation, when the breath empties and the diaphragm floats upward, sets up the core-softening necessary for the next pattern.
- Breath support enlivens movement throughout the whole body and promotes complexity and virtuosity in movement.
L/BMA and Physical Humor
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor.
Contributed by Sarah Donohue, CLMA, MFA. Used with permission.
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor. An unexpected peek-a-boo delights a baby into laughter, the universal indicator of humor. A story is told in which the associated mental images are contradicted by an unforeseen twist at the end. With a shift in perspective, we experience humor on many perceptual levels.
This application explores the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective and suggests that incongruities in movement not only contribute to humor, but are subconsciously accessed on a kinesthetic level. While acknowledging that humor is situational and relational, my research isolates the movement of the body during a humorous event and reveals that incongruent movement patterns can explain physical humor.
Since determining what is humorous is in the funny bone of the beholder, I have selected a group of individuals whose movements are generally deemed humorous: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Rowan Atkinson, and others. I am not asking if their movement is humorous. Rather, I am assuming that it is and asking if they exhibit common movement patterns. Using the Laban/Bartenieff system, I have also analyzed the movement of humorous dance, such as the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes. Additionally, this inquiry prompts a search for humorous quotidian movement, such as someone walking into a spider web, which is difficult to spontaneously encounter and simultaneously analyze. Although the elements of humor-producing movement vary, I identify patterns of incongruity within the Laban/Bartenieff categories of Body, Effort, Shape, and Space.
Body
Which parts of the body are moved or held and how they are moved or held is culturally and socially significant. In the prototypical clown, we see the legs in external rotation, knees bent and adaptable, and a narrow torso being held in line with the head. There is often superfluous action of the lower legs and feet, and walking is initiated by spoking with the knees. Picture the gait of Charlie Chaplin. This bodily posture appears paradoxically inviting (with legs turned out) and protective (with spine and torso held). The contradictory posture contributes to a pattern of incongruence.
Body-Half and Upper-Lower Patterns of Total Body Connectivity
In the movement of physical comedians and clowns, there is a tendency for locomotion to take place in a body-half pattern instead of in the natural cross-lateral gait, perhaps an intentional indication of being less physically developed. We find familiarity, and often humor, in the body-half waddling of a penguin or toddler. Perceiving someone walk in a body-half pattern is incongruent with the naturally developed human gait of cross-laterality. Additionally, an apparent separation between the upper and lower parts of the body is a trait often present in physical humor. A common theme in cartoons involves the lower body running away from peril before the upper body gets the message to flee as well. In human form, the disassociation between the upper and lower body of physical comedians indicates an incongruity on a basic level of development, as if regions of the body are being controlled by separate forces. Monty Python's sketch “Ministry of Silly Walks” demonstrates an elaborate disconnection between body parts, with the upper and lower body often moving incongruently against one another.
Shape Flow Support and Shape Qualities
The Laban/Bartenieff category of Shape reveals meaning by focusing on the growing and shrinking of the torso and how the shaping of the body connects to Space. How we move our torsos can send very clear messages to perceivers, or, conversely, incongruent messages. If a person lengthens his torso vertically while rising with his entire form to pick an apple from a tree, the experience of all parts organizing toward place high—and the apple—is both functional and congruent. Incongruence in Shape would have the apple-picking man shorten his torso like a compressed spring while the frame of his body attempts to rise to place high. This incongruence may indicate that the mover does not physically embody efficient movement phrasing, which, to those inclined to schadenfreude, is perhaps a humorous situation. From a less vindictive perspective, incongruity between shape qualities and shape flow support is prevalent in clowning and particularly humorous in dance, where the expectation is for efficient movement patterns.
Phrasing in movement corresponds well to phrasing in written language. A movement phrase, or movement sentence, is complete and congruent when there is preparation, initiation, action, and follow through. A dart player prepares by focusing on the bull's-eye, both visually and kinesthetically. To initiate throwing the dart, she carefully pulls it back toward her shoulder before suddenly and directly sending it toward the target in the main action of the phrase. To complete the phrasing, her hand follows the pathway of the dart, guiding it empathetically to the bull's-eye. In dance, a well-executed grand jeté, or leap, is an example of congruent phrasing.
Physical humor often relies on the interruption of phrasing and the viewer's preconceived expectations being altered unpredictably, as is often utilized in the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes—a pelvic gyration in the midst of a flowing modern phrase or a giant cardboard box flying onstage to hit the dancer at the height of a graceful arabesque. Incongruities in phrasing are closely related to surprise, a key element in humor (Weems 2014, 26). Our sense-making minds are stringing together visual input to create a narrative or expected outcome. When what we believed would take place shifts unpredictably, humor is the result.
Effort
Phrasing can also be interrupted in regard to Effort. Listening to your favorite song and remembering sweet memories of the past may take you into what Laban calls passion drive (free Flow, light Weight, and sustained Time). However, an unexpected knock on the door will take you into an awake state (direct Space and sudden Time). The complete shift on the effort spectrum, from indulging qualities (free, light, sustained in this case) to condensing qualities (direct and sudden) is incongruent, surprising, and can be humorous. Stand-up comedians exhibit wonderful incongruent Effort phrasing in their verbal delivery. Conversely, congruent effort phrasing is created through effort loading. The effort is a natural progression that develops out of and returns to an established effort constellation.
However, in incongruent effort phrasing, like moving from passion drive to awake state, all the Effort qualities change at once. What was sustained becomes sudden; what was missing (Space effort) suddenly appears in direct Space. We can picture the effort phrasing making a complete shift across the effort spectrum in progressions such as walking to slipping or reading a book to being startled. In choreography, being aware of how effort phrasing falls naturally into, or out of, metered music can mean the difference between predicable musicality and delightful surprise.
Space
How the human body is organized in Space is meaningful not only in humor studies but also in everyday interaction with the environment. A congruent interaction with space allows you to get to the bus stop safely and efficiently. “Natural,” unaffected walking takes place in the sagittal plane (forward, with a little bit of up and down). In many clowning examples as well as Charlie Chaplin's walk, space is approached incongruently, by ambulating in the vertical plane (more side to side than forward).
Incongruence in Space is also revealed by countertension, which is what the body uses to balance when one slips or falls. From walking along in two spatial pulls of the sagittal plane, slipping requires the body to balance by moving into the third, previously absent spatial pull, the horizontal dimension (or some deflection of it). The need to move into a countertension is in opposition to the previous action or movement goal. Our expectations for regular locomotion are broken on many levels. While dance lives in the world of countertension, everyday actions meet extreme countertension when something unpredictable has happened—something incongruent.
As a choreographer and dance educator, my aim is not necessarily to create humorous dances. However, humor is an inroad to interpersonal connection, and my aim is to create dances with which a wide range of audiences can connect. Humor, like dance, has the capacity to be nonverbal and to reach beyond boundaries of culture, society, ability, and age (Weems 2014, 154). Infants laugh before they possess language—often they are laughing at motion. Humor is a primal human experience that we understand innately and kinesthetically.
The study of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective offers various benefits to the arts and education. Humor in the classroom serves memory retention, allowing students to create knowledge through their individual, humorous connection to learning. Understanding the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff analysis of incongruent movement patterns allows choreographers to develop innovation in their movement, audiences to access dance on a subconscious level, and everyday people to connect with each other through the kinesthetic language of humor.
Using Touch to Facilitate Body Connectivity
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch is a vulnerable and powerful experience. In the Laban/Bartenieff work, touch is not a given or an expectation. It is important to learn that you can say yes and no to touch from another person. Saying no to touch can be an empowering reminder of your ownership of and agency over your body. When working with others, ask permission to touch that includes where on their body the touch will be and what kinds of touch you will deliver. If someone decides not to be touched they can use their own hands, or you can assist them in finding other ways to experience the purpose of the touch.
The following are basic ideas for incorporating touch that are easy to learn and particularly useful for enhancing body connectivity. The types of touch discussed below are part of a larger body of work developed by Peggy Hackney and Janice Meaden with Ed Groff and Pam Schick as part of Integrated Movement Studies' “Touch for Repatterning” curriculum. Each brought other training perspectives including Body-Mind Centering, Irene Dowd's kinesthetic anatomy and neuromuscular re-education, and massage therapy to the curriculum. This is part of a much larger body of work, but this will get your started.
Being with Touch
Use this method to become present with the connection between your body and your partner's. Being with touch asks the toucher to be present with and listen to what is underneath their hands. It does not seek to do anything or ask that the person being touched do anything besides be present with what is there. Try this type of touch on the torso. As the toucher, you may want to check in with the person you are touching, asking questions like, “What are you noticing?” Or, “Is this pressure okay? Would you like more or less?” Keep the dialogue going to demonstrate that conversation about what is happening is part of the experience.
Locating Touch
Use locating touch to help your partner get a sense of where different parts of the body are sited and how they relate to other parts. Locating touch can go to one body part or slide along a pathway. It is like using your hands to say, “Focus your attention right here.” Try this type of touch to locate the hip joint or the lesser trochanter or the base of the scapula. After locating an area or part of the body, cue your partner to notice how that area relates to another area.
Sliding Touch
Locating touch can phrase into a sliding touch, where the toucher uses her hand to slide along or trace a line or connection on the body as if to bring awareness to the connection between one area and another.
Sending Touch and Receiving Touch
Use these techniques to find a connection or pathway through the body. Sending touch has directionality that give an energetic quality of sending information through the body's tissues. Receiving touch gathers or receives the sending touch somewhere else in the body. For example, try placing a hand on the sternum, and imagine you can send a message through the sternum. Place another hand on the sacrum, and imagine this hand can receive the message being sent by the top hand. The directionality in this kind of touch is clarified by the receiving touch. In this example, the hand on the sternum is sending a message in a down and back direction. Explore this type of touch with multiple pathways through the body.
Applying L/BMA to Aerial Dancing
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance.
Elizabeth Stitch
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance. Due to safety concerns and initial lack of strength, beginning aerialists often utilize spoke-like directional modes. This allows the aerialist to form a direct link between her body and the environment, or apparatus, which provides safety while she's in the air. When teaching beginning aerial students, I use this functional approach and encourage them to exactly model my steps into each skill.
Over time, I have noticed that it is difficult to break this initial pattern and begin to explore other options for changing the form of the body and connecting with the apparatus. In analyzing my personal aerial performance, I was surprised to observe my own strong preference for the directional mode, particularly the Arc-like form. While this mode can lend a more graceful feeling to a movement, it is essentially similar to the spoke-like mode in terms of the expressive statement it makes in connecting to the apparatus. In this context, both directional modes of shape change are straightforward and utilitarian, which is by no means negative, but they are expressively limited and not what I always want to convey.
One of the things I love most about Laban theory is that it gives me a map into lesser-known places in my movement signature. Following this map into the co-creative realm of carving has offered me not only a different relationship with my apparatus, but also new possibilities for movement invention. It has also guided me as a performer into the vulnerability of sharing my inner life with the audience through specific moments of shape-flow mode of shape change. With this full palette of expressive possibilities, my movement experience feels more satisfying, which keeps me coming back to my apparatus for further exploration in the air!
Perceiving Movement Through Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests.
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests. In any context, the Laban/Bartenieff lens is especially useful for observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning from, and experiencing movement.
Observing Movement
Movement happens quickly and is constantly in flux. As soon one movement ends, another has already begun, making comprehensive and accurate observations of movement difficult. Observing what is happening in movement is a common use of the Laban/Bartenieff framework. Using L/BMA to observe movement allows the observer to be precise and specific about what is happening, it also encourages the observer to recognize how movement calls forth feelings and associations that make it expressive. This is facilitated by the multiple aspects of the L/BMA lens, which enable the observer to comb through movement for its elemental parts and then integrate those parts together towards a larger whole. The ability to be precise in one's observations of movement, despite the movement's complexity, is important to many fields that study and address movement.
Describing Movement
Translating movement into words can feel like juggling two disparate systems of experience. Movement is felt, kinesthetic, and constantly morphing. Language is verbal, intellectual, and relatively durable—words do not change in the same moment they are spoken. Yes, language evolves and words change meaning overtime, but not so fast that we cannot keep up with them. Movement is infinitely faster and more difficult to “pin down”; as soon as you realize what is there, it has passed. Finding words that convey the experienced and changing nature of movement while being precise, accurate, and evocative can be a challenge. In many fields that involve movement, the ability to accurately describe what is happening is essential to conveying how movement is manifesting and how it is important in the context. L/BMA offers a specific lexicon for articulating human movement; explaining these terms makes up the majority of part II of this book. Of course, the L/BMA terminology is probably unfamiliar to those who have not studied this material, so part of using L/BMA is knowing how to translate the specialized language into words that inspire movement, no matter how much or how little L/BMA terminology the other person knows.
Coaching and Teaching Movement
For those who coach and teach movement, the act of facilitating growth and improvement involves many aspects of perceiving movement. The coach or teacher analyzes what is happening in relationship to what is desired, and then communicates that information, confirming what is serving the mover and offering strategies for growth. That information is then integrated into the movement, and then, the cycle begins again, including observing how the new information impacted the movement. This complex process is aided by the clear framework for observation, description, and analysis provided by Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis.
Making Meaning from Movement
The biological body is the basis for movement; it produces and makes movement possible, and is itself formed by movement. Yet, the picture of movement in human life is far more complex than that of a biological body moving from synaptic impulses. From the moment of conception, the body is molded by movement, and movement informs the ongoing and shifting perceptions of the self (Bryan 2018). Throughout the human life, movement is meaningful. Movement arises to meet needs: to get closer to what is desired or to create distance from what is not desired, to express inner thoughts and desires, and to accomplish the tasks that maintain and give meaning to life. Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis allows those who use it to address the meaningful aspects of movement while honoring the context and sequencing of movement.
Making meaning from movement is different from interpreting movement, and there is a time for both. People are always making meaning from movement, usually unconsciously—for example, someone might interpret how her father moves when he is tired or when he is angry. Making meaning emphasizes the influence of the observer in how movement is understood. Interpretation is about seeking to understand someone else's meaning, as if an observer could use movement in order to “read the mover's mind.” In the former, the observer is an active participant in making meaning; in the latter, movement is interpreted without recognizing the influence of the interpreter, potentially leading to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. For example, crossing the arms or nodding the head means different things to different people, in different cultures and contexts, and any interpretation one might place upon either of those actions will necessarily change with each mover and each context. I highlight this distinction to emphasize that L/BMA does not provide a dictionary or one-to-one correlation between a movement and “what it means” in any general sense. Movement always happens in a context, and our analysis of any particular movement must honor the particular mover within the particular context, as well as the complexity of what happened and how it happened in movement.
Experiencing Movement
Movement is a constant. Experiencing movement within the Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis framework can heighten and refine your awareness of a movement as you do it, and can help you recognize your preferences in movement. It can also help you gain new options in your movement. The specificity of the Laban/Bartenieff framework heightens sensation to bring greater clarity in movement so that you can manifest what you intend. When you bring your L/BMA knowledge to your lived experiences, you will notice new things about your movement, gaining a greater sense of presence, a sense of being “in your body.” As you work through the Laban/Bartenieff system you will generate awareness of your personal preferences and patterns for movement. As you learn what you like to do, you can also “style stretch,” that is develop movements that you have been less likely to inhabit, thus expanding your range of physicality. You'll increase your expressive range and functional skills.
All of the above—observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning, and experiencing—are ways of perceiving movement. The Laban/Bartenieff framework is fundamentally about creating conscious and effective inroads to the heightened perception of movement. As you use L/BMA to perceive movement in your life, you may feel as though you are learning a new language, and in some ways you are. Your understanding of movement will shift as you apply the Laban/Bartenieff framework to your life. You may notice that you can see movement with greater distinction and that you have new words and approaches to talking about it. You may also notice that you are better able to organize and frame your pursuits around movement, and that you have new options for being creative with your movement goals. Finally, you may notice that as a mover you are more prepared to increase the range of movements you execute and enjoy.
Total Body Connectivity—Breath Patterning
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop.
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop. It is fundamental to life and among our first experiences upon entering the world. Before an infant's first breaths, the fetus practices the movements of breathing in utero, as the mother breathes for the fetus by sending oxygen through the umbilical cord.
Figure 3.1 Breath symbol.
For an infant, breath affords sensation of the inside of the body, including the body's inner volume. Through breathing you feel the internal body growing and shrinking through the swelling of the inhalation and the contracting of the exhalation. The gentle expansion and contraction of the breath's rhythm provides the basic material of human life, oxygen, and the important release of carbon dioxide.
Breath patterning assists the coordination of the internal body that is vital in human movement. Functionally, every inhalation and exhalation is a complex event. Upon inhaling, the five lobes of the lungs expand to engulf the heart and welcome oxygen. The diaphragm is pulled downward toward the pelvis by the central tendon, filling up like an inverted hot-air balloon (see figure 3.2). Oxygen is taken into the body via the lungs, where it is transferred through small air sacs called alveoli into the blood, which is pumped throughout the body by the heart—a process that allows every cell in the body to respire. Carbon dioxide is released via exhalation, eliminating waste products. As you exhale, the central tendon releases, the diaphragm contracts upward, and the pelvic floor moves up, back, and in. Deliberately bringing your awareness to your breath as support for your movement is a precursor to whole-body coordination and virtuosity in movement. This is true for movers of all levels as breath allows the entire body to be supported from within in complex coordination.
Figure 3.2 Lungs, diaphragm, and central tendon, at the height of exhalation and inhalation
Illustrated by Sydney P. Celio.
As long as there is life, breath is present; it is the baseline of life force, the river on which all movement and expression runs. As an adult, revisiting the breath pattern is a useful way of connecting with sensation. Tuning into sensation within the body offers a way of becoming present within yourself and identifying what is needed in the moment. As a way of checking in with yourself, you can revisit the breath pattern when you are overstimulated, exhausted, or stressed; observing your breath can sooth what feels overwhelming. You may notice your breath changing with your emotional states. Agitation may shorten or truncate the breath, and rest may deepen it. You can alter and shift “emotional tone” by inviting the breath. The breath pattern is a reminder that you have the choice to affect your feelings and thereby your responses. Paying attention to the sensation of breath with its wave-like, rolling inhalations and exhalations can release muscle tension associated with stress.
Notice how the breath pulses inside of your body. Sensing the breath may bring you home to yourself. Many spiritual and centering practices, like meditation and stress reduction, use a focus on the breath as a key principle because it brings centeredness. It is a way of returning to a fundamental aspect of being alive. When stressed or feeling distanced from yourself, connecting to the breath can help you reconnect to yourself and feel calmer and more present.
Breath also provides access to the sense of yielding, bonding, and being with that will be discussed in depth later in this chapter. Imagine that as you attend to your breath you can soften the surfaces of your body and bond with the surfaces of support around you.
Breath brings with it a sense of the connection between one's inner and outer worlds, an experience that can be life-giving and profoundly essential. The exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide changes the torso as it expands and contracts. Allow this internal to growing and shrinking to support and fill your movement. Breath support is a concept used by Irmgard Bartenieff to illustrate the breath's ability to support and enliven full-bodied movement.
Visiting the breath pattern can provide another way of getting ready for activity. Breath supports movement. To accompany and support movement, the breath can be activated and vigorous, or soft, sustained, and elongated. Beginning an activity by getting the breath going is like preparing the insides of the body for what will later become activated outwardly. By using breath as part of a warm-up, you activate sensations of the internal three-dimensional support for movement, and you recruit the tissues of the body to be responsive and pliable.
For many adults who lead sedentary lives, the torso can feel tense and stuck, while their attention is directed outward. Attending to the flow of breath by directing attention inward can help them find movement and ease in the torso. When tension headaches or fatigue arises due to limited and contained movement, a person can deliberately deepen the flow of breath to nourish tissue and find new movement potential throughout the torso. To help you visualize the flow of breath, imagine a surfer riding a wave into shore. Like the wave that catches the surfboard, “catch” your exhalation and “ride” its undulating pattern through your body, noticing how and where it moves. You can also explore the feeling of being filled and expanded by the inhalation.
Bringing breath patterning into the forefront of your movement gives you the opportunity to let breath guide and initiate and influence the movement. In this way, the breath stimulates support of the core, the supple undulations of the spine, and massages the connection between upper and lower body. Fully receiving the exhalation allows for the area around the belly button to gather and hollow inward toward the organs, providing the first inklings of what will come next in movement.
As an expression of inner life, breath patterning has an audible nature, revealed in sounding and speaking. Every verbal or sounded expression rides on the breath; we can either use it fully or diminish and stunt it. An example of breath support in sound is the grandeur of passionate song or chanted liturgy; an example in which breath struggles to support us is hyperventilation. As the expression of inner life, another person's use of breath allows us to perceive the states of his or her thoughts and feelings. Listening to someone talk and sensing the congruence between breath, voice, and body gives the sense that they are coming from a grounded, centered, and committed place. We sense them as believable.
Finally, breath patterning supports big, exuberant, and virtuosic movement. It increases the strength of a boxer's punch or the quick burst of a swimmer's takeoff. The horseback rider uses her breathing to control and communicate to the horse, and the dancer exhales as he prepares to turn.
Explore the Breath Pattern
Check in with your breath. No need to boss it around. Bring your attention to what is currently happening with your breath, and allow it to change as it will. Notice the movement your breath is inspiring in your body. Can you send breath to areas that feel tight or bound up to change the tension of your tissues? Follow and ride the breath pathway like you might follow and ride a wave. Notice where in your body the organs and tissue grow with your breath, and where your internal world is softening or shrinking. Take some time here, and notice how you feel and what this experience has brought. Try singing or sounding the song of your breath. Have your feelings shifted? Where might actively focusing on your breath patterning be useful for you? How might your awareness serve you in your daily life?
Key Points for the Breath Pattern
- Connecting to breath is a way of connecting to and centering the self.
- Breath brings oxygen to the blood and tissues, and releases carbon dioxide waste.
- Breath is the infant's first experience of the inner volume of the body.
- The end of the exhalation, when the breath empties and the diaphragm floats upward, sets up the core-softening necessary for the next pattern.
- Breath support enlivens movement throughout the whole body and promotes complexity and virtuosity in movement.
L/BMA and Physical Humor
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor.
Contributed by Sarah Donohue, CLMA, MFA. Used with permission.
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor. An unexpected peek-a-boo delights a baby into laughter, the universal indicator of humor. A story is told in which the associated mental images are contradicted by an unforeseen twist at the end. With a shift in perspective, we experience humor on many perceptual levels.
This application explores the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective and suggests that incongruities in movement not only contribute to humor, but are subconsciously accessed on a kinesthetic level. While acknowledging that humor is situational and relational, my research isolates the movement of the body during a humorous event and reveals that incongruent movement patterns can explain physical humor.
Since determining what is humorous is in the funny bone of the beholder, I have selected a group of individuals whose movements are generally deemed humorous: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Rowan Atkinson, and others. I am not asking if their movement is humorous. Rather, I am assuming that it is and asking if they exhibit common movement patterns. Using the Laban/Bartenieff system, I have also analyzed the movement of humorous dance, such as the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes. Additionally, this inquiry prompts a search for humorous quotidian movement, such as someone walking into a spider web, which is difficult to spontaneously encounter and simultaneously analyze. Although the elements of humor-producing movement vary, I identify patterns of incongruity within the Laban/Bartenieff categories of Body, Effort, Shape, and Space.
Body
Which parts of the body are moved or held and how they are moved or held is culturally and socially significant. In the prototypical clown, we see the legs in external rotation, knees bent and adaptable, and a narrow torso being held in line with the head. There is often superfluous action of the lower legs and feet, and walking is initiated by spoking with the knees. Picture the gait of Charlie Chaplin. This bodily posture appears paradoxically inviting (with legs turned out) and protective (with spine and torso held). The contradictory posture contributes to a pattern of incongruence.
Body-Half and Upper-Lower Patterns of Total Body Connectivity
In the movement of physical comedians and clowns, there is a tendency for locomotion to take place in a body-half pattern instead of in the natural cross-lateral gait, perhaps an intentional indication of being less physically developed. We find familiarity, and often humor, in the body-half waddling of a penguin or toddler. Perceiving someone walk in a body-half pattern is incongruent with the naturally developed human gait of cross-laterality. Additionally, an apparent separation between the upper and lower parts of the body is a trait often present in physical humor. A common theme in cartoons involves the lower body running away from peril before the upper body gets the message to flee as well. In human form, the disassociation between the upper and lower body of physical comedians indicates an incongruity on a basic level of development, as if regions of the body are being controlled by separate forces. Monty Python's sketch “Ministry of Silly Walks” demonstrates an elaborate disconnection between body parts, with the upper and lower body often moving incongruently against one another.
Shape Flow Support and Shape Qualities
The Laban/Bartenieff category of Shape reveals meaning by focusing on the growing and shrinking of the torso and how the shaping of the body connects to Space. How we move our torsos can send very clear messages to perceivers, or, conversely, incongruent messages. If a person lengthens his torso vertically while rising with his entire form to pick an apple from a tree, the experience of all parts organizing toward place high—and the apple—is both functional and congruent. Incongruence in Shape would have the apple-picking man shorten his torso like a compressed spring while the frame of his body attempts to rise to place high. This incongruence may indicate that the mover does not physically embody efficient movement phrasing, which, to those inclined to schadenfreude, is perhaps a humorous situation. From a less vindictive perspective, incongruity between shape qualities and shape flow support is prevalent in clowning and particularly humorous in dance, where the expectation is for efficient movement patterns.
Phrasing in movement corresponds well to phrasing in written language. A movement phrase, or movement sentence, is complete and congruent when there is preparation, initiation, action, and follow through. A dart player prepares by focusing on the bull's-eye, both visually and kinesthetically. To initiate throwing the dart, she carefully pulls it back toward her shoulder before suddenly and directly sending it toward the target in the main action of the phrase. To complete the phrasing, her hand follows the pathway of the dart, guiding it empathetically to the bull's-eye. In dance, a well-executed grand jeté, or leap, is an example of congruent phrasing.
Physical humor often relies on the interruption of phrasing and the viewer's preconceived expectations being altered unpredictably, as is often utilized in the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes—a pelvic gyration in the midst of a flowing modern phrase or a giant cardboard box flying onstage to hit the dancer at the height of a graceful arabesque. Incongruities in phrasing are closely related to surprise, a key element in humor (Weems 2014, 26). Our sense-making minds are stringing together visual input to create a narrative or expected outcome. When what we believed would take place shifts unpredictably, humor is the result.
Effort
Phrasing can also be interrupted in regard to Effort. Listening to your favorite song and remembering sweet memories of the past may take you into what Laban calls passion drive (free Flow, light Weight, and sustained Time). However, an unexpected knock on the door will take you into an awake state (direct Space and sudden Time). The complete shift on the effort spectrum, from indulging qualities (free, light, sustained in this case) to condensing qualities (direct and sudden) is incongruent, surprising, and can be humorous. Stand-up comedians exhibit wonderful incongruent Effort phrasing in their verbal delivery. Conversely, congruent effort phrasing is created through effort loading. The effort is a natural progression that develops out of and returns to an established effort constellation.
However, in incongruent effort phrasing, like moving from passion drive to awake state, all the Effort qualities change at once. What was sustained becomes sudden; what was missing (Space effort) suddenly appears in direct Space. We can picture the effort phrasing making a complete shift across the effort spectrum in progressions such as walking to slipping or reading a book to being startled. In choreography, being aware of how effort phrasing falls naturally into, or out of, metered music can mean the difference between predicable musicality and delightful surprise.
Space
How the human body is organized in Space is meaningful not only in humor studies but also in everyday interaction with the environment. A congruent interaction with space allows you to get to the bus stop safely and efficiently. “Natural,” unaffected walking takes place in the sagittal plane (forward, with a little bit of up and down). In many clowning examples as well as Charlie Chaplin's walk, space is approached incongruently, by ambulating in the vertical plane (more side to side than forward).
Incongruence in Space is also revealed by countertension, which is what the body uses to balance when one slips or falls. From walking along in two spatial pulls of the sagittal plane, slipping requires the body to balance by moving into the third, previously absent spatial pull, the horizontal dimension (or some deflection of it). The need to move into a countertension is in opposition to the previous action or movement goal. Our expectations for regular locomotion are broken on many levels. While dance lives in the world of countertension, everyday actions meet extreme countertension when something unpredictable has happened—something incongruent.
As a choreographer and dance educator, my aim is not necessarily to create humorous dances. However, humor is an inroad to interpersonal connection, and my aim is to create dances with which a wide range of audiences can connect. Humor, like dance, has the capacity to be nonverbal and to reach beyond boundaries of culture, society, ability, and age (Weems 2014, 154). Infants laugh before they possess language—often they are laughing at motion. Humor is a primal human experience that we understand innately and kinesthetically.
The study of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective offers various benefits to the arts and education. Humor in the classroom serves memory retention, allowing students to create knowledge through their individual, humorous connection to learning. Understanding the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff analysis of incongruent movement patterns allows choreographers to develop innovation in their movement, audiences to access dance on a subconscious level, and everyday people to connect with each other through the kinesthetic language of humor.
Using Touch to Facilitate Body Connectivity
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch is a vulnerable and powerful experience. In the Laban/Bartenieff work, touch is not a given or an expectation. It is important to learn that you can say yes and no to touch from another person. Saying no to touch can be an empowering reminder of your ownership of and agency over your body. When working with others, ask permission to touch that includes where on their body the touch will be and what kinds of touch you will deliver. If someone decides not to be touched they can use their own hands, or you can assist them in finding other ways to experience the purpose of the touch.
The following are basic ideas for incorporating touch that are easy to learn and particularly useful for enhancing body connectivity. The types of touch discussed below are part of a larger body of work developed by Peggy Hackney and Janice Meaden with Ed Groff and Pam Schick as part of Integrated Movement Studies' “Touch for Repatterning” curriculum. Each brought other training perspectives including Body-Mind Centering, Irene Dowd's kinesthetic anatomy and neuromuscular re-education, and massage therapy to the curriculum. This is part of a much larger body of work, but this will get your started.
Being with Touch
Use this method to become present with the connection between your body and your partner's. Being with touch asks the toucher to be present with and listen to what is underneath their hands. It does not seek to do anything or ask that the person being touched do anything besides be present with what is there. Try this type of touch on the torso. As the toucher, you may want to check in with the person you are touching, asking questions like, “What are you noticing?” Or, “Is this pressure okay? Would you like more or less?” Keep the dialogue going to demonstrate that conversation about what is happening is part of the experience.
Locating Touch
Use locating touch to help your partner get a sense of where different parts of the body are sited and how they relate to other parts. Locating touch can go to one body part or slide along a pathway. It is like using your hands to say, “Focus your attention right here.” Try this type of touch to locate the hip joint or the lesser trochanter or the base of the scapula. After locating an area or part of the body, cue your partner to notice how that area relates to another area.
Sliding Touch
Locating touch can phrase into a sliding touch, where the toucher uses her hand to slide along or trace a line or connection on the body as if to bring awareness to the connection between one area and another.
Sending Touch and Receiving Touch
Use these techniques to find a connection or pathway through the body. Sending touch has directionality that give an energetic quality of sending information through the body's tissues. Receiving touch gathers or receives the sending touch somewhere else in the body. For example, try placing a hand on the sternum, and imagine you can send a message through the sternum. Place another hand on the sacrum, and imagine this hand can receive the message being sent by the top hand. The directionality in this kind of touch is clarified by the receiving touch. In this example, the hand on the sternum is sending a message in a down and back direction. Explore this type of touch with multiple pathways through the body.
Applying L/BMA to Aerial Dancing
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance.
Elizabeth Stitch
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance. Due to safety concerns and initial lack of strength, beginning aerialists often utilize spoke-like directional modes. This allows the aerialist to form a direct link between her body and the environment, or apparatus, which provides safety while she's in the air. When teaching beginning aerial students, I use this functional approach and encourage them to exactly model my steps into each skill.
Over time, I have noticed that it is difficult to break this initial pattern and begin to explore other options for changing the form of the body and connecting with the apparatus. In analyzing my personal aerial performance, I was surprised to observe my own strong preference for the directional mode, particularly the Arc-like form. While this mode can lend a more graceful feeling to a movement, it is essentially similar to the spoke-like mode in terms of the expressive statement it makes in connecting to the apparatus. In this context, both directional modes of shape change are straightforward and utilitarian, which is by no means negative, but they are expressively limited and not what I always want to convey.
One of the things I love most about Laban theory is that it gives me a map into lesser-known places in my movement signature. Following this map into the co-creative realm of carving has offered me not only a different relationship with my apparatus, but also new possibilities for movement invention. It has also guided me as a performer into the vulnerability of sharing my inner life with the audience through specific moments of shape-flow mode of shape change. With this full palette of expressive possibilities, my movement experience feels more satisfying, which keeps me coming back to my apparatus for further exploration in the air!
Perceiving Movement Through Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests.
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests. In any context, the Laban/Bartenieff lens is especially useful for observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning from, and experiencing movement.
Observing Movement
Movement happens quickly and is constantly in flux. As soon one movement ends, another has already begun, making comprehensive and accurate observations of movement difficult. Observing what is happening in movement is a common use of the Laban/Bartenieff framework. Using L/BMA to observe movement allows the observer to be precise and specific about what is happening, it also encourages the observer to recognize how movement calls forth feelings and associations that make it expressive. This is facilitated by the multiple aspects of the L/BMA lens, which enable the observer to comb through movement for its elemental parts and then integrate those parts together towards a larger whole. The ability to be precise in one's observations of movement, despite the movement's complexity, is important to many fields that study and address movement.
Describing Movement
Translating movement into words can feel like juggling two disparate systems of experience. Movement is felt, kinesthetic, and constantly morphing. Language is verbal, intellectual, and relatively durable—words do not change in the same moment they are spoken. Yes, language evolves and words change meaning overtime, but not so fast that we cannot keep up with them. Movement is infinitely faster and more difficult to “pin down”; as soon as you realize what is there, it has passed. Finding words that convey the experienced and changing nature of movement while being precise, accurate, and evocative can be a challenge. In many fields that involve movement, the ability to accurately describe what is happening is essential to conveying how movement is manifesting and how it is important in the context. L/BMA offers a specific lexicon for articulating human movement; explaining these terms makes up the majority of part II of this book. Of course, the L/BMA terminology is probably unfamiliar to those who have not studied this material, so part of using L/BMA is knowing how to translate the specialized language into words that inspire movement, no matter how much or how little L/BMA terminology the other person knows.
Coaching and Teaching Movement
For those who coach and teach movement, the act of facilitating growth and improvement involves many aspects of perceiving movement. The coach or teacher analyzes what is happening in relationship to what is desired, and then communicates that information, confirming what is serving the mover and offering strategies for growth. That information is then integrated into the movement, and then, the cycle begins again, including observing how the new information impacted the movement. This complex process is aided by the clear framework for observation, description, and analysis provided by Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis.
Making Meaning from Movement
The biological body is the basis for movement; it produces and makes movement possible, and is itself formed by movement. Yet, the picture of movement in human life is far more complex than that of a biological body moving from synaptic impulses. From the moment of conception, the body is molded by movement, and movement informs the ongoing and shifting perceptions of the self (Bryan 2018). Throughout the human life, movement is meaningful. Movement arises to meet needs: to get closer to what is desired or to create distance from what is not desired, to express inner thoughts and desires, and to accomplish the tasks that maintain and give meaning to life. Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis allows those who use it to address the meaningful aspects of movement while honoring the context and sequencing of movement.
Making meaning from movement is different from interpreting movement, and there is a time for both. People are always making meaning from movement, usually unconsciously—for example, someone might interpret how her father moves when he is tired or when he is angry. Making meaning emphasizes the influence of the observer in how movement is understood. Interpretation is about seeking to understand someone else's meaning, as if an observer could use movement in order to “read the mover's mind.” In the former, the observer is an active participant in making meaning; in the latter, movement is interpreted without recognizing the influence of the interpreter, potentially leading to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. For example, crossing the arms or nodding the head means different things to different people, in different cultures and contexts, and any interpretation one might place upon either of those actions will necessarily change with each mover and each context. I highlight this distinction to emphasize that L/BMA does not provide a dictionary or one-to-one correlation between a movement and “what it means” in any general sense. Movement always happens in a context, and our analysis of any particular movement must honor the particular mover within the particular context, as well as the complexity of what happened and how it happened in movement.
Experiencing Movement
Movement is a constant. Experiencing movement within the Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis framework can heighten and refine your awareness of a movement as you do it, and can help you recognize your preferences in movement. It can also help you gain new options in your movement. The specificity of the Laban/Bartenieff framework heightens sensation to bring greater clarity in movement so that you can manifest what you intend. When you bring your L/BMA knowledge to your lived experiences, you will notice new things about your movement, gaining a greater sense of presence, a sense of being “in your body.” As you work through the Laban/Bartenieff system you will generate awareness of your personal preferences and patterns for movement. As you learn what you like to do, you can also “style stretch,” that is develop movements that you have been less likely to inhabit, thus expanding your range of physicality. You'll increase your expressive range and functional skills.
All of the above—observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning, and experiencing—are ways of perceiving movement. The Laban/Bartenieff framework is fundamentally about creating conscious and effective inroads to the heightened perception of movement. As you use L/BMA to perceive movement in your life, you may feel as though you are learning a new language, and in some ways you are. Your understanding of movement will shift as you apply the Laban/Bartenieff framework to your life. You may notice that you can see movement with greater distinction and that you have new words and approaches to talking about it. You may also notice that you are better able to organize and frame your pursuits around movement, and that you have new options for being creative with your movement goals. Finally, you may notice that as a mover you are more prepared to increase the range of movements you execute and enjoy.
Total Body Connectivity—Breath Patterning
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop.
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop. It is fundamental to life and among our first experiences upon entering the world. Before an infant's first breaths, the fetus practices the movements of breathing in utero, as the mother breathes for the fetus by sending oxygen through the umbilical cord.
Figure 3.1 Breath symbol.
For an infant, breath affords sensation of the inside of the body, including the body's inner volume. Through breathing you feel the internal body growing and shrinking through the swelling of the inhalation and the contracting of the exhalation. The gentle expansion and contraction of the breath's rhythm provides the basic material of human life, oxygen, and the important release of carbon dioxide.
Breath patterning assists the coordination of the internal body that is vital in human movement. Functionally, every inhalation and exhalation is a complex event. Upon inhaling, the five lobes of the lungs expand to engulf the heart and welcome oxygen. The diaphragm is pulled downward toward the pelvis by the central tendon, filling up like an inverted hot-air balloon (see figure 3.2). Oxygen is taken into the body via the lungs, where it is transferred through small air sacs called alveoli into the blood, which is pumped throughout the body by the heart—a process that allows every cell in the body to respire. Carbon dioxide is released via exhalation, eliminating waste products. As you exhale, the central tendon releases, the diaphragm contracts upward, and the pelvic floor moves up, back, and in. Deliberately bringing your awareness to your breath as support for your movement is a precursor to whole-body coordination and virtuosity in movement. This is true for movers of all levels as breath allows the entire body to be supported from within in complex coordination.
Figure 3.2 Lungs, diaphragm, and central tendon, at the height of exhalation and inhalation
Illustrated by Sydney P. Celio.
As long as there is life, breath is present; it is the baseline of life force, the river on which all movement and expression runs. As an adult, revisiting the breath pattern is a useful way of connecting with sensation. Tuning into sensation within the body offers a way of becoming present within yourself and identifying what is needed in the moment. As a way of checking in with yourself, you can revisit the breath pattern when you are overstimulated, exhausted, or stressed; observing your breath can sooth what feels overwhelming. You may notice your breath changing with your emotional states. Agitation may shorten or truncate the breath, and rest may deepen it. You can alter and shift “emotional tone” by inviting the breath. The breath pattern is a reminder that you have the choice to affect your feelings and thereby your responses. Paying attention to the sensation of breath with its wave-like, rolling inhalations and exhalations can release muscle tension associated with stress.
Notice how the breath pulses inside of your body. Sensing the breath may bring you home to yourself. Many spiritual and centering practices, like meditation and stress reduction, use a focus on the breath as a key principle because it brings centeredness. It is a way of returning to a fundamental aspect of being alive. When stressed or feeling distanced from yourself, connecting to the breath can help you reconnect to yourself and feel calmer and more present.
Breath also provides access to the sense of yielding, bonding, and being with that will be discussed in depth later in this chapter. Imagine that as you attend to your breath you can soften the surfaces of your body and bond with the surfaces of support around you.
Breath brings with it a sense of the connection between one's inner and outer worlds, an experience that can be life-giving and profoundly essential. The exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide changes the torso as it expands and contracts. Allow this internal to growing and shrinking to support and fill your movement. Breath support is a concept used by Irmgard Bartenieff to illustrate the breath's ability to support and enliven full-bodied movement.
Visiting the breath pattern can provide another way of getting ready for activity. Breath supports movement. To accompany and support movement, the breath can be activated and vigorous, or soft, sustained, and elongated. Beginning an activity by getting the breath going is like preparing the insides of the body for what will later become activated outwardly. By using breath as part of a warm-up, you activate sensations of the internal three-dimensional support for movement, and you recruit the tissues of the body to be responsive and pliable.
For many adults who lead sedentary lives, the torso can feel tense and stuck, while their attention is directed outward. Attending to the flow of breath by directing attention inward can help them find movement and ease in the torso. When tension headaches or fatigue arises due to limited and contained movement, a person can deliberately deepen the flow of breath to nourish tissue and find new movement potential throughout the torso. To help you visualize the flow of breath, imagine a surfer riding a wave into shore. Like the wave that catches the surfboard, “catch” your exhalation and “ride” its undulating pattern through your body, noticing how and where it moves. You can also explore the feeling of being filled and expanded by the inhalation.
Bringing breath patterning into the forefront of your movement gives you the opportunity to let breath guide and initiate and influence the movement. In this way, the breath stimulates support of the core, the supple undulations of the spine, and massages the connection between upper and lower body. Fully receiving the exhalation allows for the area around the belly button to gather and hollow inward toward the organs, providing the first inklings of what will come next in movement.
As an expression of inner life, breath patterning has an audible nature, revealed in sounding and speaking. Every verbal or sounded expression rides on the breath; we can either use it fully or diminish and stunt it. An example of breath support in sound is the grandeur of passionate song or chanted liturgy; an example in which breath struggles to support us is hyperventilation. As the expression of inner life, another person's use of breath allows us to perceive the states of his or her thoughts and feelings. Listening to someone talk and sensing the congruence between breath, voice, and body gives the sense that they are coming from a grounded, centered, and committed place. We sense them as believable.
Finally, breath patterning supports big, exuberant, and virtuosic movement. It increases the strength of a boxer's punch or the quick burst of a swimmer's takeoff. The horseback rider uses her breathing to control and communicate to the horse, and the dancer exhales as he prepares to turn.
Explore the Breath Pattern
Check in with your breath. No need to boss it around. Bring your attention to what is currently happening with your breath, and allow it to change as it will. Notice the movement your breath is inspiring in your body. Can you send breath to areas that feel tight or bound up to change the tension of your tissues? Follow and ride the breath pathway like you might follow and ride a wave. Notice where in your body the organs and tissue grow with your breath, and where your internal world is softening or shrinking. Take some time here, and notice how you feel and what this experience has brought. Try singing or sounding the song of your breath. Have your feelings shifted? Where might actively focusing on your breath patterning be useful for you? How might your awareness serve you in your daily life?
Key Points for the Breath Pattern
- Connecting to breath is a way of connecting to and centering the self.
- Breath brings oxygen to the blood and tissues, and releases carbon dioxide waste.
- Breath is the infant's first experience of the inner volume of the body.
- The end of the exhalation, when the breath empties and the diaphragm floats upward, sets up the core-softening necessary for the next pattern.
- Breath support enlivens movement throughout the whole body and promotes complexity and virtuosity in movement.
L/BMA and Physical Humor
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor.
Contributed by Sarah Donohue, CLMA, MFA. Used with permission.
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor. An unexpected peek-a-boo delights a baby into laughter, the universal indicator of humor. A story is told in which the associated mental images are contradicted by an unforeseen twist at the end. With a shift in perspective, we experience humor on many perceptual levels.
This application explores the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective and suggests that incongruities in movement not only contribute to humor, but are subconsciously accessed on a kinesthetic level. While acknowledging that humor is situational and relational, my research isolates the movement of the body during a humorous event and reveals that incongruent movement patterns can explain physical humor.
Since determining what is humorous is in the funny bone of the beholder, I have selected a group of individuals whose movements are generally deemed humorous: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Rowan Atkinson, and others. I am not asking if their movement is humorous. Rather, I am assuming that it is and asking if they exhibit common movement patterns. Using the Laban/Bartenieff system, I have also analyzed the movement of humorous dance, such as the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes. Additionally, this inquiry prompts a search for humorous quotidian movement, such as someone walking into a spider web, which is difficult to spontaneously encounter and simultaneously analyze. Although the elements of humor-producing movement vary, I identify patterns of incongruity within the Laban/Bartenieff categories of Body, Effort, Shape, and Space.
Body
Which parts of the body are moved or held and how they are moved or held is culturally and socially significant. In the prototypical clown, we see the legs in external rotation, knees bent and adaptable, and a narrow torso being held in line with the head. There is often superfluous action of the lower legs and feet, and walking is initiated by spoking with the knees. Picture the gait of Charlie Chaplin. This bodily posture appears paradoxically inviting (with legs turned out) and protective (with spine and torso held). The contradictory posture contributes to a pattern of incongruence.
Body-Half and Upper-Lower Patterns of Total Body Connectivity
In the movement of physical comedians and clowns, there is a tendency for locomotion to take place in a body-half pattern instead of in the natural cross-lateral gait, perhaps an intentional indication of being less physically developed. We find familiarity, and often humor, in the body-half waddling of a penguin or toddler. Perceiving someone walk in a body-half pattern is incongruent with the naturally developed human gait of cross-laterality. Additionally, an apparent separation between the upper and lower parts of the body is a trait often present in physical humor. A common theme in cartoons involves the lower body running away from peril before the upper body gets the message to flee as well. In human form, the disassociation between the upper and lower body of physical comedians indicates an incongruity on a basic level of development, as if regions of the body are being controlled by separate forces. Monty Python's sketch “Ministry of Silly Walks” demonstrates an elaborate disconnection between body parts, with the upper and lower body often moving incongruently against one another.
Shape Flow Support and Shape Qualities
The Laban/Bartenieff category of Shape reveals meaning by focusing on the growing and shrinking of the torso and how the shaping of the body connects to Space. How we move our torsos can send very clear messages to perceivers, or, conversely, incongruent messages. If a person lengthens his torso vertically while rising with his entire form to pick an apple from a tree, the experience of all parts organizing toward place high—and the apple—is both functional and congruent. Incongruence in Shape would have the apple-picking man shorten his torso like a compressed spring while the frame of his body attempts to rise to place high. This incongruence may indicate that the mover does not physically embody efficient movement phrasing, which, to those inclined to schadenfreude, is perhaps a humorous situation. From a less vindictive perspective, incongruity between shape qualities and shape flow support is prevalent in clowning and particularly humorous in dance, where the expectation is for efficient movement patterns.
Phrasing in movement corresponds well to phrasing in written language. A movement phrase, or movement sentence, is complete and congruent when there is preparation, initiation, action, and follow through. A dart player prepares by focusing on the bull's-eye, both visually and kinesthetically. To initiate throwing the dart, she carefully pulls it back toward her shoulder before suddenly and directly sending it toward the target in the main action of the phrase. To complete the phrasing, her hand follows the pathway of the dart, guiding it empathetically to the bull's-eye. In dance, a well-executed grand jeté, or leap, is an example of congruent phrasing.
Physical humor often relies on the interruption of phrasing and the viewer's preconceived expectations being altered unpredictably, as is often utilized in the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes—a pelvic gyration in the midst of a flowing modern phrase or a giant cardboard box flying onstage to hit the dancer at the height of a graceful arabesque. Incongruities in phrasing are closely related to surprise, a key element in humor (Weems 2014, 26). Our sense-making minds are stringing together visual input to create a narrative or expected outcome. When what we believed would take place shifts unpredictably, humor is the result.
Effort
Phrasing can also be interrupted in regard to Effort. Listening to your favorite song and remembering sweet memories of the past may take you into what Laban calls passion drive (free Flow, light Weight, and sustained Time). However, an unexpected knock on the door will take you into an awake state (direct Space and sudden Time). The complete shift on the effort spectrum, from indulging qualities (free, light, sustained in this case) to condensing qualities (direct and sudden) is incongruent, surprising, and can be humorous. Stand-up comedians exhibit wonderful incongruent Effort phrasing in their verbal delivery. Conversely, congruent effort phrasing is created through effort loading. The effort is a natural progression that develops out of and returns to an established effort constellation.
However, in incongruent effort phrasing, like moving from passion drive to awake state, all the Effort qualities change at once. What was sustained becomes sudden; what was missing (Space effort) suddenly appears in direct Space. We can picture the effort phrasing making a complete shift across the effort spectrum in progressions such as walking to slipping or reading a book to being startled. In choreography, being aware of how effort phrasing falls naturally into, or out of, metered music can mean the difference between predicable musicality and delightful surprise.
Space
How the human body is organized in Space is meaningful not only in humor studies but also in everyday interaction with the environment. A congruent interaction with space allows you to get to the bus stop safely and efficiently. “Natural,” unaffected walking takes place in the sagittal plane (forward, with a little bit of up and down). In many clowning examples as well as Charlie Chaplin's walk, space is approached incongruently, by ambulating in the vertical plane (more side to side than forward).
Incongruence in Space is also revealed by countertension, which is what the body uses to balance when one slips or falls. From walking along in two spatial pulls of the sagittal plane, slipping requires the body to balance by moving into the third, previously absent spatial pull, the horizontal dimension (or some deflection of it). The need to move into a countertension is in opposition to the previous action or movement goal. Our expectations for regular locomotion are broken on many levels. While dance lives in the world of countertension, everyday actions meet extreme countertension when something unpredictable has happened—something incongruent.
As a choreographer and dance educator, my aim is not necessarily to create humorous dances. However, humor is an inroad to interpersonal connection, and my aim is to create dances with which a wide range of audiences can connect. Humor, like dance, has the capacity to be nonverbal and to reach beyond boundaries of culture, society, ability, and age (Weems 2014, 154). Infants laugh before they possess language—often they are laughing at motion. Humor is a primal human experience that we understand innately and kinesthetically.
The study of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective offers various benefits to the arts and education. Humor in the classroom serves memory retention, allowing students to create knowledge through their individual, humorous connection to learning. Understanding the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff analysis of incongruent movement patterns allows choreographers to develop innovation in their movement, audiences to access dance on a subconscious level, and everyday people to connect with each other through the kinesthetic language of humor.
Using Touch to Facilitate Body Connectivity
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch is a vulnerable and powerful experience. In the Laban/Bartenieff work, touch is not a given or an expectation. It is important to learn that you can say yes and no to touch from another person. Saying no to touch can be an empowering reminder of your ownership of and agency over your body. When working with others, ask permission to touch that includes where on their body the touch will be and what kinds of touch you will deliver. If someone decides not to be touched they can use their own hands, or you can assist them in finding other ways to experience the purpose of the touch.
The following are basic ideas for incorporating touch that are easy to learn and particularly useful for enhancing body connectivity. The types of touch discussed below are part of a larger body of work developed by Peggy Hackney and Janice Meaden with Ed Groff and Pam Schick as part of Integrated Movement Studies' “Touch for Repatterning” curriculum. Each brought other training perspectives including Body-Mind Centering, Irene Dowd's kinesthetic anatomy and neuromuscular re-education, and massage therapy to the curriculum. This is part of a much larger body of work, but this will get your started.
Being with Touch
Use this method to become present with the connection between your body and your partner's. Being with touch asks the toucher to be present with and listen to what is underneath their hands. It does not seek to do anything or ask that the person being touched do anything besides be present with what is there. Try this type of touch on the torso. As the toucher, you may want to check in with the person you are touching, asking questions like, “What are you noticing?” Or, “Is this pressure okay? Would you like more or less?” Keep the dialogue going to demonstrate that conversation about what is happening is part of the experience.
Locating Touch
Use locating touch to help your partner get a sense of where different parts of the body are sited and how they relate to other parts. Locating touch can go to one body part or slide along a pathway. It is like using your hands to say, “Focus your attention right here.” Try this type of touch to locate the hip joint or the lesser trochanter or the base of the scapula. After locating an area or part of the body, cue your partner to notice how that area relates to another area.
Sliding Touch
Locating touch can phrase into a sliding touch, where the toucher uses her hand to slide along or trace a line or connection on the body as if to bring awareness to the connection between one area and another.
Sending Touch and Receiving Touch
Use these techniques to find a connection or pathway through the body. Sending touch has directionality that give an energetic quality of sending information through the body's tissues. Receiving touch gathers or receives the sending touch somewhere else in the body. For example, try placing a hand on the sternum, and imagine you can send a message through the sternum. Place another hand on the sacrum, and imagine this hand can receive the message being sent by the top hand. The directionality in this kind of touch is clarified by the receiving touch. In this example, the hand on the sternum is sending a message in a down and back direction. Explore this type of touch with multiple pathways through the body.
Applying L/BMA to Aerial Dancing
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance.
Elizabeth Stitch
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance. Due to safety concerns and initial lack of strength, beginning aerialists often utilize spoke-like directional modes. This allows the aerialist to form a direct link between her body and the environment, or apparatus, which provides safety while she's in the air. When teaching beginning aerial students, I use this functional approach and encourage them to exactly model my steps into each skill.
Over time, I have noticed that it is difficult to break this initial pattern and begin to explore other options for changing the form of the body and connecting with the apparatus. In analyzing my personal aerial performance, I was surprised to observe my own strong preference for the directional mode, particularly the Arc-like form. While this mode can lend a more graceful feeling to a movement, it is essentially similar to the spoke-like mode in terms of the expressive statement it makes in connecting to the apparatus. In this context, both directional modes of shape change are straightforward and utilitarian, which is by no means negative, but they are expressively limited and not what I always want to convey.
One of the things I love most about Laban theory is that it gives me a map into lesser-known places in my movement signature. Following this map into the co-creative realm of carving has offered me not only a different relationship with my apparatus, but also new possibilities for movement invention. It has also guided me as a performer into the vulnerability of sharing my inner life with the audience through specific moments of shape-flow mode of shape change. With this full palette of expressive possibilities, my movement experience feels more satisfying, which keeps me coming back to my apparatus for further exploration in the air!
Perceiving Movement Through Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests.
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests. In any context, the Laban/Bartenieff lens is especially useful for observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning from, and experiencing movement.
Observing Movement
Movement happens quickly and is constantly in flux. As soon one movement ends, another has already begun, making comprehensive and accurate observations of movement difficult. Observing what is happening in movement is a common use of the Laban/Bartenieff framework. Using L/BMA to observe movement allows the observer to be precise and specific about what is happening, it also encourages the observer to recognize how movement calls forth feelings and associations that make it expressive. This is facilitated by the multiple aspects of the L/BMA lens, which enable the observer to comb through movement for its elemental parts and then integrate those parts together towards a larger whole. The ability to be precise in one's observations of movement, despite the movement's complexity, is important to many fields that study and address movement.
Describing Movement
Translating movement into words can feel like juggling two disparate systems of experience. Movement is felt, kinesthetic, and constantly morphing. Language is verbal, intellectual, and relatively durable—words do not change in the same moment they are spoken. Yes, language evolves and words change meaning overtime, but not so fast that we cannot keep up with them. Movement is infinitely faster and more difficult to “pin down”; as soon as you realize what is there, it has passed. Finding words that convey the experienced and changing nature of movement while being precise, accurate, and evocative can be a challenge. In many fields that involve movement, the ability to accurately describe what is happening is essential to conveying how movement is manifesting and how it is important in the context. L/BMA offers a specific lexicon for articulating human movement; explaining these terms makes up the majority of part II of this book. Of course, the L/BMA terminology is probably unfamiliar to those who have not studied this material, so part of using L/BMA is knowing how to translate the specialized language into words that inspire movement, no matter how much or how little L/BMA terminology the other person knows.
Coaching and Teaching Movement
For those who coach and teach movement, the act of facilitating growth and improvement involves many aspects of perceiving movement. The coach or teacher analyzes what is happening in relationship to what is desired, and then communicates that information, confirming what is serving the mover and offering strategies for growth. That information is then integrated into the movement, and then, the cycle begins again, including observing how the new information impacted the movement. This complex process is aided by the clear framework for observation, description, and analysis provided by Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis.
Making Meaning from Movement
The biological body is the basis for movement; it produces and makes movement possible, and is itself formed by movement. Yet, the picture of movement in human life is far more complex than that of a biological body moving from synaptic impulses. From the moment of conception, the body is molded by movement, and movement informs the ongoing and shifting perceptions of the self (Bryan 2018). Throughout the human life, movement is meaningful. Movement arises to meet needs: to get closer to what is desired or to create distance from what is not desired, to express inner thoughts and desires, and to accomplish the tasks that maintain and give meaning to life. Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis allows those who use it to address the meaningful aspects of movement while honoring the context and sequencing of movement.
Making meaning from movement is different from interpreting movement, and there is a time for both. People are always making meaning from movement, usually unconsciously—for example, someone might interpret how her father moves when he is tired or when he is angry. Making meaning emphasizes the influence of the observer in how movement is understood. Interpretation is about seeking to understand someone else's meaning, as if an observer could use movement in order to “read the mover's mind.” In the former, the observer is an active participant in making meaning; in the latter, movement is interpreted without recognizing the influence of the interpreter, potentially leading to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. For example, crossing the arms or nodding the head means different things to different people, in different cultures and contexts, and any interpretation one might place upon either of those actions will necessarily change with each mover and each context. I highlight this distinction to emphasize that L/BMA does not provide a dictionary or one-to-one correlation between a movement and “what it means” in any general sense. Movement always happens in a context, and our analysis of any particular movement must honor the particular mover within the particular context, as well as the complexity of what happened and how it happened in movement.
Experiencing Movement
Movement is a constant. Experiencing movement within the Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis framework can heighten and refine your awareness of a movement as you do it, and can help you recognize your preferences in movement. It can also help you gain new options in your movement. The specificity of the Laban/Bartenieff framework heightens sensation to bring greater clarity in movement so that you can manifest what you intend. When you bring your L/BMA knowledge to your lived experiences, you will notice new things about your movement, gaining a greater sense of presence, a sense of being “in your body.” As you work through the Laban/Bartenieff system you will generate awareness of your personal preferences and patterns for movement. As you learn what you like to do, you can also “style stretch,” that is develop movements that you have been less likely to inhabit, thus expanding your range of physicality. You'll increase your expressive range and functional skills.
All of the above—observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning, and experiencing—are ways of perceiving movement. The Laban/Bartenieff framework is fundamentally about creating conscious and effective inroads to the heightened perception of movement. As you use L/BMA to perceive movement in your life, you may feel as though you are learning a new language, and in some ways you are. Your understanding of movement will shift as you apply the Laban/Bartenieff framework to your life. You may notice that you can see movement with greater distinction and that you have new words and approaches to talking about it. You may also notice that you are better able to organize and frame your pursuits around movement, and that you have new options for being creative with your movement goals. Finally, you may notice that as a mover you are more prepared to increase the range of movements you execute and enjoy.
Total Body Connectivity—Breath Patterning
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop.
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop. It is fundamental to life and among our first experiences upon entering the world. Before an infant's first breaths, the fetus practices the movements of breathing in utero, as the mother breathes for the fetus by sending oxygen through the umbilical cord.
Figure 3.1 Breath symbol.
For an infant, breath affords sensation of the inside of the body, including the body's inner volume. Through breathing you feel the internal body growing and shrinking through the swelling of the inhalation and the contracting of the exhalation. The gentle expansion and contraction of the breath's rhythm provides the basic material of human life, oxygen, and the important release of carbon dioxide.
Breath patterning assists the coordination of the internal body that is vital in human movement. Functionally, every inhalation and exhalation is a complex event. Upon inhaling, the five lobes of the lungs expand to engulf the heart and welcome oxygen. The diaphragm is pulled downward toward the pelvis by the central tendon, filling up like an inverted hot-air balloon (see figure 3.2). Oxygen is taken into the body via the lungs, where it is transferred through small air sacs called alveoli into the blood, which is pumped throughout the body by the heart—a process that allows every cell in the body to respire. Carbon dioxide is released via exhalation, eliminating waste products. As you exhale, the central tendon releases, the diaphragm contracts upward, and the pelvic floor moves up, back, and in. Deliberately bringing your awareness to your breath as support for your movement is a precursor to whole-body coordination and virtuosity in movement. This is true for movers of all levels as breath allows the entire body to be supported from within in complex coordination.
Figure 3.2 Lungs, diaphragm, and central tendon, at the height of exhalation and inhalation
Illustrated by Sydney P. Celio.
As long as there is life, breath is present; it is the baseline of life force, the river on which all movement and expression runs. As an adult, revisiting the breath pattern is a useful way of connecting with sensation. Tuning into sensation within the body offers a way of becoming present within yourself and identifying what is needed in the moment. As a way of checking in with yourself, you can revisit the breath pattern when you are overstimulated, exhausted, or stressed; observing your breath can sooth what feels overwhelming. You may notice your breath changing with your emotional states. Agitation may shorten or truncate the breath, and rest may deepen it. You can alter and shift “emotional tone” by inviting the breath. The breath pattern is a reminder that you have the choice to affect your feelings and thereby your responses. Paying attention to the sensation of breath with its wave-like, rolling inhalations and exhalations can release muscle tension associated with stress.
Notice how the breath pulses inside of your body. Sensing the breath may bring you home to yourself. Many spiritual and centering practices, like meditation and stress reduction, use a focus on the breath as a key principle because it brings centeredness. It is a way of returning to a fundamental aspect of being alive. When stressed or feeling distanced from yourself, connecting to the breath can help you reconnect to yourself and feel calmer and more present.
Breath also provides access to the sense of yielding, bonding, and being with that will be discussed in depth later in this chapter. Imagine that as you attend to your breath you can soften the surfaces of your body and bond with the surfaces of support around you.
Breath brings with it a sense of the connection between one's inner and outer worlds, an experience that can be life-giving and profoundly essential. The exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide changes the torso as it expands and contracts. Allow this internal to growing and shrinking to support and fill your movement. Breath support is a concept used by Irmgard Bartenieff to illustrate the breath's ability to support and enliven full-bodied movement.
Visiting the breath pattern can provide another way of getting ready for activity. Breath supports movement. To accompany and support movement, the breath can be activated and vigorous, or soft, sustained, and elongated. Beginning an activity by getting the breath going is like preparing the insides of the body for what will later become activated outwardly. By using breath as part of a warm-up, you activate sensations of the internal three-dimensional support for movement, and you recruit the tissues of the body to be responsive and pliable.
For many adults who lead sedentary lives, the torso can feel tense and stuck, while their attention is directed outward. Attending to the flow of breath by directing attention inward can help them find movement and ease in the torso. When tension headaches or fatigue arises due to limited and contained movement, a person can deliberately deepen the flow of breath to nourish tissue and find new movement potential throughout the torso. To help you visualize the flow of breath, imagine a surfer riding a wave into shore. Like the wave that catches the surfboard, “catch” your exhalation and “ride” its undulating pattern through your body, noticing how and where it moves. You can also explore the feeling of being filled and expanded by the inhalation.
Bringing breath patterning into the forefront of your movement gives you the opportunity to let breath guide and initiate and influence the movement. In this way, the breath stimulates support of the core, the supple undulations of the spine, and massages the connection between upper and lower body. Fully receiving the exhalation allows for the area around the belly button to gather and hollow inward toward the organs, providing the first inklings of what will come next in movement.
As an expression of inner life, breath patterning has an audible nature, revealed in sounding and speaking. Every verbal or sounded expression rides on the breath; we can either use it fully or diminish and stunt it. An example of breath support in sound is the grandeur of passionate song or chanted liturgy; an example in which breath struggles to support us is hyperventilation. As the expression of inner life, another person's use of breath allows us to perceive the states of his or her thoughts and feelings. Listening to someone talk and sensing the congruence between breath, voice, and body gives the sense that they are coming from a grounded, centered, and committed place. We sense them as believable.
Finally, breath patterning supports big, exuberant, and virtuosic movement. It increases the strength of a boxer's punch or the quick burst of a swimmer's takeoff. The horseback rider uses her breathing to control and communicate to the horse, and the dancer exhales as he prepares to turn.
Explore the Breath Pattern
Check in with your breath. No need to boss it around. Bring your attention to what is currently happening with your breath, and allow it to change as it will. Notice the movement your breath is inspiring in your body. Can you send breath to areas that feel tight or bound up to change the tension of your tissues? Follow and ride the breath pathway like you might follow and ride a wave. Notice where in your body the organs and tissue grow with your breath, and where your internal world is softening or shrinking. Take some time here, and notice how you feel and what this experience has brought. Try singing or sounding the song of your breath. Have your feelings shifted? Where might actively focusing on your breath patterning be useful for you? How might your awareness serve you in your daily life?
Key Points for the Breath Pattern
- Connecting to breath is a way of connecting to and centering the self.
- Breath brings oxygen to the blood and tissues, and releases carbon dioxide waste.
- Breath is the infant's first experience of the inner volume of the body.
- The end of the exhalation, when the breath empties and the diaphragm floats upward, sets up the core-softening necessary for the next pattern.
- Breath support enlivens movement throughout the whole body and promotes complexity and virtuosity in movement.
L/BMA and Physical Humor
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor.
Contributed by Sarah Donohue, CLMA, MFA. Used with permission.
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor. An unexpected peek-a-boo delights a baby into laughter, the universal indicator of humor. A story is told in which the associated mental images are contradicted by an unforeseen twist at the end. With a shift in perspective, we experience humor on many perceptual levels.
This application explores the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective and suggests that incongruities in movement not only contribute to humor, but are subconsciously accessed on a kinesthetic level. While acknowledging that humor is situational and relational, my research isolates the movement of the body during a humorous event and reveals that incongruent movement patterns can explain physical humor.
Since determining what is humorous is in the funny bone of the beholder, I have selected a group of individuals whose movements are generally deemed humorous: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Rowan Atkinson, and others. I am not asking if their movement is humorous. Rather, I am assuming that it is and asking if they exhibit common movement patterns. Using the Laban/Bartenieff system, I have also analyzed the movement of humorous dance, such as the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes. Additionally, this inquiry prompts a search for humorous quotidian movement, such as someone walking into a spider web, which is difficult to spontaneously encounter and simultaneously analyze. Although the elements of humor-producing movement vary, I identify patterns of incongruity within the Laban/Bartenieff categories of Body, Effort, Shape, and Space.
Body
Which parts of the body are moved or held and how they are moved or held is culturally and socially significant. In the prototypical clown, we see the legs in external rotation, knees bent and adaptable, and a narrow torso being held in line with the head. There is often superfluous action of the lower legs and feet, and walking is initiated by spoking with the knees. Picture the gait of Charlie Chaplin. This bodily posture appears paradoxically inviting (with legs turned out) and protective (with spine and torso held). The contradictory posture contributes to a pattern of incongruence.
Body-Half and Upper-Lower Patterns of Total Body Connectivity
In the movement of physical comedians and clowns, there is a tendency for locomotion to take place in a body-half pattern instead of in the natural cross-lateral gait, perhaps an intentional indication of being less physically developed. We find familiarity, and often humor, in the body-half waddling of a penguin or toddler. Perceiving someone walk in a body-half pattern is incongruent with the naturally developed human gait of cross-laterality. Additionally, an apparent separation between the upper and lower parts of the body is a trait often present in physical humor. A common theme in cartoons involves the lower body running away from peril before the upper body gets the message to flee as well. In human form, the disassociation between the upper and lower body of physical comedians indicates an incongruity on a basic level of development, as if regions of the body are being controlled by separate forces. Monty Python's sketch “Ministry of Silly Walks” demonstrates an elaborate disconnection between body parts, with the upper and lower body often moving incongruently against one another.
Shape Flow Support and Shape Qualities
The Laban/Bartenieff category of Shape reveals meaning by focusing on the growing and shrinking of the torso and how the shaping of the body connects to Space. How we move our torsos can send very clear messages to perceivers, or, conversely, incongruent messages. If a person lengthens his torso vertically while rising with his entire form to pick an apple from a tree, the experience of all parts organizing toward place high—and the apple—is both functional and congruent. Incongruence in Shape would have the apple-picking man shorten his torso like a compressed spring while the frame of his body attempts to rise to place high. This incongruence may indicate that the mover does not physically embody efficient movement phrasing, which, to those inclined to schadenfreude, is perhaps a humorous situation. From a less vindictive perspective, incongruity between shape qualities and shape flow support is prevalent in clowning and particularly humorous in dance, where the expectation is for efficient movement patterns.
Phrasing in movement corresponds well to phrasing in written language. A movement phrase, or movement sentence, is complete and congruent when there is preparation, initiation, action, and follow through. A dart player prepares by focusing on the bull's-eye, both visually and kinesthetically. To initiate throwing the dart, she carefully pulls it back toward her shoulder before suddenly and directly sending it toward the target in the main action of the phrase. To complete the phrasing, her hand follows the pathway of the dart, guiding it empathetically to the bull's-eye. In dance, a well-executed grand jeté, or leap, is an example of congruent phrasing.
Physical humor often relies on the interruption of phrasing and the viewer's preconceived expectations being altered unpredictably, as is often utilized in the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes—a pelvic gyration in the midst of a flowing modern phrase or a giant cardboard box flying onstage to hit the dancer at the height of a graceful arabesque. Incongruities in phrasing are closely related to surprise, a key element in humor (Weems 2014, 26). Our sense-making minds are stringing together visual input to create a narrative or expected outcome. When what we believed would take place shifts unpredictably, humor is the result.
Effort
Phrasing can also be interrupted in regard to Effort. Listening to your favorite song and remembering sweet memories of the past may take you into what Laban calls passion drive (free Flow, light Weight, and sustained Time). However, an unexpected knock on the door will take you into an awake state (direct Space and sudden Time). The complete shift on the effort spectrum, from indulging qualities (free, light, sustained in this case) to condensing qualities (direct and sudden) is incongruent, surprising, and can be humorous. Stand-up comedians exhibit wonderful incongruent Effort phrasing in their verbal delivery. Conversely, congruent effort phrasing is created through effort loading. The effort is a natural progression that develops out of and returns to an established effort constellation.
However, in incongruent effort phrasing, like moving from passion drive to awake state, all the Effort qualities change at once. What was sustained becomes sudden; what was missing (Space effort) suddenly appears in direct Space. We can picture the effort phrasing making a complete shift across the effort spectrum in progressions such as walking to slipping or reading a book to being startled. In choreography, being aware of how effort phrasing falls naturally into, or out of, metered music can mean the difference between predicable musicality and delightful surprise.
Space
How the human body is organized in Space is meaningful not only in humor studies but also in everyday interaction with the environment. A congruent interaction with space allows you to get to the bus stop safely and efficiently. “Natural,” unaffected walking takes place in the sagittal plane (forward, with a little bit of up and down). In many clowning examples as well as Charlie Chaplin's walk, space is approached incongruently, by ambulating in the vertical plane (more side to side than forward).
Incongruence in Space is also revealed by countertension, which is what the body uses to balance when one slips or falls. From walking along in two spatial pulls of the sagittal plane, slipping requires the body to balance by moving into the third, previously absent spatial pull, the horizontal dimension (or some deflection of it). The need to move into a countertension is in opposition to the previous action or movement goal. Our expectations for regular locomotion are broken on many levels. While dance lives in the world of countertension, everyday actions meet extreme countertension when something unpredictable has happened—something incongruent.
As a choreographer and dance educator, my aim is not necessarily to create humorous dances. However, humor is an inroad to interpersonal connection, and my aim is to create dances with which a wide range of audiences can connect. Humor, like dance, has the capacity to be nonverbal and to reach beyond boundaries of culture, society, ability, and age (Weems 2014, 154). Infants laugh before they possess language—often they are laughing at motion. Humor is a primal human experience that we understand innately and kinesthetically.
The study of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective offers various benefits to the arts and education. Humor in the classroom serves memory retention, allowing students to create knowledge through their individual, humorous connection to learning. Understanding the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff analysis of incongruent movement patterns allows choreographers to develop innovation in their movement, audiences to access dance on a subconscious level, and everyday people to connect with each other through the kinesthetic language of humor.
Using Touch to Facilitate Body Connectivity
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch is a vulnerable and powerful experience. In the Laban/Bartenieff work, touch is not a given or an expectation. It is important to learn that you can say yes and no to touch from another person. Saying no to touch can be an empowering reminder of your ownership of and agency over your body. When working with others, ask permission to touch that includes where on their body the touch will be and what kinds of touch you will deliver. If someone decides not to be touched they can use their own hands, or you can assist them in finding other ways to experience the purpose of the touch.
The following are basic ideas for incorporating touch that are easy to learn and particularly useful for enhancing body connectivity. The types of touch discussed below are part of a larger body of work developed by Peggy Hackney and Janice Meaden with Ed Groff and Pam Schick as part of Integrated Movement Studies' “Touch for Repatterning” curriculum. Each brought other training perspectives including Body-Mind Centering, Irene Dowd's kinesthetic anatomy and neuromuscular re-education, and massage therapy to the curriculum. This is part of a much larger body of work, but this will get your started.
Being with Touch
Use this method to become present with the connection between your body and your partner's. Being with touch asks the toucher to be present with and listen to what is underneath their hands. It does not seek to do anything or ask that the person being touched do anything besides be present with what is there. Try this type of touch on the torso. As the toucher, you may want to check in with the person you are touching, asking questions like, “What are you noticing?” Or, “Is this pressure okay? Would you like more or less?” Keep the dialogue going to demonstrate that conversation about what is happening is part of the experience.
Locating Touch
Use locating touch to help your partner get a sense of where different parts of the body are sited and how they relate to other parts. Locating touch can go to one body part or slide along a pathway. It is like using your hands to say, “Focus your attention right here.” Try this type of touch to locate the hip joint or the lesser trochanter or the base of the scapula. After locating an area or part of the body, cue your partner to notice how that area relates to another area.
Sliding Touch
Locating touch can phrase into a sliding touch, where the toucher uses her hand to slide along or trace a line or connection on the body as if to bring awareness to the connection between one area and another.
Sending Touch and Receiving Touch
Use these techniques to find a connection or pathway through the body. Sending touch has directionality that give an energetic quality of sending information through the body's tissues. Receiving touch gathers or receives the sending touch somewhere else in the body. For example, try placing a hand on the sternum, and imagine you can send a message through the sternum. Place another hand on the sacrum, and imagine this hand can receive the message being sent by the top hand. The directionality in this kind of touch is clarified by the receiving touch. In this example, the hand on the sternum is sending a message in a down and back direction. Explore this type of touch with multiple pathways through the body.
Applying L/BMA to Aerial Dancing
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance.
Elizabeth Stitch
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance. Due to safety concerns and initial lack of strength, beginning aerialists often utilize spoke-like directional modes. This allows the aerialist to form a direct link between her body and the environment, or apparatus, which provides safety while she's in the air. When teaching beginning aerial students, I use this functional approach and encourage them to exactly model my steps into each skill.
Over time, I have noticed that it is difficult to break this initial pattern and begin to explore other options for changing the form of the body and connecting with the apparatus. In analyzing my personal aerial performance, I was surprised to observe my own strong preference for the directional mode, particularly the Arc-like form. While this mode can lend a more graceful feeling to a movement, it is essentially similar to the spoke-like mode in terms of the expressive statement it makes in connecting to the apparatus. In this context, both directional modes of shape change are straightforward and utilitarian, which is by no means negative, but they are expressively limited and not what I always want to convey.
One of the things I love most about Laban theory is that it gives me a map into lesser-known places in my movement signature. Following this map into the co-creative realm of carving has offered me not only a different relationship with my apparatus, but also new possibilities for movement invention. It has also guided me as a performer into the vulnerability of sharing my inner life with the audience through specific moments of shape-flow mode of shape change. With this full palette of expressive possibilities, my movement experience feels more satisfying, which keeps me coming back to my apparatus for further exploration in the air!
Perceiving Movement Through Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests.
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests. In any context, the Laban/Bartenieff lens is especially useful for observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning from, and experiencing movement.
Observing Movement
Movement happens quickly and is constantly in flux. As soon one movement ends, another has already begun, making comprehensive and accurate observations of movement difficult. Observing what is happening in movement is a common use of the Laban/Bartenieff framework. Using L/BMA to observe movement allows the observer to be precise and specific about what is happening, it also encourages the observer to recognize how movement calls forth feelings and associations that make it expressive. This is facilitated by the multiple aspects of the L/BMA lens, which enable the observer to comb through movement for its elemental parts and then integrate those parts together towards a larger whole. The ability to be precise in one's observations of movement, despite the movement's complexity, is important to many fields that study and address movement.
Describing Movement
Translating movement into words can feel like juggling two disparate systems of experience. Movement is felt, kinesthetic, and constantly morphing. Language is verbal, intellectual, and relatively durable—words do not change in the same moment they are spoken. Yes, language evolves and words change meaning overtime, but not so fast that we cannot keep up with them. Movement is infinitely faster and more difficult to “pin down”; as soon as you realize what is there, it has passed. Finding words that convey the experienced and changing nature of movement while being precise, accurate, and evocative can be a challenge. In many fields that involve movement, the ability to accurately describe what is happening is essential to conveying how movement is manifesting and how it is important in the context. L/BMA offers a specific lexicon for articulating human movement; explaining these terms makes up the majority of part II of this book. Of course, the L/BMA terminology is probably unfamiliar to those who have not studied this material, so part of using L/BMA is knowing how to translate the specialized language into words that inspire movement, no matter how much or how little L/BMA terminology the other person knows.
Coaching and Teaching Movement
For those who coach and teach movement, the act of facilitating growth and improvement involves many aspects of perceiving movement. The coach or teacher analyzes what is happening in relationship to what is desired, and then communicates that information, confirming what is serving the mover and offering strategies for growth. That information is then integrated into the movement, and then, the cycle begins again, including observing how the new information impacted the movement. This complex process is aided by the clear framework for observation, description, and analysis provided by Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis.
Making Meaning from Movement
The biological body is the basis for movement; it produces and makes movement possible, and is itself formed by movement. Yet, the picture of movement in human life is far more complex than that of a biological body moving from synaptic impulses. From the moment of conception, the body is molded by movement, and movement informs the ongoing and shifting perceptions of the self (Bryan 2018). Throughout the human life, movement is meaningful. Movement arises to meet needs: to get closer to what is desired or to create distance from what is not desired, to express inner thoughts and desires, and to accomplish the tasks that maintain and give meaning to life. Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis allows those who use it to address the meaningful aspects of movement while honoring the context and sequencing of movement.
Making meaning from movement is different from interpreting movement, and there is a time for both. People are always making meaning from movement, usually unconsciously—for example, someone might interpret how her father moves when he is tired or when he is angry. Making meaning emphasizes the influence of the observer in how movement is understood. Interpretation is about seeking to understand someone else's meaning, as if an observer could use movement in order to “read the mover's mind.” In the former, the observer is an active participant in making meaning; in the latter, movement is interpreted without recognizing the influence of the interpreter, potentially leading to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. For example, crossing the arms or nodding the head means different things to different people, in different cultures and contexts, and any interpretation one might place upon either of those actions will necessarily change with each mover and each context. I highlight this distinction to emphasize that L/BMA does not provide a dictionary or one-to-one correlation between a movement and “what it means” in any general sense. Movement always happens in a context, and our analysis of any particular movement must honor the particular mover within the particular context, as well as the complexity of what happened and how it happened in movement.
Experiencing Movement
Movement is a constant. Experiencing movement within the Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis framework can heighten and refine your awareness of a movement as you do it, and can help you recognize your preferences in movement. It can also help you gain new options in your movement. The specificity of the Laban/Bartenieff framework heightens sensation to bring greater clarity in movement so that you can manifest what you intend. When you bring your L/BMA knowledge to your lived experiences, you will notice new things about your movement, gaining a greater sense of presence, a sense of being “in your body.” As you work through the Laban/Bartenieff system you will generate awareness of your personal preferences and patterns for movement. As you learn what you like to do, you can also “style stretch,” that is develop movements that you have been less likely to inhabit, thus expanding your range of physicality. You'll increase your expressive range and functional skills.
All of the above—observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning, and experiencing—are ways of perceiving movement. The Laban/Bartenieff framework is fundamentally about creating conscious and effective inroads to the heightened perception of movement. As you use L/BMA to perceive movement in your life, you may feel as though you are learning a new language, and in some ways you are. Your understanding of movement will shift as you apply the Laban/Bartenieff framework to your life. You may notice that you can see movement with greater distinction and that you have new words and approaches to talking about it. You may also notice that you are better able to organize and frame your pursuits around movement, and that you have new options for being creative with your movement goals. Finally, you may notice that as a mover you are more prepared to increase the range of movements you execute and enjoy.
Total Body Connectivity—Breath Patterning
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop.
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop. It is fundamental to life and among our first experiences upon entering the world. Before an infant's first breaths, the fetus practices the movements of breathing in utero, as the mother breathes for the fetus by sending oxygen through the umbilical cord.
Figure 3.1 Breath symbol.
For an infant, breath affords sensation of the inside of the body, including the body's inner volume. Through breathing you feel the internal body growing and shrinking through the swelling of the inhalation and the contracting of the exhalation. The gentle expansion and contraction of the breath's rhythm provides the basic material of human life, oxygen, and the important release of carbon dioxide.
Breath patterning assists the coordination of the internal body that is vital in human movement. Functionally, every inhalation and exhalation is a complex event. Upon inhaling, the five lobes of the lungs expand to engulf the heart and welcome oxygen. The diaphragm is pulled downward toward the pelvis by the central tendon, filling up like an inverted hot-air balloon (see figure 3.2). Oxygen is taken into the body via the lungs, where it is transferred through small air sacs called alveoli into the blood, which is pumped throughout the body by the heart—a process that allows every cell in the body to respire. Carbon dioxide is released via exhalation, eliminating waste products. As you exhale, the central tendon releases, the diaphragm contracts upward, and the pelvic floor moves up, back, and in. Deliberately bringing your awareness to your breath as support for your movement is a precursor to whole-body coordination and virtuosity in movement. This is true for movers of all levels as breath allows the entire body to be supported from within in complex coordination.
Figure 3.2 Lungs, diaphragm, and central tendon, at the height of exhalation and inhalation
Illustrated by Sydney P. Celio.
As long as there is life, breath is present; it is the baseline of life force, the river on which all movement and expression runs. As an adult, revisiting the breath pattern is a useful way of connecting with sensation. Tuning into sensation within the body offers a way of becoming present within yourself and identifying what is needed in the moment. As a way of checking in with yourself, you can revisit the breath pattern when you are overstimulated, exhausted, or stressed; observing your breath can sooth what feels overwhelming. You may notice your breath changing with your emotional states. Agitation may shorten or truncate the breath, and rest may deepen it. You can alter and shift “emotional tone” by inviting the breath. The breath pattern is a reminder that you have the choice to affect your feelings and thereby your responses. Paying attention to the sensation of breath with its wave-like, rolling inhalations and exhalations can release muscle tension associated with stress.
Notice how the breath pulses inside of your body. Sensing the breath may bring you home to yourself. Many spiritual and centering practices, like meditation and stress reduction, use a focus on the breath as a key principle because it brings centeredness. It is a way of returning to a fundamental aspect of being alive. When stressed or feeling distanced from yourself, connecting to the breath can help you reconnect to yourself and feel calmer and more present.
Breath also provides access to the sense of yielding, bonding, and being with that will be discussed in depth later in this chapter. Imagine that as you attend to your breath you can soften the surfaces of your body and bond with the surfaces of support around you.
Breath brings with it a sense of the connection between one's inner and outer worlds, an experience that can be life-giving and profoundly essential. The exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide changes the torso as it expands and contracts. Allow this internal to growing and shrinking to support and fill your movement. Breath support is a concept used by Irmgard Bartenieff to illustrate the breath's ability to support and enliven full-bodied movement.
Visiting the breath pattern can provide another way of getting ready for activity. Breath supports movement. To accompany and support movement, the breath can be activated and vigorous, or soft, sustained, and elongated. Beginning an activity by getting the breath going is like preparing the insides of the body for what will later become activated outwardly. By using breath as part of a warm-up, you activate sensations of the internal three-dimensional support for movement, and you recruit the tissues of the body to be responsive and pliable.
For many adults who lead sedentary lives, the torso can feel tense and stuck, while their attention is directed outward. Attending to the flow of breath by directing attention inward can help them find movement and ease in the torso. When tension headaches or fatigue arises due to limited and contained movement, a person can deliberately deepen the flow of breath to nourish tissue and find new movement potential throughout the torso. To help you visualize the flow of breath, imagine a surfer riding a wave into shore. Like the wave that catches the surfboard, “catch” your exhalation and “ride” its undulating pattern through your body, noticing how and where it moves. You can also explore the feeling of being filled and expanded by the inhalation.
Bringing breath patterning into the forefront of your movement gives you the opportunity to let breath guide and initiate and influence the movement. In this way, the breath stimulates support of the core, the supple undulations of the spine, and massages the connection between upper and lower body. Fully receiving the exhalation allows for the area around the belly button to gather and hollow inward toward the organs, providing the first inklings of what will come next in movement.
As an expression of inner life, breath patterning has an audible nature, revealed in sounding and speaking. Every verbal or sounded expression rides on the breath; we can either use it fully or diminish and stunt it. An example of breath support in sound is the grandeur of passionate song or chanted liturgy; an example in which breath struggles to support us is hyperventilation. As the expression of inner life, another person's use of breath allows us to perceive the states of his or her thoughts and feelings. Listening to someone talk and sensing the congruence between breath, voice, and body gives the sense that they are coming from a grounded, centered, and committed place. We sense them as believable.
Finally, breath patterning supports big, exuberant, and virtuosic movement. It increases the strength of a boxer's punch or the quick burst of a swimmer's takeoff. The horseback rider uses her breathing to control and communicate to the horse, and the dancer exhales as he prepares to turn.
Explore the Breath Pattern
Check in with your breath. No need to boss it around. Bring your attention to what is currently happening with your breath, and allow it to change as it will. Notice the movement your breath is inspiring in your body. Can you send breath to areas that feel tight or bound up to change the tension of your tissues? Follow and ride the breath pathway like you might follow and ride a wave. Notice where in your body the organs and tissue grow with your breath, and where your internal world is softening or shrinking. Take some time here, and notice how you feel and what this experience has brought. Try singing or sounding the song of your breath. Have your feelings shifted? Where might actively focusing on your breath patterning be useful for you? How might your awareness serve you in your daily life?
Key Points for the Breath Pattern
- Connecting to breath is a way of connecting to and centering the self.
- Breath brings oxygen to the blood and tissues, and releases carbon dioxide waste.
- Breath is the infant's first experience of the inner volume of the body.
- The end of the exhalation, when the breath empties and the diaphragm floats upward, sets up the core-softening necessary for the next pattern.
- Breath support enlivens movement throughout the whole body and promotes complexity and virtuosity in movement.
L/BMA and Physical Humor
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor.
Contributed by Sarah Donohue, CLMA, MFA. Used with permission.
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor. An unexpected peek-a-boo delights a baby into laughter, the universal indicator of humor. A story is told in which the associated mental images are contradicted by an unforeseen twist at the end. With a shift in perspective, we experience humor on many perceptual levels.
This application explores the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective and suggests that incongruities in movement not only contribute to humor, but are subconsciously accessed on a kinesthetic level. While acknowledging that humor is situational and relational, my research isolates the movement of the body during a humorous event and reveals that incongruent movement patterns can explain physical humor.
Since determining what is humorous is in the funny bone of the beholder, I have selected a group of individuals whose movements are generally deemed humorous: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Rowan Atkinson, and others. I am not asking if their movement is humorous. Rather, I am assuming that it is and asking if they exhibit common movement patterns. Using the Laban/Bartenieff system, I have also analyzed the movement of humorous dance, such as the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes. Additionally, this inquiry prompts a search for humorous quotidian movement, such as someone walking into a spider web, which is difficult to spontaneously encounter and simultaneously analyze. Although the elements of humor-producing movement vary, I identify patterns of incongruity within the Laban/Bartenieff categories of Body, Effort, Shape, and Space.
Body
Which parts of the body are moved or held and how they are moved or held is culturally and socially significant. In the prototypical clown, we see the legs in external rotation, knees bent and adaptable, and a narrow torso being held in line with the head. There is often superfluous action of the lower legs and feet, and walking is initiated by spoking with the knees. Picture the gait of Charlie Chaplin. This bodily posture appears paradoxically inviting (with legs turned out) and protective (with spine and torso held). The contradictory posture contributes to a pattern of incongruence.
Body-Half and Upper-Lower Patterns of Total Body Connectivity
In the movement of physical comedians and clowns, there is a tendency for locomotion to take place in a body-half pattern instead of in the natural cross-lateral gait, perhaps an intentional indication of being less physically developed. We find familiarity, and often humor, in the body-half waddling of a penguin or toddler. Perceiving someone walk in a body-half pattern is incongruent with the naturally developed human gait of cross-laterality. Additionally, an apparent separation between the upper and lower parts of the body is a trait often present in physical humor. A common theme in cartoons involves the lower body running away from peril before the upper body gets the message to flee as well. In human form, the disassociation between the upper and lower body of physical comedians indicates an incongruity on a basic level of development, as if regions of the body are being controlled by separate forces. Monty Python's sketch “Ministry of Silly Walks” demonstrates an elaborate disconnection between body parts, with the upper and lower body often moving incongruently against one another.
Shape Flow Support and Shape Qualities
The Laban/Bartenieff category of Shape reveals meaning by focusing on the growing and shrinking of the torso and how the shaping of the body connects to Space. How we move our torsos can send very clear messages to perceivers, or, conversely, incongruent messages. If a person lengthens his torso vertically while rising with his entire form to pick an apple from a tree, the experience of all parts organizing toward place high—and the apple—is both functional and congruent. Incongruence in Shape would have the apple-picking man shorten his torso like a compressed spring while the frame of his body attempts to rise to place high. This incongruence may indicate that the mover does not physically embody efficient movement phrasing, which, to those inclined to schadenfreude, is perhaps a humorous situation. From a less vindictive perspective, incongruity between shape qualities and shape flow support is prevalent in clowning and particularly humorous in dance, where the expectation is for efficient movement patterns.
Phrasing in movement corresponds well to phrasing in written language. A movement phrase, or movement sentence, is complete and congruent when there is preparation, initiation, action, and follow through. A dart player prepares by focusing on the bull's-eye, both visually and kinesthetically. To initiate throwing the dart, she carefully pulls it back toward her shoulder before suddenly and directly sending it toward the target in the main action of the phrase. To complete the phrasing, her hand follows the pathway of the dart, guiding it empathetically to the bull's-eye. In dance, a well-executed grand jeté, or leap, is an example of congruent phrasing.
Physical humor often relies on the interruption of phrasing and the viewer's preconceived expectations being altered unpredictably, as is often utilized in the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes—a pelvic gyration in the midst of a flowing modern phrase or a giant cardboard box flying onstage to hit the dancer at the height of a graceful arabesque. Incongruities in phrasing are closely related to surprise, a key element in humor (Weems 2014, 26). Our sense-making minds are stringing together visual input to create a narrative or expected outcome. When what we believed would take place shifts unpredictably, humor is the result.
Effort
Phrasing can also be interrupted in regard to Effort. Listening to your favorite song and remembering sweet memories of the past may take you into what Laban calls passion drive (free Flow, light Weight, and sustained Time). However, an unexpected knock on the door will take you into an awake state (direct Space and sudden Time). The complete shift on the effort spectrum, from indulging qualities (free, light, sustained in this case) to condensing qualities (direct and sudden) is incongruent, surprising, and can be humorous. Stand-up comedians exhibit wonderful incongruent Effort phrasing in their verbal delivery. Conversely, congruent effort phrasing is created through effort loading. The effort is a natural progression that develops out of and returns to an established effort constellation.
However, in incongruent effort phrasing, like moving from passion drive to awake state, all the Effort qualities change at once. What was sustained becomes sudden; what was missing (Space effort) suddenly appears in direct Space. We can picture the effort phrasing making a complete shift across the effort spectrum in progressions such as walking to slipping or reading a book to being startled. In choreography, being aware of how effort phrasing falls naturally into, or out of, metered music can mean the difference between predicable musicality and delightful surprise.
Space
How the human body is organized in Space is meaningful not only in humor studies but also in everyday interaction with the environment. A congruent interaction with space allows you to get to the bus stop safely and efficiently. “Natural,” unaffected walking takes place in the sagittal plane (forward, with a little bit of up and down). In many clowning examples as well as Charlie Chaplin's walk, space is approached incongruently, by ambulating in the vertical plane (more side to side than forward).
Incongruence in Space is also revealed by countertension, which is what the body uses to balance when one slips or falls. From walking along in two spatial pulls of the sagittal plane, slipping requires the body to balance by moving into the third, previously absent spatial pull, the horizontal dimension (or some deflection of it). The need to move into a countertension is in opposition to the previous action or movement goal. Our expectations for regular locomotion are broken on many levels. While dance lives in the world of countertension, everyday actions meet extreme countertension when something unpredictable has happened—something incongruent.
As a choreographer and dance educator, my aim is not necessarily to create humorous dances. However, humor is an inroad to interpersonal connection, and my aim is to create dances with which a wide range of audiences can connect. Humor, like dance, has the capacity to be nonverbal and to reach beyond boundaries of culture, society, ability, and age (Weems 2014, 154). Infants laugh before they possess language—often they are laughing at motion. Humor is a primal human experience that we understand innately and kinesthetically.
The study of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective offers various benefits to the arts and education. Humor in the classroom serves memory retention, allowing students to create knowledge through their individual, humorous connection to learning. Understanding the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff analysis of incongruent movement patterns allows choreographers to develop innovation in their movement, audiences to access dance on a subconscious level, and everyday people to connect with each other through the kinesthetic language of humor.
Using Touch to Facilitate Body Connectivity
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch is a vulnerable and powerful experience. In the Laban/Bartenieff work, touch is not a given or an expectation. It is important to learn that you can say yes and no to touch from another person. Saying no to touch can be an empowering reminder of your ownership of and agency over your body. When working with others, ask permission to touch that includes where on their body the touch will be and what kinds of touch you will deliver. If someone decides not to be touched they can use their own hands, or you can assist them in finding other ways to experience the purpose of the touch.
The following are basic ideas for incorporating touch that are easy to learn and particularly useful for enhancing body connectivity. The types of touch discussed below are part of a larger body of work developed by Peggy Hackney and Janice Meaden with Ed Groff and Pam Schick as part of Integrated Movement Studies' “Touch for Repatterning” curriculum. Each brought other training perspectives including Body-Mind Centering, Irene Dowd's kinesthetic anatomy and neuromuscular re-education, and massage therapy to the curriculum. This is part of a much larger body of work, but this will get your started.
Being with Touch
Use this method to become present with the connection between your body and your partner's. Being with touch asks the toucher to be present with and listen to what is underneath their hands. It does not seek to do anything or ask that the person being touched do anything besides be present with what is there. Try this type of touch on the torso. As the toucher, you may want to check in with the person you are touching, asking questions like, “What are you noticing?” Or, “Is this pressure okay? Would you like more or less?” Keep the dialogue going to demonstrate that conversation about what is happening is part of the experience.
Locating Touch
Use locating touch to help your partner get a sense of where different parts of the body are sited and how they relate to other parts. Locating touch can go to one body part or slide along a pathway. It is like using your hands to say, “Focus your attention right here.” Try this type of touch to locate the hip joint or the lesser trochanter or the base of the scapula. After locating an area or part of the body, cue your partner to notice how that area relates to another area.
Sliding Touch
Locating touch can phrase into a sliding touch, where the toucher uses her hand to slide along or trace a line or connection on the body as if to bring awareness to the connection between one area and another.
Sending Touch and Receiving Touch
Use these techniques to find a connection or pathway through the body. Sending touch has directionality that give an energetic quality of sending information through the body's tissues. Receiving touch gathers or receives the sending touch somewhere else in the body. For example, try placing a hand on the sternum, and imagine you can send a message through the sternum. Place another hand on the sacrum, and imagine this hand can receive the message being sent by the top hand. The directionality in this kind of touch is clarified by the receiving touch. In this example, the hand on the sternum is sending a message in a down and back direction. Explore this type of touch with multiple pathways through the body.
Applying L/BMA to Aerial Dancing
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance.
Elizabeth Stitch
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance. Due to safety concerns and initial lack of strength, beginning aerialists often utilize spoke-like directional modes. This allows the aerialist to form a direct link between her body and the environment, or apparatus, which provides safety while she's in the air. When teaching beginning aerial students, I use this functional approach and encourage them to exactly model my steps into each skill.
Over time, I have noticed that it is difficult to break this initial pattern and begin to explore other options for changing the form of the body and connecting with the apparatus. In analyzing my personal aerial performance, I was surprised to observe my own strong preference for the directional mode, particularly the Arc-like form. While this mode can lend a more graceful feeling to a movement, it is essentially similar to the spoke-like mode in terms of the expressive statement it makes in connecting to the apparatus. In this context, both directional modes of shape change are straightforward and utilitarian, which is by no means negative, but they are expressively limited and not what I always want to convey.
One of the things I love most about Laban theory is that it gives me a map into lesser-known places in my movement signature. Following this map into the co-creative realm of carving has offered me not only a different relationship with my apparatus, but also new possibilities for movement invention. It has also guided me as a performer into the vulnerability of sharing my inner life with the audience through specific moments of shape-flow mode of shape change. With this full palette of expressive possibilities, my movement experience feels more satisfying, which keeps me coming back to my apparatus for further exploration in the air!
Perceiving Movement Through Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests.
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests. In any context, the Laban/Bartenieff lens is especially useful for observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning from, and experiencing movement.
Observing Movement
Movement happens quickly and is constantly in flux. As soon one movement ends, another has already begun, making comprehensive and accurate observations of movement difficult. Observing what is happening in movement is a common use of the Laban/Bartenieff framework. Using L/BMA to observe movement allows the observer to be precise and specific about what is happening, it also encourages the observer to recognize how movement calls forth feelings and associations that make it expressive. This is facilitated by the multiple aspects of the L/BMA lens, which enable the observer to comb through movement for its elemental parts and then integrate those parts together towards a larger whole. The ability to be precise in one's observations of movement, despite the movement's complexity, is important to many fields that study and address movement.
Describing Movement
Translating movement into words can feel like juggling two disparate systems of experience. Movement is felt, kinesthetic, and constantly morphing. Language is verbal, intellectual, and relatively durable—words do not change in the same moment they are spoken. Yes, language evolves and words change meaning overtime, but not so fast that we cannot keep up with them. Movement is infinitely faster and more difficult to “pin down”; as soon as you realize what is there, it has passed. Finding words that convey the experienced and changing nature of movement while being precise, accurate, and evocative can be a challenge. In many fields that involve movement, the ability to accurately describe what is happening is essential to conveying how movement is manifesting and how it is important in the context. L/BMA offers a specific lexicon for articulating human movement; explaining these terms makes up the majority of part II of this book. Of course, the L/BMA terminology is probably unfamiliar to those who have not studied this material, so part of using L/BMA is knowing how to translate the specialized language into words that inspire movement, no matter how much or how little L/BMA terminology the other person knows.
Coaching and Teaching Movement
For those who coach and teach movement, the act of facilitating growth and improvement involves many aspects of perceiving movement. The coach or teacher analyzes what is happening in relationship to what is desired, and then communicates that information, confirming what is serving the mover and offering strategies for growth. That information is then integrated into the movement, and then, the cycle begins again, including observing how the new information impacted the movement. This complex process is aided by the clear framework for observation, description, and analysis provided by Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis.
Making Meaning from Movement
The biological body is the basis for movement; it produces and makes movement possible, and is itself formed by movement. Yet, the picture of movement in human life is far more complex than that of a biological body moving from synaptic impulses. From the moment of conception, the body is molded by movement, and movement informs the ongoing and shifting perceptions of the self (Bryan 2018). Throughout the human life, movement is meaningful. Movement arises to meet needs: to get closer to what is desired or to create distance from what is not desired, to express inner thoughts and desires, and to accomplish the tasks that maintain and give meaning to life. Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis allows those who use it to address the meaningful aspects of movement while honoring the context and sequencing of movement.
Making meaning from movement is different from interpreting movement, and there is a time for both. People are always making meaning from movement, usually unconsciously—for example, someone might interpret how her father moves when he is tired or when he is angry. Making meaning emphasizes the influence of the observer in how movement is understood. Interpretation is about seeking to understand someone else's meaning, as if an observer could use movement in order to “read the mover's mind.” In the former, the observer is an active participant in making meaning; in the latter, movement is interpreted without recognizing the influence of the interpreter, potentially leading to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. For example, crossing the arms or nodding the head means different things to different people, in different cultures and contexts, and any interpretation one might place upon either of those actions will necessarily change with each mover and each context. I highlight this distinction to emphasize that L/BMA does not provide a dictionary or one-to-one correlation between a movement and “what it means” in any general sense. Movement always happens in a context, and our analysis of any particular movement must honor the particular mover within the particular context, as well as the complexity of what happened and how it happened in movement.
Experiencing Movement
Movement is a constant. Experiencing movement within the Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis framework can heighten and refine your awareness of a movement as you do it, and can help you recognize your preferences in movement. It can also help you gain new options in your movement. The specificity of the Laban/Bartenieff framework heightens sensation to bring greater clarity in movement so that you can manifest what you intend. When you bring your L/BMA knowledge to your lived experiences, you will notice new things about your movement, gaining a greater sense of presence, a sense of being “in your body.” As you work through the Laban/Bartenieff system you will generate awareness of your personal preferences and patterns for movement. As you learn what you like to do, you can also “style stretch,” that is develop movements that you have been less likely to inhabit, thus expanding your range of physicality. You'll increase your expressive range and functional skills.
All of the above—observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning, and experiencing—are ways of perceiving movement. The Laban/Bartenieff framework is fundamentally about creating conscious and effective inroads to the heightened perception of movement. As you use L/BMA to perceive movement in your life, you may feel as though you are learning a new language, and in some ways you are. Your understanding of movement will shift as you apply the Laban/Bartenieff framework to your life. You may notice that you can see movement with greater distinction and that you have new words and approaches to talking about it. You may also notice that you are better able to organize and frame your pursuits around movement, and that you have new options for being creative with your movement goals. Finally, you may notice that as a mover you are more prepared to increase the range of movements you execute and enjoy.
Total Body Connectivity—Breath Patterning
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop.
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop. It is fundamental to life and among our first experiences upon entering the world. Before an infant's first breaths, the fetus practices the movements of breathing in utero, as the mother breathes for the fetus by sending oxygen through the umbilical cord.
Figure 3.1 Breath symbol.
For an infant, breath affords sensation of the inside of the body, including the body's inner volume. Through breathing you feel the internal body growing and shrinking through the swelling of the inhalation and the contracting of the exhalation. The gentle expansion and contraction of the breath's rhythm provides the basic material of human life, oxygen, and the important release of carbon dioxide.
Breath patterning assists the coordination of the internal body that is vital in human movement. Functionally, every inhalation and exhalation is a complex event. Upon inhaling, the five lobes of the lungs expand to engulf the heart and welcome oxygen. The diaphragm is pulled downward toward the pelvis by the central tendon, filling up like an inverted hot-air balloon (see figure 3.2). Oxygen is taken into the body via the lungs, where it is transferred through small air sacs called alveoli into the blood, which is pumped throughout the body by the heart—a process that allows every cell in the body to respire. Carbon dioxide is released via exhalation, eliminating waste products. As you exhale, the central tendon releases, the diaphragm contracts upward, and the pelvic floor moves up, back, and in. Deliberately bringing your awareness to your breath as support for your movement is a precursor to whole-body coordination and virtuosity in movement. This is true for movers of all levels as breath allows the entire body to be supported from within in complex coordination.
Figure 3.2 Lungs, diaphragm, and central tendon, at the height of exhalation and inhalation
Illustrated by Sydney P. Celio.
As long as there is life, breath is present; it is the baseline of life force, the river on which all movement and expression runs. As an adult, revisiting the breath pattern is a useful way of connecting with sensation. Tuning into sensation within the body offers a way of becoming present within yourself and identifying what is needed in the moment. As a way of checking in with yourself, you can revisit the breath pattern when you are overstimulated, exhausted, or stressed; observing your breath can sooth what feels overwhelming. You may notice your breath changing with your emotional states. Agitation may shorten or truncate the breath, and rest may deepen it. You can alter and shift “emotional tone” by inviting the breath. The breath pattern is a reminder that you have the choice to affect your feelings and thereby your responses. Paying attention to the sensation of breath with its wave-like, rolling inhalations and exhalations can release muscle tension associated with stress.
Notice how the breath pulses inside of your body. Sensing the breath may bring you home to yourself. Many spiritual and centering practices, like meditation and stress reduction, use a focus on the breath as a key principle because it brings centeredness. It is a way of returning to a fundamental aspect of being alive. When stressed or feeling distanced from yourself, connecting to the breath can help you reconnect to yourself and feel calmer and more present.
Breath also provides access to the sense of yielding, bonding, and being with that will be discussed in depth later in this chapter. Imagine that as you attend to your breath you can soften the surfaces of your body and bond with the surfaces of support around you.
Breath brings with it a sense of the connection between one's inner and outer worlds, an experience that can be life-giving and profoundly essential. The exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide changes the torso as it expands and contracts. Allow this internal to growing and shrinking to support and fill your movement. Breath support is a concept used by Irmgard Bartenieff to illustrate the breath's ability to support and enliven full-bodied movement.
Visiting the breath pattern can provide another way of getting ready for activity. Breath supports movement. To accompany and support movement, the breath can be activated and vigorous, or soft, sustained, and elongated. Beginning an activity by getting the breath going is like preparing the insides of the body for what will later become activated outwardly. By using breath as part of a warm-up, you activate sensations of the internal three-dimensional support for movement, and you recruit the tissues of the body to be responsive and pliable.
For many adults who lead sedentary lives, the torso can feel tense and stuck, while their attention is directed outward. Attending to the flow of breath by directing attention inward can help them find movement and ease in the torso. When tension headaches or fatigue arises due to limited and contained movement, a person can deliberately deepen the flow of breath to nourish tissue and find new movement potential throughout the torso. To help you visualize the flow of breath, imagine a surfer riding a wave into shore. Like the wave that catches the surfboard, “catch” your exhalation and “ride” its undulating pattern through your body, noticing how and where it moves. You can also explore the feeling of being filled and expanded by the inhalation.
Bringing breath patterning into the forefront of your movement gives you the opportunity to let breath guide and initiate and influence the movement. In this way, the breath stimulates support of the core, the supple undulations of the spine, and massages the connection between upper and lower body. Fully receiving the exhalation allows for the area around the belly button to gather and hollow inward toward the organs, providing the first inklings of what will come next in movement.
As an expression of inner life, breath patterning has an audible nature, revealed in sounding and speaking. Every verbal or sounded expression rides on the breath; we can either use it fully or diminish and stunt it. An example of breath support in sound is the grandeur of passionate song or chanted liturgy; an example in which breath struggles to support us is hyperventilation. As the expression of inner life, another person's use of breath allows us to perceive the states of his or her thoughts and feelings. Listening to someone talk and sensing the congruence between breath, voice, and body gives the sense that they are coming from a grounded, centered, and committed place. We sense them as believable.
Finally, breath patterning supports big, exuberant, and virtuosic movement. It increases the strength of a boxer's punch or the quick burst of a swimmer's takeoff. The horseback rider uses her breathing to control and communicate to the horse, and the dancer exhales as he prepares to turn.
Explore the Breath Pattern
Check in with your breath. No need to boss it around. Bring your attention to what is currently happening with your breath, and allow it to change as it will. Notice the movement your breath is inspiring in your body. Can you send breath to areas that feel tight or bound up to change the tension of your tissues? Follow and ride the breath pathway like you might follow and ride a wave. Notice where in your body the organs and tissue grow with your breath, and where your internal world is softening or shrinking. Take some time here, and notice how you feel and what this experience has brought. Try singing or sounding the song of your breath. Have your feelings shifted? Where might actively focusing on your breath patterning be useful for you? How might your awareness serve you in your daily life?
Key Points for the Breath Pattern
- Connecting to breath is a way of connecting to and centering the self.
- Breath brings oxygen to the blood and tissues, and releases carbon dioxide waste.
- Breath is the infant's first experience of the inner volume of the body.
- The end of the exhalation, when the breath empties and the diaphragm floats upward, sets up the core-softening necessary for the next pattern.
- Breath support enlivens movement throughout the whole body and promotes complexity and virtuosity in movement.
L/BMA and Physical Humor
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor.
Contributed by Sarah Donohue, CLMA, MFA. Used with permission.
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor. An unexpected peek-a-boo delights a baby into laughter, the universal indicator of humor. A story is told in which the associated mental images are contradicted by an unforeseen twist at the end. With a shift in perspective, we experience humor on many perceptual levels.
This application explores the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective and suggests that incongruities in movement not only contribute to humor, but are subconsciously accessed on a kinesthetic level. While acknowledging that humor is situational and relational, my research isolates the movement of the body during a humorous event and reveals that incongruent movement patterns can explain physical humor.
Since determining what is humorous is in the funny bone of the beholder, I have selected a group of individuals whose movements are generally deemed humorous: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Rowan Atkinson, and others. I am not asking if their movement is humorous. Rather, I am assuming that it is and asking if they exhibit common movement patterns. Using the Laban/Bartenieff system, I have also analyzed the movement of humorous dance, such as the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes. Additionally, this inquiry prompts a search for humorous quotidian movement, such as someone walking into a spider web, which is difficult to spontaneously encounter and simultaneously analyze. Although the elements of humor-producing movement vary, I identify patterns of incongruity within the Laban/Bartenieff categories of Body, Effort, Shape, and Space.
Body
Which parts of the body are moved or held and how they are moved or held is culturally and socially significant. In the prototypical clown, we see the legs in external rotation, knees bent and adaptable, and a narrow torso being held in line with the head. There is often superfluous action of the lower legs and feet, and walking is initiated by spoking with the knees. Picture the gait of Charlie Chaplin. This bodily posture appears paradoxically inviting (with legs turned out) and protective (with spine and torso held). The contradictory posture contributes to a pattern of incongruence.
Body-Half and Upper-Lower Patterns of Total Body Connectivity
In the movement of physical comedians and clowns, there is a tendency for locomotion to take place in a body-half pattern instead of in the natural cross-lateral gait, perhaps an intentional indication of being less physically developed. We find familiarity, and often humor, in the body-half waddling of a penguin or toddler. Perceiving someone walk in a body-half pattern is incongruent with the naturally developed human gait of cross-laterality. Additionally, an apparent separation between the upper and lower parts of the body is a trait often present in physical humor. A common theme in cartoons involves the lower body running away from peril before the upper body gets the message to flee as well. In human form, the disassociation between the upper and lower body of physical comedians indicates an incongruity on a basic level of development, as if regions of the body are being controlled by separate forces. Monty Python's sketch “Ministry of Silly Walks” demonstrates an elaborate disconnection between body parts, with the upper and lower body often moving incongruently against one another.
Shape Flow Support and Shape Qualities
The Laban/Bartenieff category of Shape reveals meaning by focusing on the growing and shrinking of the torso and how the shaping of the body connects to Space. How we move our torsos can send very clear messages to perceivers, or, conversely, incongruent messages. If a person lengthens his torso vertically while rising with his entire form to pick an apple from a tree, the experience of all parts organizing toward place high—and the apple—is both functional and congruent. Incongruence in Shape would have the apple-picking man shorten his torso like a compressed spring while the frame of his body attempts to rise to place high. This incongruence may indicate that the mover does not physically embody efficient movement phrasing, which, to those inclined to schadenfreude, is perhaps a humorous situation. From a less vindictive perspective, incongruity between shape qualities and shape flow support is prevalent in clowning and particularly humorous in dance, where the expectation is for efficient movement patterns.
Phrasing in movement corresponds well to phrasing in written language. A movement phrase, or movement sentence, is complete and congruent when there is preparation, initiation, action, and follow through. A dart player prepares by focusing on the bull's-eye, both visually and kinesthetically. To initiate throwing the dart, she carefully pulls it back toward her shoulder before suddenly and directly sending it toward the target in the main action of the phrase. To complete the phrasing, her hand follows the pathway of the dart, guiding it empathetically to the bull's-eye. In dance, a well-executed grand jeté, or leap, is an example of congruent phrasing.
Physical humor often relies on the interruption of phrasing and the viewer's preconceived expectations being altered unpredictably, as is often utilized in the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes—a pelvic gyration in the midst of a flowing modern phrase or a giant cardboard box flying onstage to hit the dancer at the height of a graceful arabesque. Incongruities in phrasing are closely related to surprise, a key element in humor (Weems 2014, 26). Our sense-making minds are stringing together visual input to create a narrative or expected outcome. When what we believed would take place shifts unpredictably, humor is the result.
Effort
Phrasing can also be interrupted in regard to Effort. Listening to your favorite song and remembering sweet memories of the past may take you into what Laban calls passion drive (free Flow, light Weight, and sustained Time). However, an unexpected knock on the door will take you into an awake state (direct Space and sudden Time). The complete shift on the effort spectrum, from indulging qualities (free, light, sustained in this case) to condensing qualities (direct and sudden) is incongruent, surprising, and can be humorous. Stand-up comedians exhibit wonderful incongruent Effort phrasing in their verbal delivery. Conversely, congruent effort phrasing is created through effort loading. The effort is a natural progression that develops out of and returns to an established effort constellation.
However, in incongruent effort phrasing, like moving from passion drive to awake state, all the Effort qualities change at once. What was sustained becomes sudden; what was missing (Space effort) suddenly appears in direct Space. We can picture the effort phrasing making a complete shift across the effort spectrum in progressions such as walking to slipping or reading a book to being startled. In choreography, being aware of how effort phrasing falls naturally into, or out of, metered music can mean the difference between predicable musicality and delightful surprise.
Space
How the human body is organized in Space is meaningful not only in humor studies but also in everyday interaction with the environment. A congruent interaction with space allows you to get to the bus stop safely and efficiently. “Natural,” unaffected walking takes place in the sagittal plane (forward, with a little bit of up and down). In many clowning examples as well as Charlie Chaplin's walk, space is approached incongruently, by ambulating in the vertical plane (more side to side than forward).
Incongruence in Space is also revealed by countertension, which is what the body uses to balance when one slips or falls. From walking along in two spatial pulls of the sagittal plane, slipping requires the body to balance by moving into the third, previously absent spatial pull, the horizontal dimension (or some deflection of it). The need to move into a countertension is in opposition to the previous action or movement goal. Our expectations for regular locomotion are broken on many levels. While dance lives in the world of countertension, everyday actions meet extreme countertension when something unpredictable has happened—something incongruent.
As a choreographer and dance educator, my aim is not necessarily to create humorous dances. However, humor is an inroad to interpersonal connection, and my aim is to create dances with which a wide range of audiences can connect. Humor, like dance, has the capacity to be nonverbal and to reach beyond boundaries of culture, society, ability, and age (Weems 2014, 154). Infants laugh before they possess language—often they are laughing at motion. Humor is a primal human experience that we understand innately and kinesthetically.
The study of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective offers various benefits to the arts and education. Humor in the classroom serves memory retention, allowing students to create knowledge through their individual, humorous connection to learning. Understanding the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff analysis of incongruent movement patterns allows choreographers to develop innovation in their movement, audiences to access dance on a subconscious level, and everyday people to connect with each other through the kinesthetic language of humor.
Using Touch to Facilitate Body Connectivity
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch is a vulnerable and powerful experience. In the Laban/Bartenieff work, touch is not a given or an expectation. It is important to learn that you can say yes and no to touch from another person. Saying no to touch can be an empowering reminder of your ownership of and agency over your body. When working with others, ask permission to touch that includes where on their body the touch will be and what kinds of touch you will deliver. If someone decides not to be touched they can use their own hands, or you can assist them in finding other ways to experience the purpose of the touch.
The following are basic ideas for incorporating touch that are easy to learn and particularly useful for enhancing body connectivity. The types of touch discussed below are part of a larger body of work developed by Peggy Hackney and Janice Meaden with Ed Groff and Pam Schick as part of Integrated Movement Studies' “Touch for Repatterning” curriculum. Each brought other training perspectives including Body-Mind Centering, Irene Dowd's kinesthetic anatomy and neuromuscular re-education, and massage therapy to the curriculum. This is part of a much larger body of work, but this will get your started.
Being with Touch
Use this method to become present with the connection between your body and your partner's. Being with touch asks the toucher to be present with and listen to what is underneath their hands. It does not seek to do anything or ask that the person being touched do anything besides be present with what is there. Try this type of touch on the torso. As the toucher, you may want to check in with the person you are touching, asking questions like, “What are you noticing?” Or, “Is this pressure okay? Would you like more or less?” Keep the dialogue going to demonstrate that conversation about what is happening is part of the experience.
Locating Touch
Use locating touch to help your partner get a sense of where different parts of the body are sited and how they relate to other parts. Locating touch can go to one body part or slide along a pathway. It is like using your hands to say, “Focus your attention right here.” Try this type of touch to locate the hip joint or the lesser trochanter or the base of the scapula. After locating an area or part of the body, cue your partner to notice how that area relates to another area.
Sliding Touch
Locating touch can phrase into a sliding touch, where the toucher uses her hand to slide along or trace a line or connection on the body as if to bring awareness to the connection between one area and another.
Sending Touch and Receiving Touch
Use these techniques to find a connection or pathway through the body. Sending touch has directionality that give an energetic quality of sending information through the body's tissues. Receiving touch gathers or receives the sending touch somewhere else in the body. For example, try placing a hand on the sternum, and imagine you can send a message through the sternum. Place another hand on the sacrum, and imagine this hand can receive the message being sent by the top hand. The directionality in this kind of touch is clarified by the receiving touch. In this example, the hand on the sternum is sending a message in a down and back direction. Explore this type of touch with multiple pathways through the body.
Applying L/BMA to Aerial Dancing
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance.
Elizabeth Stitch
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance. Due to safety concerns and initial lack of strength, beginning aerialists often utilize spoke-like directional modes. This allows the aerialist to form a direct link between her body and the environment, or apparatus, which provides safety while she's in the air. When teaching beginning aerial students, I use this functional approach and encourage them to exactly model my steps into each skill.
Over time, I have noticed that it is difficult to break this initial pattern and begin to explore other options for changing the form of the body and connecting with the apparatus. In analyzing my personal aerial performance, I was surprised to observe my own strong preference for the directional mode, particularly the Arc-like form. While this mode can lend a more graceful feeling to a movement, it is essentially similar to the spoke-like mode in terms of the expressive statement it makes in connecting to the apparatus. In this context, both directional modes of shape change are straightforward and utilitarian, which is by no means negative, but they are expressively limited and not what I always want to convey.
One of the things I love most about Laban theory is that it gives me a map into lesser-known places in my movement signature. Following this map into the co-creative realm of carving has offered me not only a different relationship with my apparatus, but also new possibilities for movement invention. It has also guided me as a performer into the vulnerability of sharing my inner life with the audience through specific moments of shape-flow mode of shape change. With this full palette of expressive possibilities, my movement experience feels more satisfying, which keeps me coming back to my apparatus for further exploration in the air!
Perceiving Movement Through Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests.
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests. In any context, the Laban/Bartenieff lens is especially useful for observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning from, and experiencing movement.
Observing Movement
Movement happens quickly and is constantly in flux. As soon one movement ends, another has already begun, making comprehensive and accurate observations of movement difficult. Observing what is happening in movement is a common use of the Laban/Bartenieff framework. Using L/BMA to observe movement allows the observer to be precise and specific about what is happening, it also encourages the observer to recognize how movement calls forth feelings and associations that make it expressive. This is facilitated by the multiple aspects of the L/BMA lens, which enable the observer to comb through movement for its elemental parts and then integrate those parts together towards a larger whole. The ability to be precise in one's observations of movement, despite the movement's complexity, is important to many fields that study and address movement.
Describing Movement
Translating movement into words can feel like juggling two disparate systems of experience. Movement is felt, kinesthetic, and constantly morphing. Language is verbal, intellectual, and relatively durable—words do not change in the same moment they are spoken. Yes, language evolves and words change meaning overtime, but not so fast that we cannot keep up with them. Movement is infinitely faster and more difficult to “pin down”; as soon as you realize what is there, it has passed. Finding words that convey the experienced and changing nature of movement while being precise, accurate, and evocative can be a challenge. In many fields that involve movement, the ability to accurately describe what is happening is essential to conveying how movement is manifesting and how it is important in the context. L/BMA offers a specific lexicon for articulating human movement; explaining these terms makes up the majority of part II of this book. Of course, the L/BMA terminology is probably unfamiliar to those who have not studied this material, so part of using L/BMA is knowing how to translate the specialized language into words that inspire movement, no matter how much or how little L/BMA terminology the other person knows.
Coaching and Teaching Movement
For those who coach and teach movement, the act of facilitating growth and improvement involves many aspects of perceiving movement. The coach or teacher analyzes what is happening in relationship to what is desired, and then communicates that information, confirming what is serving the mover and offering strategies for growth. That information is then integrated into the movement, and then, the cycle begins again, including observing how the new information impacted the movement. This complex process is aided by the clear framework for observation, description, and analysis provided by Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis.
Making Meaning from Movement
The biological body is the basis for movement; it produces and makes movement possible, and is itself formed by movement. Yet, the picture of movement in human life is far more complex than that of a biological body moving from synaptic impulses. From the moment of conception, the body is molded by movement, and movement informs the ongoing and shifting perceptions of the self (Bryan 2018). Throughout the human life, movement is meaningful. Movement arises to meet needs: to get closer to what is desired or to create distance from what is not desired, to express inner thoughts and desires, and to accomplish the tasks that maintain and give meaning to life. Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis allows those who use it to address the meaningful aspects of movement while honoring the context and sequencing of movement.
Making meaning from movement is different from interpreting movement, and there is a time for both. People are always making meaning from movement, usually unconsciously—for example, someone might interpret how her father moves when he is tired or when he is angry. Making meaning emphasizes the influence of the observer in how movement is understood. Interpretation is about seeking to understand someone else's meaning, as if an observer could use movement in order to “read the mover's mind.” In the former, the observer is an active participant in making meaning; in the latter, movement is interpreted without recognizing the influence of the interpreter, potentially leading to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. For example, crossing the arms or nodding the head means different things to different people, in different cultures and contexts, and any interpretation one might place upon either of those actions will necessarily change with each mover and each context. I highlight this distinction to emphasize that L/BMA does not provide a dictionary or one-to-one correlation between a movement and “what it means” in any general sense. Movement always happens in a context, and our analysis of any particular movement must honor the particular mover within the particular context, as well as the complexity of what happened and how it happened in movement.
Experiencing Movement
Movement is a constant. Experiencing movement within the Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis framework can heighten and refine your awareness of a movement as you do it, and can help you recognize your preferences in movement. It can also help you gain new options in your movement. The specificity of the Laban/Bartenieff framework heightens sensation to bring greater clarity in movement so that you can manifest what you intend. When you bring your L/BMA knowledge to your lived experiences, you will notice new things about your movement, gaining a greater sense of presence, a sense of being “in your body.” As you work through the Laban/Bartenieff system you will generate awareness of your personal preferences and patterns for movement. As you learn what you like to do, you can also “style stretch,” that is develop movements that you have been less likely to inhabit, thus expanding your range of physicality. You'll increase your expressive range and functional skills.
All of the above—observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning, and experiencing—are ways of perceiving movement. The Laban/Bartenieff framework is fundamentally about creating conscious and effective inroads to the heightened perception of movement. As you use L/BMA to perceive movement in your life, you may feel as though you are learning a new language, and in some ways you are. Your understanding of movement will shift as you apply the Laban/Bartenieff framework to your life. You may notice that you can see movement with greater distinction and that you have new words and approaches to talking about it. You may also notice that you are better able to organize and frame your pursuits around movement, and that you have new options for being creative with your movement goals. Finally, you may notice that as a mover you are more prepared to increase the range of movements you execute and enjoy.
Total Body Connectivity—Breath Patterning
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop.
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop. It is fundamental to life and among our first experiences upon entering the world. Before an infant's first breaths, the fetus practices the movements of breathing in utero, as the mother breathes for the fetus by sending oxygen through the umbilical cord.
Figure 3.1 Breath symbol.
For an infant, breath affords sensation of the inside of the body, including the body's inner volume. Through breathing you feel the internal body growing and shrinking through the swelling of the inhalation and the contracting of the exhalation. The gentle expansion and contraction of the breath's rhythm provides the basic material of human life, oxygen, and the important release of carbon dioxide.
Breath patterning assists the coordination of the internal body that is vital in human movement. Functionally, every inhalation and exhalation is a complex event. Upon inhaling, the five lobes of the lungs expand to engulf the heart and welcome oxygen. The diaphragm is pulled downward toward the pelvis by the central tendon, filling up like an inverted hot-air balloon (see figure 3.2). Oxygen is taken into the body via the lungs, where it is transferred through small air sacs called alveoli into the blood, which is pumped throughout the body by the heart—a process that allows every cell in the body to respire. Carbon dioxide is released via exhalation, eliminating waste products. As you exhale, the central tendon releases, the diaphragm contracts upward, and the pelvic floor moves up, back, and in. Deliberately bringing your awareness to your breath as support for your movement is a precursor to whole-body coordination and virtuosity in movement. This is true for movers of all levels as breath allows the entire body to be supported from within in complex coordination.
Figure 3.2 Lungs, diaphragm, and central tendon, at the height of exhalation and inhalation
Illustrated by Sydney P. Celio.
As long as there is life, breath is present; it is the baseline of life force, the river on which all movement and expression runs. As an adult, revisiting the breath pattern is a useful way of connecting with sensation. Tuning into sensation within the body offers a way of becoming present within yourself and identifying what is needed in the moment. As a way of checking in with yourself, you can revisit the breath pattern when you are overstimulated, exhausted, or stressed; observing your breath can sooth what feels overwhelming. You may notice your breath changing with your emotional states. Agitation may shorten or truncate the breath, and rest may deepen it. You can alter and shift “emotional tone” by inviting the breath. The breath pattern is a reminder that you have the choice to affect your feelings and thereby your responses. Paying attention to the sensation of breath with its wave-like, rolling inhalations and exhalations can release muscle tension associated with stress.
Notice how the breath pulses inside of your body. Sensing the breath may bring you home to yourself. Many spiritual and centering practices, like meditation and stress reduction, use a focus on the breath as a key principle because it brings centeredness. It is a way of returning to a fundamental aspect of being alive. When stressed or feeling distanced from yourself, connecting to the breath can help you reconnect to yourself and feel calmer and more present.
Breath also provides access to the sense of yielding, bonding, and being with that will be discussed in depth later in this chapter. Imagine that as you attend to your breath you can soften the surfaces of your body and bond with the surfaces of support around you.
Breath brings with it a sense of the connection between one's inner and outer worlds, an experience that can be life-giving and profoundly essential. The exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide changes the torso as it expands and contracts. Allow this internal to growing and shrinking to support and fill your movement. Breath support is a concept used by Irmgard Bartenieff to illustrate the breath's ability to support and enliven full-bodied movement.
Visiting the breath pattern can provide another way of getting ready for activity. Breath supports movement. To accompany and support movement, the breath can be activated and vigorous, or soft, sustained, and elongated. Beginning an activity by getting the breath going is like preparing the insides of the body for what will later become activated outwardly. By using breath as part of a warm-up, you activate sensations of the internal three-dimensional support for movement, and you recruit the tissues of the body to be responsive and pliable.
For many adults who lead sedentary lives, the torso can feel tense and stuck, while their attention is directed outward. Attending to the flow of breath by directing attention inward can help them find movement and ease in the torso. When tension headaches or fatigue arises due to limited and contained movement, a person can deliberately deepen the flow of breath to nourish tissue and find new movement potential throughout the torso. To help you visualize the flow of breath, imagine a surfer riding a wave into shore. Like the wave that catches the surfboard, “catch” your exhalation and “ride” its undulating pattern through your body, noticing how and where it moves. You can also explore the feeling of being filled and expanded by the inhalation.
Bringing breath patterning into the forefront of your movement gives you the opportunity to let breath guide and initiate and influence the movement. In this way, the breath stimulates support of the core, the supple undulations of the spine, and massages the connection between upper and lower body. Fully receiving the exhalation allows for the area around the belly button to gather and hollow inward toward the organs, providing the first inklings of what will come next in movement.
As an expression of inner life, breath patterning has an audible nature, revealed in sounding and speaking. Every verbal or sounded expression rides on the breath; we can either use it fully or diminish and stunt it. An example of breath support in sound is the grandeur of passionate song or chanted liturgy; an example in which breath struggles to support us is hyperventilation. As the expression of inner life, another person's use of breath allows us to perceive the states of his or her thoughts and feelings. Listening to someone talk and sensing the congruence between breath, voice, and body gives the sense that they are coming from a grounded, centered, and committed place. We sense them as believable.
Finally, breath patterning supports big, exuberant, and virtuosic movement. It increases the strength of a boxer's punch or the quick burst of a swimmer's takeoff. The horseback rider uses her breathing to control and communicate to the horse, and the dancer exhales as he prepares to turn.
Explore the Breath Pattern
Check in with your breath. No need to boss it around. Bring your attention to what is currently happening with your breath, and allow it to change as it will. Notice the movement your breath is inspiring in your body. Can you send breath to areas that feel tight or bound up to change the tension of your tissues? Follow and ride the breath pathway like you might follow and ride a wave. Notice where in your body the organs and tissue grow with your breath, and where your internal world is softening or shrinking. Take some time here, and notice how you feel and what this experience has brought. Try singing or sounding the song of your breath. Have your feelings shifted? Where might actively focusing on your breath patterning be useful for you? How might your awareness serve you in your daily life?
Key Points for the Breath Pattern
- Connecting to breath is a way of connecting to and centering the self.
- Breath brings oxygen to the blood and tissues, and releases carbon dioxide waste.
- Breath is the infant's first experience of the inner volume of the body.
- The end of the exhalation, when the breath empties and the diaphragm floats upward, sets up the core-softening necessary for the next pattern.
- Breath support enlivens movement throughout the whole body and promotes complexity and virtuosity in movement.
L/BMA and Physical Humor
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor.
Contributed by Sarah Donohue, CLMA, MFA. Used with permission.
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor. An unexpected peek-a-boo delights a baby into laughter, the universal indicator of humor. A story is told in which the associated mental images are contradicted by an unforeseen twist at the end. With a shift in perspective, we experience humor on many perceptual levels.
This application explores the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective and suggests that incongruities in movement not only contribute to humor, but are subconsciously accessed on a kinesthetic level. While acknowledging that humor is situational and relational, my research isolates the movement of the body during a humorous event and reveals that incongruent movement patterns can explain physical humor.
Since determining what is humorous is in the funny bone of the beholder, I have selected a group of individuals whose movements are generally deemed humorous: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Rowan Atkinson, and others. I am not asking if their movement is humorous. Rather, I am assuming that it is and asking if they exhibit common movement patterns. Using the Laban/Bartenieff system, I have also analyzed the movement of humorous dance, such as the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes. Additionally, this inquiry prompts a search for humorous quotidian movement, such as someone walking into a spider web, which is difficult to spontaneously encounter and simultaneously analyze. Although the elements of humor-producing movement vary, I identify patterns of incongruity within the Laban/Bartenieff categories of Body, Effort, Shape, and Space.
Body
Which parts of the body are moved or held and how they are moved or held is culturally and socially significant. In the prototypical clown, we see the legs in external rotation, knees bent and adaptable, and a narrow torso being held in line with the head. There is often superfluous action of the lower legs and feet, and walking is initiated by spoking with the knees. Picture the gait of Charlie Chaplin. This bodily posture appears paradoxically inviting (with legs turned out) and protective (with spine and torso held). The contradictory posture contributes to a pattern of incongruence.
Body-Half and Upper-Lower Patterns of Total Body Connectivity
In the movement of physical comedians and clowns, there is a tendency for locomotion to take place in a body-half pattern instead of in the natural cross-lateral gait, perhaps an intentional indication of being less physically developed. We find familiarity, and often humor, in the body-half waddling of a penguin or toddler. Perceiving someone walk in a body-half pattern is incongruent with the naturally developed human gait of cross-laterality. Additionally, an apparent separation between the upper and lower parts of the body is a trait often present in physical humor. A common theme in cartoons involves the lower body running away from peril before the upper body gets the message to flee as well. In human form, the disassociation between the upper and lower body of physical comedians indicates an incongruity on a basic level of development, as if regions of the body are being controlled by separate forces. Monty Python's sketch “Ministry of Silly Walks” demonstrates an elaborate disconnection between body parts, with the upper and lower body often moving incongruently against one another.
Shape Flow Support and Shape Qualities
The Laban/Bartenieff category of Shape reveals meaning by focusing on the growing and shrinking of the torso and how the shaping of the body connects to Space. How we move our torsos can send very clear messages to perceivers, or, conversely, incongruent messages. If a person lengthens his torso vertically while rising with his entire form to pick an apple from a tree, the experience of all parts organizing toward place high—and the apple—is both functional and congruent. Incongruence in Shape would have the apple-picking man shorten his torso like a compressed spring while the frame of his body attempts to rise to place high. This incongruence may indicate that the mover does not physically embody efficient movement phrasing, which, to those inclined to schadenfreude, is perhaps a humorous situation. From a less vindictive perspective, incongruity between shape qualities and shape flow support is prevalent in clowning and particularly humorous in dance, where the expectation is for efficient movement patterns.
Phrasing in movement corresponds well to phrasing in written language. A movement phrase, or movement sentence, is complete and congruent when there is preparation, initiation, action, and follow through. A dart player prepares by focusing on the bull's-eye, both visually and kinesthetically. To initiate throwing the dart, she carefully pulls it back toward her shoulder before suddenly and directly sending it toward the target in the main action of the phrase. To complete the phrasing, her hand follows the pathway of the dart, guiding it empathetically to the bull's-eye. In dance, a well-executed grand jeté, or leap, is an example of congruent phrasing.
Physical humor often relies on the interruption of phrasing and the viewer's preconceived expectations being altered unpredictably, as is often utilized in the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes—a pelvic gyration in the midst of a flowing modern phrase or a giant cardboard box flying onstage to hit the dancer at the height of a graceful arabesque. Incongruities in phrasing are closely related to surprise, a key element in humor (Weems 2014, 26). Our sense-making minds are stringing together visual input to create a narrative or expected outcome. When what we believed would take place shifts unpredictably, humor is the result.
Effort
Phrasing can also be interrupted in regard to Effort. Listening to your favorite song and remembering sweet memories of the past may take you into what Laban calls passion drive (free Flow, light Weight, and sustained Time). However, an unexpected knock on the door will take you into an awake state (direct Space and sudden Time). The complete shift on the effort spectrum, from indulging qualities (free, light, sustained in this case) to condensing qualities (direct and sudden) is incongruent, surprising, and can be humorous. Stand-up comedians exhibit wonderful incongruent Effort phrasing in their verbal delivery. Conversely, congruent effort phrasing is created through effort loading. The effort is a natural progression that develops out of and returns to an established effort constellation.
However, in incongruent effort phrasing, like moving from passion drive to awake state, all the Effort qualities change at once. What was sustained becomes sudden; what was missing (Space effort) suddenly appears in direct Space. We can picture the effort phrasing making a complete shift across the effort spectrum in progressions such as walking to slipping or reading a book to being startled. In choreography, being aware of how effort phrasing falls naturally into, or out of, metered music can mean the difference between predicable musicality and delightful surprise.
Space
How the human body is organized in Space is meaningful not only in humor studies but also in everyday interaction with the environment. A congruent interaction with space allows you to get to the bus stop safely and efficiently. “Natural,” unaffected walking takes place in the sagittal plane (forward, with a little bit of up and down). In many clowning examples as well as Charlie Chaplin's walk, space is approached incongruently, by ambulating in the vertical plane (more side to side than forward).
Incongruence in Space is also revealed by countertension, which is what the body uses to balance when one slips or falls. From walking along in two spatial pulls of the sagittal plane, slipping requires the body to balance by moving into the third, previously absent spatial pull, the horizontal dimension (or some deflection of it). The need to move into a countertension is in opposition to the previous action or movement goal. Our expectations for regular locomotion are broken on many levels. While dance lives in the world of countertension, everyday actions meet extreme countertension when something unpredictable has happened—something incongruent.
As a choreographer and dance educator, my aim is not necessarily to create humorous dances. However, humor is an inroad to interpersonal connection, and my aim is to create dances with which a wide range of audiences can connect. Humor, like dance, has the capacity to be nonverbal and to reach beyond boundaries of culture, society, ability, and age (Weems 2014, 154). Infants laugh before they possess language—often they are laughing at motion. Humor is a primal human experience that we understand innately and kinesthetically.
The study of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective offers various benefits to the arts and education. Humor in the classroom serves memory retention, allowing students to create knowledge through their individual, humorous connection to learning. Understanding the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff analysis of incongruent movement patterns allows choreographers to develop innovation in their movement, audiences to access dance on a subconscious level, and everyday people to connect with each other through the kinesthetic language of humor.
Using Touch to Facilitate Body Connectivity
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch is a vulnerable and powerful experience. In the Laban/Bartenieff work, touch is not a given or an expectation. It is important to learn that you can say yes and no to touch from another person. Saying no to touch can be an empowering reminder of your ownership of and agency over your body. When working with others, ask permission to touch that includes where on their body the touch will be and what kinds of touch you will deliver. If someone decides not to be touched they can use their own hands, or you can assist them in finding other ways to experience the purpose of the touch.
The following are basic ideas for incorporating touch that are easy to learn and particularly useful for enhancing body connectivity. The types of touch discussed below are part of a larger body of work developed by Peggy Hackney and Janice Meaden with Ed Groff and Pam Schick as part of Integrated Movement Studies' “Touch for Repatterning” curriculum. Each brought other training perspectives including Body-Mind Centering, Irene Dowd's kinesthetic anatomy and neuromuscular re-education, and massage therapy to the curriculum. This is part of a much larger body of work, but this will get your started.
Being with Touch
Use this method to become present with the connection between your body and your partner's. Being with touch asks the toucher to be present with and listen to what is underneath their hands. It does not seek to do anything or ask that the person being touched do anything besides be present with what is there. Try this type of touch on the torso. As the toucher, you may want to check in with the person you are touching, asking questions like, “What are you noticing?” Or, “Is this pressure okay? Would you like more or less?” Keep the dialogue going to demonstrate that conversation about what is happening is part of the experience.
Locating Touch
Use locating touch to help your partner get a sense of where different parts of the body are sited and how they relate to other parts. Locating touch can go to one body part or slide along a pathway. It is like using your hands to say, “Focus your attention right here.” Try this type of touch to locate the hip joint or the lesser trochanter or the base of the scapula. After locating an area or part of the body, cue your partner to notice how that area relates to another area.
Sliding Touch
Locating touch can phrase into a sliding touch, where the toucher uses her hand to slide along or trace a line or connection on the body as if to bring awareness to the connection between one area and another.
Sending Touch and Receiving Touch
Use these techniques to find a connection or pathway through the body. Sending touch has directionality that give an energetic quality of sending information through the body's tissues. Receiving touch gathers or receives the sending touch somewhere else in the body. For example, try placing a hand on the sternum, and imagine you can send a message through the sternum. Place another hand on the sacrum, and imagine this hand can receive the message being sent by the top hand. The directionality in this kind of touch is clarified by the receiving touch. In this example, the hand on the sternum is sending a message in a down and back direction. Explore this type of touch with multiple pathways through the body.
Applying L/BMA to Aerial Dancing
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance.
Elizabeth Stitch
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance. Due to safety concerns and initial lack of strength, beginning aerialists often utilize spoke-like directional modes. This allows the aerialist to form a direct link between her body and the environment, or apparatus, which provides safety while she's in the air. When teaching beginning aerial students, I use this functional approach and encourage them to exactly model my steps into each skill.
Over time, I have noticed that it is difficult to break this initial pattern and begin to explore other options for changing the form of the body and connecting with the apparatus. In analyzing my personal aerial performance, I was surprised to observe my own strong preference for the directional mode, particularly the Arc-like form. While this mode can lend a more graceful feeling to a movement, it is essentially similar to the spoke-like mode in terms of the expressive statement it makes in connecting to the apparatus. In this context, both directional modes of shape change are straightforward and utilitarian, which is by no means negative, but they are expressively limited and not what I always want to convey.
One of the things I love most about Laban theory is that it gives me a map into lesser-known places in my movement signature. Following this map into the co-creative realm of carving has offered me not only a different relationship with my apparatus, but also new possibilities for movement invention. It has also guided me as a performer into the vulnerability of sharing my inner life with the audience through specific moments of shape-flow mode of shape change. With this full palette of expressive possibilities, my movement experience feels more satisfying, which keeps me coming back to my apparatus for further exploration in the air!
Perceiving Movement Through Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests.
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests. In any context, the Laban/Bartenieff lens is especially useful for observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning from, and experiencing movement.
Observing Movement
Movement happens quickly and is constantly in flux. As soon one movement ends, another has already begun, making comprehensive and accurate observations of movement difficult. Observing what is happening in movement is a common use of the Laban/Bartenieff framework. Using L/BMA to observe movement allows the observer to be precise and specific about what is happening, it also encourages the observer to recognize how movement calls forth feelings and associations that make it expressive. This is facilitated by the multiple aspects of the L/BMA lens, which enable the observer to comb through movement for its elemental parts and then integrate those parts together towards a larger whole. The ability to be precise in one's observations of movement, despite the movement's complexity, is important to many fields that study and address movement.
Describing Movement
Translating movement into words can feel like juggling two disparate systems of experience. Movement is felt, kinesthetic, and constantly morphing. Language is verbal, intellectual, and relatively durable—words do not change in the same moment they are spoken. Yes, language evolves and words change meaning overtime, but not so fast that we cannot keep up with them. Movement is infinitely faster and more difficult to “pin down”; as soon as you realize what is there, it has passed. Finding words that convey the experienced and changing nature of movement while being precise, accurate, and evocative can be a challenge. In many fields that involve movement, the ability to accurately describe what is happening is essential to conveying how movement is manifesting and how it is important in the context. L/BMA offers a specific lexicon for articulating human movement; explaining these terms makes up the majority of part II of this book. Of course, the L/BMA terminology is probably unfamiliar to those who have not studied this material, so part of using L/BMA is knowing how to translate the specialized language into words that inspire movement, no matter how much or how little L/BMA terminology the other person knows.
Coaching and Teaching Movement
For those who coach and teach movement, the act of facilitating growth and improvement involves many aspects of perceiving movement. The coach or teacher analyzes what is happening in relationship to what is desired, and then communicates that information, confirming what is serving the mover and offering strategies for growth. That information is then integrated into the movement, and then, the cycle begins again, including observing how the new information impacted the movement. This complex process is aided by the clear framework for observation, description, and analysis provided by Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis.
Making Meaning from Movement
The biological body is the basis for movement; it produces and makes movement possible, and is itself formed by movement. Yet, the picture of movement in human life is far more complex than that of a biological body moving from synaptic impulses. From the moment of conception, the body is molded by movement, and movement informs the ongoing and shifting perceptions of the self (Bryan 2018). Throughout the human life, movement is meaningful. Movement arises to meet needs: to get closer to what is desired or to create distance from what is not desired, to express inner thoughts and desires, and to accomplish the tasks that maintain and give meaning to life. Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis allows those who use it to address the meaningful aspects of movement while honoring the context and sequencing of movement.
Making meaning from movement is different from interpreting movement, and there is a time for both. People are always making meaning from movement, usually unconsciously—for example, someone might interpret how her father moves when he is tired or when he is angry. Making meaning emphasizes the influence of the observer in how movement is understood. Interpretation is about seeking to understand someone else's meaning, as if an observer could use movement in order to “read the mover's mind.” In the former, the observer is an active participant in making meaning; in the latter, movement is interpreted without recognizing the influence of the interpreter, potentially leading to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. For example, crossing the arms or nodding the head means different things to different people, in different cultures and contexts, and any interpretation one might place upon either of those actions will necessarily change with each mover and each context. I highlight this distinction to emphasize that L/BMA does not provide a dictionary or one-to-one correlation between a movement and “what it means” in any general sense. Movement always happens in a context, and our analysis of any particular movement must honor the particular mover within the particular context, as well as the complexity of what happened and how it happened in movement.
Experiencing Movement
Movement is a constant. Experiencing movement within the Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis framework can heighten and refine your awareness of a movement as you do it, and can help you recognize your preferences in movement. It can also help you gain new options in your movement. The specificity of the Laban/Bartenieff framework heightens sensation to bring greater clarity in movement so that you can manifest what you intend. When you bring your L/BMA knowledge to your lived experiences, you will notice new things about your movement, gaining a greater sense of presence, a sense of being “in your body.” As you work through the Laban/Bartenieff system you will generate awareness of your personal preferences and patterns for movement. As you learn what you like to do, you can also “style stretch,” that is develop movements that you have been less likely to inhabit, thus expanding your range of physicality. You'll increase your expressive range and functional skills.
All of the above—observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning, and experiencing—are ways of perceiving movement. The Laban/Bartenieff framework is fundamentally about creating conscious and effective inroads to the heightened perception of movement. As you use L/BMA to perceive movement in your life, you may feel as though you are learning a new language, and in some ways you are. Your understanding of movement will shift as you apply the Laban/Bartenieff framework to your life. You may notice that you can see movement with greater distinction and that you have new words and approaches to talking about it. You may also notice that you are better able to organize and frame your pursuits around movement, and that you have new options for being creative with your movement goals. Finally, you may notice that as a mover you are more prepared to increase the range of movements you execute and enjoy.
Total Body Connectivity—Breath Patterning
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop.
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop. It is fundamental to life and among our first experiences upon entering the world. Before an infant's first breaths, the fetus practices the movements of breathing in utero, as the mother breathes for the fetus by sending oxygen through the umbilical cord.
Figure 3.1 Breath symbol.
For an infant, breath affords sensation of the inside of the body, including the body's inner volume. Through breathing you feel the internal body growing and shrinking through the swelling of the inhalation and the contracting of the exhalation. The gentle expansion and contraction of the breath's rhythm provides the basic material of human life, oxygen, and the important release of carbon dioxide.
Breath patterning assists the coordination of the internal body that is vital in human movement. Functionally, every inhalation and exhalation is a complex event. Upon inhaling, the five lobes of the lungs expand to engulf the heart and welcome oxygen. The diaphragm is pulled downward toward the pelvis by the central tendon, filling up like an inverted hot-air balloon (see figure 3.2). Oxygen is taken into the body via the lungs, where it is transferred through small air sacs called alveoli into the blood, which is pumped throughout the body by the heart—a process that allows every cell in the body to respire. Carbon dioxide is released via exhalation, eliminating waste products. As you exhale, the central tendon releases, the diaphragm contracts upward, and the pelvic floor moves up, back, and in. Deliberately bringing your awareness to your breath as support for your movement is a precursor to whole-body coordination and virtuosity in movement. This is true for movers of all levels as breath allows the entire body to be supported from within in complex coordination.
Figure 3.2 Lungs, diaphragm, and central tendon, at the height of exhalation and inhalation
Illustrated by Sydney P. Celio.
As long as there is life, breath is present; it is the baseline of life force, the river on which all movement and expression runs. As an adult, revisiting the breath pattern is a useful way of connecting with sensation. Tuning into sensation within the body offers a way of becoming present within yourself and identifying what is needed in the moment. As a way of checking in with yourself, you can revisit the breath pattern when you are overstimulated, exhausted, or stressed; observing your breath can sooth what feels overwhelming. You may notice your breath changing with your emotional states. Agitation may shorten or truncate the breath, and rest may deepen it. You can alter and shift “emotional tone” by inviting the breath. The breath pattern is a reminder that you have the choice to affect your feelings and thereby your responses. Paying attention to the sensation of breath with its wave-like, rolling inhalations and exhalations can release muscle tension associated with stress.
Notice how the breath pulses inside of your body. Sensing the breath may bring you home to yourself. Many spiritual and centering practices, like meditation and stress reduction, use a focus on the breath as a key principle because it brings centeredness. It is a way of returning to a fundamental aspect of being alive. When stressed or feeling distanced from yourself, connecting to the breath can help you reconnect to yourself and feel calmer and more present.
Breath also provides access to the sense of yielding, bonding, and being with that will be discussed in depth later in this chapter. Imagine that as you attend to your breath you can soften the surfaces of your body and bond with the surfaces of support around you.
Breath brings with it a sense of the connection between one's inner and outer worlds, an experience that can be life-giving and profoundly essential. The exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide changes the torso as it expands and contracts. Allow this internal to growing and shrinking to support and fill your movement. Breath support is a concept used by Irmgard Bartenieff to illustrate the breath's ability to support and enliven full-bodied movement.
Visiting the breath pattern can provide another way of getting ready for activity. Breath supports movement. To accompany and support movement, the breath can be activated and vigorous, or soft, sustained, and elongated. Beginning an activity by getting the breath going is like preparing the insides of the body for what will later become activated outwardly. By using breath as part of a warm-up, you activate sensations of the internal three-dimensional support for movement, and you recruit the tissues of the body to be responsive and pliable.
For many adults who lead sedentary lives, the torso can feel tense and stuck, while their attention is directed outward. Attending to the flow of breath by directing attention inward can help them find movement and ease in the torso. When tension headaches or fatigue arises due to limited and contained movement, a person can deliberately deepen the flow of breath to nourish tissue and find new movement potential throughout the torso. To help you visualize the flow of breath, imagine a surfer riding a wave into shore. Like the wave that catches the surfboard, “catch” your exhalation and “ride” its undulating pattern through your body, noticing how and where it moves. You can also explore the feeling of being filled and expanded by the inhalation.
Bringing breath patterning into the forefront of your movement gives you the opportunity to let breath guide and initiate and influence the movement. In this way, the breath stimulates support of the core, the supple undulations of the spine, and massages the connection between upper and lower body. Fully receiving the exhalation allows for the area around the belly button to gather and hollow inward toward the organs, providing the first inklings of what will come next in movement.
As an expression of inner life, breath patterning has an audible nature, revealed in sounding and speaking. Every verbal or sounded expression rides on the breath; we can either use it fully or diminish and stunt it. An example of breath support in sound is the grandeur of passionate song or chanted liturgy; an example in which breath struggles to support us is hyperventilation. As the expression of inner life, another person's use of breath allows us to perceive the states of his or her thoughts and feelings. Listening to someone talk and sensing the congruence between breath, voice, and body gives the sense that they are coming from a grounded, centered, and committed place. We sense them as believable.
Finally, breath patterning supports big, exuberant, and virtuosic movement. It increases the strength of a boxer's punch or the quick burst of a swimmer's takeoff. The horseback rider uses her breathing to control and communicate to the horse, and the dancer exhales as he prepares to turn.
Explore the Breath Pattern
Check in with your breath. No need to boss it around. Bring your attention to what is currently happening with your breath, and allow it to change as it will. Notice the movement your breath is inspiring in your body. Can you send breath to areas that feel tight or bound up to change the tension of your tissues? Follow and ride the breath pathway like you might follow and ride a wave. Notice where in your body the organs and tissue grow with your breath, and where your internal world is softening or shrinking. Take some time here, and notice how you feel and what this experience has brought. Try singing or sounding the song of your breath. Have your feelings shifted? Where might actively focusing on your breath patterning be useful for you? How might your awareness serve you in your daily life?
Key Points for the Breath Pattern
- Connecting to breath is a way of connecting to and centering the self.
- Breath brings oxygen to the blood and tissues, and releases carbon dioxide waste.
- Breath is the infant's first experience of the inner volume of the body.
- The end of the exhalation, when the breath empties and the diaphragm floats upward, sets up the core-softening necessary for the next pattern.
- Breath support enlivens movement throughout the whole body and promotes complexity and virtuosity in movement.
L/BMA and Physical Humor
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor.
Contributed by Sarah Donohue, CLMA, MFA. Used with permission.
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor. An unexpected peek-a-boo delights a baby into laughter, the universal indicator of humor. A story is told in which the associated mental images are contradicted by an unforeseen twist at the end. With a shift in perspective, we experience humor on many perceptual levels.
This application explores the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective and suggests that incongruities in movement not only contribute to humor, but are subconsciously accessed on a kinesthetic level. While acknowledging that humor is situational and relational, my research isolates the movement of the body during a humorous event and reveals that incongruent movement patterns can explain physical humor.
Since determining what is humorous is in the funny bone of the beholder, I have selected a group of individuals whose movements are generally deemed humorous: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Rowan Atkinson, and others. I am not asking if their movement is humorous. Rather, I am assuming that it is and asking if they exhibit common movement patterns. Using the Laban/Bartenieff system, I have also analyzed the movement of humorous dance, such as the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes. Additionally, this inquiry prompts a search for humorous quotidian movement, such as someone walking into a spider web, which is difficult to spontaneously encounter and simultaneously analyze. Although the elements of humor-producing movement vary, I identify patterns of incongruity within the Laban/Bartenieff categories of Body, Effort, Shape, and Space.
Body
Which parts of the body are moved or held and how they are moved or held is culturally and socially significant. In the prototypical clown, we see the legs in external rotation, knees bent and adaptable, and a narrow torso being held in line with the head. There is often superfluous action of the lower legs and feet, and walking is initiated by spoking with the knees. Picture the gait of Charlie Chaplin. This bodily posture appears paradoxically inviting (with legs turned out) and protective (with spine and torso held). The contradictory posture contributes to a pattern of incongruence.
Body-Half and Upper-Lower Patterns of Total Body Connectivity
In the movement of physical comedians and clowns, there is a tendency for locomotion to take place in a body-half pattern instead of in the natural cross-lateral gait, perhaps an intentional indication of being less physically developed. We find familiarity, and often humor, in the body-half waddling of a penguin or toddler. Perceiving someone walk in a body-half pattern is incongruent with the naturally developed human gait of cross-laterality. Additionally, an apparent separation between the upper and lower parts of the body is a trait often present in physical humor. A common theme in cartoons involves the lower body running away from peril before the upper body gets the message to flee as well. In human form, the disassociation between the upper and lower body of physical comedians indicates an incongruity on a basic level of development, as if regions of the body are being controlled by separate forces. Monty Python's sketch “Ministry of Silly Walks” demonstrates an elaborate disconnection between body parts, with the upper and lower body often moving incongruently against one another.
Shape Flow Support and Shape Qualities
The Laban/Bartenieff category of Shape reveals meaning by focusing on the growing and shrinking of the torso and how the shaping of the body connects to Space. How we move our torsos can send very clear messages to perceivers, or, conversely, incongruent messages. If a person lengthens his torso vertically while rising with his entire form to pick an apple from a tree, the experience of all parts organizing toward place high—and the apple—is both functional and congruent. Incongruence in Shape would have the apple-picking man shorten his torso like a compressed spring while the frame of his body attempts to rise to place high. This incongruence may indicate that the mover does not physically embody efficient movement phrasing, which, to those inclined to schadenfreude, is perhaps a humorous situation. From a less vindictive perspective, incongruity between shape qualities and shape flow support is prevalent in clowning and particularly humorous in dance, where the expectation is for efficient movement patterns.
Phrasing in movement corresponds well to phrasing in written language. A movement phrase, or movement sentence, is complete and congruent when there is preparation, initiation, action, and follow through. A dart player prepares by focusing on the bull's-eye, both visually and kinesthetically. To initiate throwing the dart, she carefully pulls it back toward her shoulder before suddenly and directly sending it toward the target in the main action of the phrase. To complete the phrasing, her hand follows the pathway of the dart, guiding it empathetically to the bull's-eye. In dance, a well-executed grand jeté, or leap, is an example of congruent phrasing.
Physical humor often relies on the interruption of phrasing and the viewer's preconceived expectations being altered unpredictably, as is often utilized in the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes—a pelvic gyration in the midst of a flowing modern phrase or a giant cardboard box flying onstage to hit the dancer at the height of a graceful arabesque. Incongruities in phrasing are closely related to surprise, a key element in humor (Weems 2014, 26). Our sense-making minds are stringing together visual input to create a narrative or expected outcome. When what we believed would take place shifts unpredictably, humor is the result.
Effort
Phrasing can also be interrupted in regard to Effort. Listening to your favorite song and remembering sweet memories of the past may take you into what Laban calls passion drive (free Flow, light Weight, and sustained Time). However, an unexpected knock on the door will take you into an awake state (direct Space and sudden Time). The complete shift on the effort spectrum, from indulging qualities (free, light, sustained in this case) to condensing qualities (direct and sudden) is incongruent, surprising, and can be humorous. Stand-up comedians exhibit wonderful incongruent Effort phrasing in their verbal delivery. Conversely, congruent effort phrasing is created through effort loading. The effort is a natural progression that develops out of and returns to an established effort constellation.
However, in incongruent effort phrasing, like moving from passion drive to awake state, all the Effort qualities change at once. What was sustained becomes sudden; what was missing (Space effort) suddenly appears in direct Space. We can picture the effort phrasing making a complete shift across the effort spectrum in progressions such as walking to slipping or reading a book to being startled. In choreography, being aware of how effort phrasing falls naturally into, or out of, metered music can mean the difference between predicable musicality and delightful surprise.
Space
How the human body is organized in Space is meaningful not only in humor studies but also in everyday interaction with the environment. A congruent interaction with space allows you to get to the bus stop safely and efficiently. “Natural,” unaffected walking takes place in the sagittal plane (forward, with a little bit of up and down). In many clowning examples as well as Charlie Chaplin's walk, space is approached incongruently, by ambulating in the vertical plane (more side to side than forward).
Incongruence in Space is also revealed by countertension, which is what the body uses to balance when one slips or falls. From walking along in two spatial pulls of the sagittal plane, slipping requires the body to balance by moving into the third, previously absent spatial pull, the horizontal dimension (or some deflection of it). The need to move into a countertension is in opposition to the previous action or movement goal. Our expectations for regular locomotion are broken on many levels. While dance lives in the world of countertension, everyday actions meet extreme countertension when something unpredictable has happened—something incongruent.
As a choreographer and dance educator, my aim is not necessarily to create humorous dances. However, humor is an inroad to interpersonal connection, and my aim is to create dances with which a wide range of audiences can connect. Humor, like dance, has the capacity to be nonverbal and to reach beyond boundaries of culture, society, ability, and age (Weems 2014, 154). Infants laugh before they possess language—often they are laughing at motion. Humor is a primal human experience that we understand innately and kinesthetically.
The study of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective offers various benefits to the arts and education. Humor in the classroom serves memory retention, allowing students to create knowledge through their individual, humorous connection to learning. Understanding the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff analysis of incongruent movement patterns allows choreographers to develop innovation in their movement, audiences to access dance on a subconscious level, and everyday people to connect with each other through the kinesthetic language of humor.
Using Touch to Facilitate Body Connectivity
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch is a vulnerable and powerful experience. In the Laban/Bartenieff work, touch is not a given or an expectation. It is important to learn that you can say yes and no to touch from another person. Saying no to touch can be an empowering reminder of your ownership of and agency over your body. When working with others, ask permission to touch that includes where on their body the touch will be and what kinds of touch you will deliver. If someone decides not to be touched they can use their own hands, or you can assist them in finding other ways to experience the purpose of the touch.
The following are basic ideas for incorporating touch that are easy to learn and particularly useful for enhancing body connectivity. The types of touch discussed below are part of a larger body of work developed by Peggy Hackney and Janice Meaden with Ed Groff and Pam Schick as part of Integrated Movement Studies' “Touch for Repatterning” curriculum. Each brought other training perspectives including Body-Mind Centering, Irene Dowd's kinesthetic anatomy and neuromuscular re-education, and massage therapy to the curriculum. This is part of a much larger body of work, but this will get your started.
Being with Touch
Use this method to become present with the connection between your body and your partner's. Being with touch asks the toucher to be present with and listen to what is underneath their hands. It does not seek to do anything or ask that the person being touched do anything besides be present with what is there. Try this type of touch on the torso. As the toucher, you may want to check in with the person you are touching, asking questions like, “What are you noticing?” Or, “Is this pressure okay? Would you like more or less?” Keep the dialogue going to demonstrate that conversation about what is happening is part of the experience.
Locating Touch
Use locating touch to help your partner get a sense of where different parts of the body are sited and how they relate to other parts. Locating touch can go to one body part or slide along a pathway. It is like using your hands to say, “Focus your attention right here.” Try this type of touch to locate the hip joint or the lesser trochanter or the base of the scapula. After locating an area or part of the body, cue your partner to notice how that area relates to another area.
Sliding Touch
Locating touch can phrase into a sliding touch, where the toucher uses her hand to slide along or trace a line or connection on the body as if to bring awareness to the connection between one area and another.
Sending Touch and Receiving Touch
Use these techniques to find a connection or pathway through the body. Sending touch has directionality that give an energetic quality of sending information through the body's tissues. Receiving touch gathers or receives the sending touch somewhere else in the body. For example, try placing a hand on the sternum, and imagine you can send a message through the sternum. Place another hand on the sacrum, and imagine this hand can receive the message being sent by the top hand. The directionality in this kind of touch is clarified by the receiving touch. In this example, the hand on the sternum is sending a message in a down and back direction. Explore this type of touch with multiple pathways through the body.
Applying L/BMA to Aerial Dancing
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance.
Elizabeth Stitch
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance. Due to safety concerns and initial lack of strength, beginning aerialists often utilize spoke-like directional modes. This allows the aerialist to form a direct link between her body and the environment, or apparatus, which provides safety while she's in the air. When teaching beginning aerial students, I use this functional approach and encourage them to exactly model my steps into each skill.
Over time, I have noticed that it is difficult to break this initial pattern and begin to explore other options for changing the form of the body and connecting with the apparatus. In analyzing my personal aerial performance, I was surprised to observe my own strong preference for the directional mode, particularly the Arc-like form. While this mode can lend a more graceful feeling to a movement, it is essentially similar to the spoke-like mode in terms of the expressive statement it makes in connecting to the apparatus. In this context, both directional modes of shape change are straightforward and utilitarian, which is by no means negative, but they are expressively limited and not what I always want to convey.
One of the things I love most about Laban theory is that it gives me a map into lesser-known places in my movement signature. Following this map into the co-creative realm of carving has offered me not only a different relationship with my apparatus, but also new possibilities for movement invention. It has also guided me as a performer into the vulnerability of sharing my inner life with the audience through specific moments of shape-flow mode of shape change. With this full palette of expressive possibilities, my movement experience feels more satisfying, which keeps me coming back to my apparatus for further exploration in the air!
Perceiving Movement Through Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests.
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests. In any context, the Laban/Bartenieff lens is especially useful for observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning from, and experiencing movement.
Observing Movement
Movement happens quickly and is constantly in flux. As soon one movement ends, another has already begun, making comprehensive and accurate observations of movement difficult. Observing what is happening in movement is a common use of the Laban/Bartenieff framework. Using L/BMA to observe movement allows the observer to be precise and specific about what is happening, it also encourages the observer to recognize how movement calls forth feelings and associations that make it expressive. This is facilitated by the multiple aspects of the L/BMA lens, which enable the observer to comb through movement for its elemental parts and then integrate those parts together towards a larger whole. The ability to be precise in one's observations of movement, despite the movement's complexity, is important to many fields that study and address movement.
Describing Movement
Translating movement into words can feel like juggling two disparate systems of experience. Movement is felt, kinesthetic, and constantly morphing. Language is verbal, intellectual, and relatively durable—words do not change in the same moment they are spoken. Yes, language evolves and words change meaning overtime, but not so fast that we cannot keep up with them. Movement is infinitely faster and more difficult to “pin down”; as soon as you realize what is there, it has passed. Finding words that convey the experienced and changing nature of movement while being precise, accurate, and evocative can be a challenge. In many fields that involve movement, the ability to accurately describe what is happening is essential to conveying how movement is manifesting and how it is important in the context. L/BMA offers a specific lexicon for articulating human movement; explaining these terms makes up the majority of part II of this book. Of course, the L/BMA terminology is probably unfamiliar to those who have not studied this material, so part of using L/BMA is knowing how to translate the specialized language into words that inspire movement, no matter how much or how little L/BMA terminology the other person knows.
Coaching and Teaching Movement
For those who coach and teach movement, the act of facilitating growth and improvement involves many aspects of perceiving movement. The coach or teacher analyzes what is happening in relationship to what is desired, and then communicates that information, confirming what is serving the mover and offering strategies for growth. That information is then integrated into the movement, and then, the cycle begins again, including observing how the new information impacted the movement. This complex process is aided by the clear framework for observation, description, and analysis provided by Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis.
Making Meaning from Movement
The biological body is the basis for movement; it produces and makes movement possible, and is itself formed by movement. Yet, the picture of movement in human life is far more complex than that of a biological body moving from synaptic impulses. From the moment of conception, the body is molded by movement, and movement informs the ongoing and shifting perceptions of the self (Bryan 2018). Throughout the human life, movement is meaningful. Movement arises to meet needs: to get closer to what is desired or to create distance from what is not desired, to express inner thoughts and desires, and to accomplish the tasks that maintain and give meaning to life. Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis allows those who use it to address the meaningful aspects of movement while honoring the context and sequencing of movement.
Making meaning from movement is different from interpreting movement, and there is a time for both. People are always making meaning from movement, usually unconsciously—for example, someone might interpret how her father moves when he is tired or when he is angry. Making meaning emphasizes the influence of the observer in how movement is understood. Interpretation is about seeking to understand someone else's meaning, as if an observer could use movement in order to “read the mover's mind.” In the former, the observer is an active participant in making meaning; in the latter, movement is interpreted without recognizing the influence of the interpreter, potentially leading to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. For example, crossing the arms or nodding the head means different things to different people, in different cultures and contexts, and any interpretation one might place upon either of those actions will necessarily change with each mover and each context. I highlight this distinction to emphasize that L/BMA does not provide a dictionary or one-to-one correlation between a movement and “what it means” in any general sense. Movement always happens in a context, and our analysis of any particular movement must honor the particular mover within the particular context, as well as the complexity of what happened and how it happened in movement.
Experiencing Movement
Movement is a constant. Experiencing movement within the Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis framework can heighten and refine your awareness of a movement as you do it, and can help you recognize your preferences in movement. It can also help you gain new options in your movement. The specificity of the Laban/Bartenieff framework heightens sensation to bring greater clarity in movement so that you can manifest what you intend. When you bring your L/BMA knowledge to your lived experiences, you will notice new things about your movement, gaining a greater sense of presence, a sense of being “in your body.” As you work through the Laban/Bartenieff system you will generate awareness of your personal preferences and patterns for movement. As you learn what you like to do, you can also “style stretch,” that is develop movements that you have been less likely to inhabit, thus expanding your range of physicality. You'll increase your expressive range and functional skills.
All of the above—observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning, and experiencing—are ways of perceiving movement. The Laban/Bartenieff framework is fundamentally about creating conscious and effective inroads to the heightened perception of movement. As you use L/BMA to perceive movement in your life, you may feel as though you are learning a new language, and in some ways you are. Your understanding of movement will shift as you apply the Laban/Bartenieff framework to your life. You may notice that you can see movement with greater distinction and that you have new words and approaches to talking about it. You may also notice that you are better able to organize and frame your pursuits around movement, and that you have new options for being creative with your movement goals. Finally, you may notice that as a mover you are more prepared to increase the range of movements you execute and enjoy.
Total Body Connectivity—Breath Patterning
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop.
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop. It is fundamental to life and among our first experiences upon entering the world. Before an infant's first breaths, the fetus practices the movements of breathing in utero, as the mother breathes for the fetus by sending oxygen through the umbilical cord.
Figure 3.1 Breath symbol.
For an infant, breath affords sensation of the inside of the body, including the body's inner volume. Through breathing you feel the internal body growing and shrinking through the swelling of the inhalation and the contracting of the exhalation. The gentle expansion and contraction of the breath's rhythm provides the basic material of human life, oxygen, and the important release of carbon dioxide.
Breath patterning assists the coordination of the internal body that is vital in human movement. Functionally, every inhalation and exhalation is a complex event. Upon inhaling, the five lobes of the lungs expand to engulf the heart and welcome oxygen. The diaphragm is pulled downward toward the pelvis by the central tendon, filling up like an inverted hot-air balloon (see figure 3.2). Oxygen is taken into the body via the lungs, where it is transferred through small air sacs called alveoli into the blood, which is pumped throughout the body by the heart—a process that allows every cell in the body to respire. Carbon dioxide is released via exhalation, eliminating waste products. As you exhale, the central tendon releases, the diaphragm contracts upward, and the pelvic floor moves up, back, and in. Deliberately bringing your awareness to your breath as support for your movement is a precursor to whole-body coordination and virtuosity in movement. This is true for movers of all levels as breath allows the entire body to be supported from within in complex coordination.
Figure 3.2 Lungs, diaphragm, and central tendon, at the height of exhalation and inhalation
Illustrated by Sydney P. Celio.
As long as there is life, breath is present; it is the baseline of life force, the river on which all movement and expression runs. As an adult, revisiting the breath pattern is a useful way of connecting with sensation. Tuning into sensation within the body offers a way of becoming present within yourself and identifying what is needed in the moment. As a way of checking in with yourself, you can revisit the breath pattern when you are overstimulated, exhausted, or stressed; observing your breath can sooth what feels overwhelming. You may notice your breath changing with your emotional states. Agitation may shorten or truncate the breath, and rest may deepen it. You can alter and shift “emotional tone” by inviting the breath. The breath pattern is a reminder that you have the choice to affect your feelings and thereby your responses. Paying attention to the sensation of breath with its wave-like, rolling inhalations and exhalations can release muscle tension associated with stress.
Notice how the breath pulses inside of your body. Sensing the breath may bring you home to yourself. Many spiritual and centering practices, like meditation and stress reduction, use a focus on the breath as a key principle because it brings centeredness. It is a way of returning to a fundamental aspect of being alive. When stressed or feeling distanced from yourself, connecting to the breath can help you reconnect to yourself and feel calmer and more present.
Breath also provides access to the sense of yielding, bonding, and being with that will be discussed in depth later in this chapter. Imagine that as you attend to your breath you can soften the surfaces of your body and bond with the surfaces of support around you.
Breath brings with it a sense of the connection between one's inner and outer worlds, an experience that can be life-giving and profoundly essential. The exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide changes the torso as it expands and contracts. Allow this internal to growing and shrinking to support and fill your movement. Breath support is a concept used by Irmgard Bartenieff to illustrate the breath's ability to support and enliven full-bodied movement.
Visiting the breath pattern can provide another way of getting ready for activity. Breath supports movement. To accompany and support movement, the breath can be activated and vigorous, or soft, sustained, and elongated. Beginning an activity by getting the breath going is like preparing the insides of the body for what will later become activated outwardly. By using breath as part of a warm-up, you activate sensations of the internal three-dimensional support for movement, and you recruit the tissues of the body to be responsive and pliable.
For many adults who lead sedentary lives, the torso can feel tense and stuck, while their attention is directed outward. Attending to the flow of breath by directing attention inward can help them find movement and ease in the torso. When tension headaches or fatigue arises due to limited and contained movement, a person can deliberately deepen the flow of breath to nourish tissue and find new movement potential throughout the torso. To help you visualize the flow of breath, imagine a surfer riding a wave into shore. Like the wave that catches the surfboard, “catch” your exhalation and “ride” its undulating pattern through your body, noticing how and where it moves. You can also explore the feeling of being filled and expanded by the inhalation.
Bringing breath patterning into the forefront of your movement gives you the opportunity to let breath guide and initiate and influence the movement. In this way, the breath stimulates support of the core, the supple undulations of the spine, and massages the connection between upper and lower body. Fully receiving the exhalation allows for the area around the belly button to gather and hollow inward toward the organs, providing the first inklings of what will come next in movement.
As an expression of inner life, breath patterning has an audible nature, revealed in sounding and speaking. Every verbal or sounded expression rides on the breath; we can either use it fully or diminish and stunt it. An example of breath support in sound is the grandeur of passionate song or chanted liturgy; an example in which breath struggles to support us is hyperventilation. As the expression of inner life, another person's use of breath allows us to perceive the states of his or her thoughts and feelings. Listening to someone talk and sensing the congruence between breath, voice, and body gives the sense that they are coming from a grounded, centered, and committed place. We sense them as believable.
Finally, breath patterning supports big, exuberant, and virtuosic movement. It increases the strength of a boxer's punch or the quick burst of a swimmer's takeoff. The horseback rider uses her breathing to control and communicate to the horse, and the dancer exhales as he prepares to turn.
Explore the Breath Pattern
Check in with your breath. No need to boss it around. Bring your attention to what is currently happening with your breath, and allow it to change as it will. Notice the movement your breath is inspiring in your body. Can you send breath to areas that feel tight or bound up to change the tension of your tissues? Follow and ride the breath pathway like you might follow and ride a wave. Notice where in your body the organs and tissue grow with your breath, and where your internal world is softening or shrinking. Take some time here, and notice how you feel and what this experience has brought. Try singing or sounding the song of your breath. Have your feelings shifted? Where might actively focusing on your breath patterning be useful for you? How might your awareness serve you in your daily life?
Key Points for the Breath Pattern
- Connecting to breath is a way of connecting to and centering the self.
- Breath brings oxygen to the blood and tissues, and releases carbon dioxide waste.
- Breath is the infant's first experience of the inner volume of the body.
- The end of the exhalation, when the breath empties and the diaphragm floats upward, sets up the core-softening necessary for the next pattern.
- Breath support enlivens movement throughout the whole body and promotes complexity and virtuosity in movement.
L/BMA and Physical Humor
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor.
Contributed by Sarah Donohue, CLMA, MFA. Used with permission.
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor. An unexpected peek-a-boo delights a baby into laughter, the universal indicator of humor. A story is told in which the associated mental images are contradicted by an unforeseen twist at the end. With a shift in perspective, we experience humor on many perceptual levels.
This application explores the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective and suggests that incongruities in movement not only contribute to humor, but are subconsciously accessed on a kinesthetic level. While acknowledging that humor is situational and relational, my research isolates the movement of the body during a humorous event and reveals that incongruent movement patterns can explain physical humor.
Since determining what is humorous is in the funny bone of the beholder, I have selected a group of individuals whose movements are generally deemed humorous: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Rowan Atkinson, and others. I am not asking if their movement is humorous. Rather, I am assuming that it is and asking if they exhibit common movement patterns. Using the Laban/Bartenieff system, I have also analyzed the movement of humorous dance, such as the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes. Additionally, this inquiry prompts a search for humorous quotidian movement, such as someone walking into a spider web, which is difficult to spontaneously encounter and simultaneously analyze. Although the elements of humor-producing movement vary, I identify patterns of incongruity within the Laban/Bartenieff categories of Body, Effort, Shape, and Space.
Body
Which parts of the body are moved or held and how they are moved or held is culturally and socially significant. In the prototypical clown, we see the legs in external rotation, knees bent and adaptable, and a narrow torso being held in line with the head. There is often superfluous action of the lower legs and feet, and walking is initiated by spoking with the knees. Picture the gait of Charlie Chaplin. This bodily posture appears paradoxically inviting (with legs turned out) and protective (with spine and torso held). The contradictory posture contributes to a pattern of incongruence.
Body-Half and Upper-Lower Patterns of Total Body Connectivity
In the movement of physical comedians and clowns, there is a tendency for locomotion to take place in a body-half pattern instead of in the natural cross-lateral gait, perhaps an intentional indication of being less physically developed. We find familiarity, and often humor, in the body-half waddling of a penguin or toddler. Perceiving someone walk in a body-half pattern is incongruent with the naturally developed human gait of cross-laterality. Additionally, an apparent separation between the upper and lower parts of the body is a trait often present in physical humor. A common theme in cartoons involves the lower body running away from peril before the upper body gets the message to flee as well. In human form, the disassociation between the upper and lower body of physical comedians indicates an incongruity on a basic level of development, as if regions of the body are being controlled by separate forces. Monty Python's sketch “Ministry of Silly Walks” demonstrates an elaborate disconnection between body parts, with the upper and lower body often moving incongruently against one another.
Shape Flow Support and Shape Qualities
The Laban/Bartenieff category of Shape reveals meaning by focusing on the growing and shrinking of the torso and how the shaping of the body connects to Space. How we move our torsos can send very clear messages to perceivers, or, conversely, incongruent messages. If a person lengthens his torso vertically while rising with his entire form to pick an apple from a tree, the experience of all parts organizing toward place high—and the apple—is both functional and congruent. Incongruence in Shape would have the apple-picking man shorten his torso like a compressed spring while the frame of his body attempts to rise to place high. This incongruence may indicate that the mover does not physically embody efficient movement phrasing, which, to those inclined to schadenfreude, is perhaps a humorous situation. From a less vindictive perspective, incongruity between shape qualities and shape flow support is prevalent in clowning and particularly humorous in dance, where the expectation is for efficient movement patterns.
Phrasing in movement corresponds well to phrasing in written language. A movement phrase, or movement sentence, is complete and congruent when there is preparation, initiation, action, and follow through. A dart player prepares by focusing on the bull's-eye, both visually and kinesthetically. To initiate throwing the dart, she carefully pulls it back toward her shoulder before suddenly and directly sending it toward the target in the main action of the phrase. To complete the phrasing, her hand follows the pathway of the dart, guiding it empathetically to the bull's-eye. In dance, a well-executed grand jeté, or leap, is an example of congruent phrasing.
Physical humor often relies on the interruption of phrasing and the viewer's preconceived expectations being altered unpredictably, as is often utilized in the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes—a pelvic gyration in the midst of a flowing modern phrase or a giant cardboard box flying onstage to hit the dancer at the height of a graceful arabesque. Incongruities in phrasing are closely related to surprise, a key element in humor (Weems 2014, 26). Our sense-making minds are stringing together visual input to create a narrative or expected outcome. When what we believed would take place shifts unpredictably, humor is the result.
Effort
Phrasing can also be interrupted in regard to Effort. Listening to your favorite song and remembering sweet memories of the past may take you into what Laban calls passion drive (free Flow, light Weight, and sustained Time). However, an unexpected knock on the door will take you into an awake state (direct Space and sudden Time). The complete shift on the effort spectrum, from indulging qualities (free, light, sustained in this case) to condensing qualities (direct and sudden) is incongruent, surprising, and can be humorous. Stand-up comedians exhibit wonderful incongruent Effort phrasing in their verbal delivery. Conversely, congruent effort phrasing is created through effort loading. The effort is a natural progression that develops out of and returns to an established effort constellation.
However, in incongruent effort phrasing, like moving from passion drive to awake state, all the Effort qualities change at once. What was sustained becomes sudden; what was missing (Space effort) suddenly appears in direct Space. We can picture the effort phrasing making a complete shift across the effort spectrum in progressions such as walking to slipping or reading a book to being startled. In choreography, being aware of how effort phrasing falls naturally into, or out of, metered music can mean the difference between predicable musicality and delightful surprise.
Space
How the human body is organized in Space is meaningful not only in humor studies but also in everyday interaction with the environment. A congruent interaction with space allows you to get to the bus stop safely and efficiently. “Natural,” unaffected walking takes place in the sagittal plane (forward, with a little bit of up and down). In many clowning examples as well as Charlie Chaplin's walk, space is approached incongruently, by ambulating in the vertical plane (more side to side than forward).
Incongruence in Space is also revealed by countertension, which is what the body uses to balance when one slips or falls. From walking along in two spatial pulls of the sagittal plane, slipping requires the body to balance by moving into the third, previously absent spatial pull, the horizontal dimension (or some deflection of it). The need to move into a countertension is in opposition to the previous action or movement goal. Our expectations for regular locomotion are broken on many levels. While dance lives in the world of countertension, everyday actions meet extreme countertension when something unpredictable has happened—something incongruent.
As a choreographer and dance educator, my aim is not necessarily to create humorous dances. However, humor is an inroad to interpersonal connection, and my aim is to create dances with which a wide range of audiences can connect. Humor, like dance, has the capacity to be nonverbal and to reach beyond boundaries of culture, society, ability, and age (Weems 2014, 154). Infants laugh before they possess language—often they are laughing at motion. Humor is a primal human experience that we understand innately and kinesthetically.
The study of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective offers various benefits to the arts and education. Humor in the classroom serves memory retention, allowing students to create knowledge through their individual, humorous connection to learning. Understanding the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff analysis of incongruent movement patterns allows choreographers to develop innovation in their movement, audiences to access dance on a subconscious level, and everyday people to connect with each other through the kinesthetic language of humor.
Using Touch to Facilitate Body Connectivity
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch is a vulnerable and powerful experience. In the Laban/Bartenieff work, touch is not a given or an expectation. It is important to learn that you can say yes and no to touch from another person. Saying no to touch can be an empowering reminder of your ownership of and agency over your body. When working with others, ask permission to touch that includes where on their body the touch will be and what kinds of touch you will deliver. If someone decides not to be touched they can use their own hands, or you can assist them in finding other ways to experience the purpose of the touch.
The following are basic ideas for incorporating touch that are easy to learn and particularly useful for enhancing body connectivity. The types of touch discussed below are part of a larger body of work developed by Peggy Hackney and Janice Meaden with Ed Groff and Pam Schick as part of Integrated Movement Studies' “Touch for Repatterning” curriculum. Each brought other training perspectives including Body-Mind Centering, Irene Dowd's kinesthetic anatomy and neuromuscular re-education, and massage therapy to the curriculum. This is part of a much larger body of work, but this will get your started.
Being with Touch
Use this method to become present with the connection between your body and your partner's. Being with touch asks the toucher to be present with and listen to what is underneath their hands. It does not seek to do anything or ask that the person being touched do anything besides be present with what is there. Try this type of touch on the torso. As the toucher, you may want to check in with the person you are touching, asking questions like, “What are you noticing?” Or, “Is this pressure okay? Would you like more or less?” Keep the dialogue going to demonstrate that conversation about what is happening is part of the experience.
Locating Touch
Use locating touch to help your partner get a sense of where different parts of the body are sited and how they relate to other parts. Locating touch can go to one body part or slide along a pathway. It is like using your hands to say, “Focus your attention right here.” Try this type of touch to locate the hip joint or the lesser trochanter or the base of the scapula. After locating an area or part of the body, cue your partner to notice how that area relates to another area.
Sliding Touch
Locating touch can phrase into a sliding touch, where the toucher uses her hand to slide along or trace a line or connection on the body as if to bring awareness to the connection between one area and another.
Sending Touch and Receiving Touch
Use these techniques to find a connection or pathway through the body. Sending touch has directionality that give an energetic quality of sending information through the body's tissues. Receiving touch gathers or receives the sending touch somewhere else in the body. For example, try placing a hand on the sternum, and imagine you can send a message through the sternum. Place another hand on the sacrum, and imagine this hand can receive the message being sent by the top hand. The directionality in this kind of touch is clarified by the receiving touch. In this example, the hand on the sternum is sending a message in a down and back direction. Explore this type of touch with multiple pathways through the body.
Applying L/BMA to Aerial Dancing
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance.
Elizabeth Stitch
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance. Due to safety concerns and initial lack of strength, beginning aerialists often utilize spoke-like directional modes. This allows the aerialist to form a direct link between her body and the environment, or apparatus, which provides safety while she's in the air. When teaching beginning aerial students, I use this functional approach and encourage them to exactly model my steps into each skill.
Over time, I have noticed that it is difficult to break this initial pattern and begin to explore other options for changing the form of the body and connecting with the apparatus. In analyzing my personal aerial performance, I was surprised to observe my own strong preference for the directional mode, particularly the Arc-like form. While this mode can lend a more graceful feeling to a movement, it is essentially similar to the spoke-like mode in terms of the expressive statement it makes in connecting to the apparatus. In this context, both directional modes of shape change are straightforward and utilitarian, which is by no means negative, but they are expressively limited and not what I always want to convey.
One of the things I love most about Laban theory is that it gives me a map into lesser-known places in my movement signature. Following this map into the co-creative realm of carving has offered me not only a different relationship with my apparatus, but also new possibilities for movement invention. It has also guided me as a performer into the vulnerability of sharing my inner life with the audience through specific moments of shape-flow mode of shape change. With this full palette of expressive possibilities, my movement experience feels more satisfying, which keeps me coming back to my apparatus for further exploration in the air!
Perceiving Movement Through Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests.
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests. In any context, the Laban/Bartenieff lens is especially useful for observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning from, and experiencing movement.
Observing Movement
Movement happens quickly and is constantly in flux. As soon one movement ends, another has already begun, making comprehensive and accurate observations of movement difficult. Observing what is happening in movement is a common use of the Laban/Bartenieff framework. Using L/BMA to observe movement allows the observer to be precise and specific about what is happening, it also encourages the observer to recognize how movement calls forth feelings and associations that make it expressive. This is facilitated by the multiple aspects of the L/BMA lens, which enable the observer to comb through movement for its elemental parts and then integrate those parts together towards a larger whole. The ability to be precise in one's observations of movement, despite the movement's complexity, is important to many fields that study and address movement.
Describing Movement
Translating movement into words can feel like juggling two disparate systems of experience. Movement is felt, kinesthetic, and constantly morphing. Language is verbal, intellectual, and relatively durable—words do not change in the same moment they are spoken. Yes, language evolves and words change meaning overtime, but not so fast that we cannot keep up with them. Movement is infinitely faster and more difficult to “pin down”; as soon as you realize what is there, it has passed. Finding words that convey the experienced and changing nature of movement while being precise, accurate, and evocative can be a challenge. In many fields that involve movement, the ability to accurately describe what is happening is essential to conveying how movement is manifesting and how it is important in the context. L/BMA offers a specific lexicon for articulating human movement; explaining these terms makes up the majority of part II of this book. Of course, the L/BMA terminology is probably unfamiliar to those who have not studied this material, so part of using L/BMA is knowing how to translate the specialized language into words that inspire movement, no matter how much or how little L/BMA terminology the other person knows.
Coaching and Teaching Movement
For those who coach and teach movement, the act of facilitating growth and improvement involves many aspects of perceiving movement. The coach or teacher analyzes what is happening in relationship to what is desired, and then communicates that information, confirming what is serving the mover and offering strategies for growth. That information is then integrated into the movement, and then, the cycle begins again, including observing how the new information impacted the movement. This complex process is aided by the clear framework for observation, description, and analysis provided by Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis.
Making Meaning from Movement
The biological body is the basis for movement; it produces and makes movement possible, and is itself formed by movement. Yet, the picture of movement in human life is far more complex than that of a biological body moving from synaptic impulses. From the moment of conception, the body is molded by movement, and movement informs the ongoing and shifting perceptions of the self (Bryan 2018). Throughout the human life, movement is meaningful. Movement arises to meet needs: to get closer to what is desired or to create distance from what is not desired, to express inner thoughts and desires, and to accomplish the tasks that maintain and give meaning to life. Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis allows those who use it to address the meaningful aspects of movement while honoring the context and sequencing of movement.
Making meaning from movement is different from interpreting movement, and there is a time for both. People are always making meaning from movement, usually unconsciously—for example, someone might interpret how her father moves when he is tired or when he is angry. Making meaning emphasizes the influence of the observer in how movement is understood. Interpretation is about seeking to understand someone else's meaning, as if an observer could use movement in order to “read the mover's mind.” In the former, the observer is an active participant in making meaning; in the latter, movement is interpreted without recognizing the influence of the interpreter, potentially leading to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. For example, crossing the arms or nodding the head means different things to different people, in different cultures and contexts, and any interpretation one might place upon either of those actions will necessarily change with each mover and each context. I highlight this distinction to emphasize that L/BMA does not provide a dictionary or one-to-one correlation between a movement and “what it means” in any general sense. Movement always happens in a context, and our analysis of any particular movement must honor the particular mover within the particular context, as well as the complexity of what happened and how it happened in movement.
Experiencing Movement
Movement is a constant. Experiencing movement within the Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis framework can heighten and refine your awareness of a movement as you do it, and can help you recognize your preferences in movement. It can also help you gain new options in your movement. The specificity of the Laban/Bartenieff framework heightens sensation to bring greater clarity in movement so that you can manifest what you intend. When you bring your L/BMA knowledge to your lived experiences, you will notice new things about your movement, gaining a greater sense of presence, a sense of being “in your body.” As you work through the Laban/Bartenieff system you will generate awareness of your personal preferences and patterns for movement. As you learn what you like to do, you can also “style stretch,” that is develop movements that you have been less likely to inhabit, thus expanding your range of physicality. You'll increase your expressive range and functional skills.
All of the above—observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning, and experiencing—are ways of perceiving movement. The Laban/Bartenieff framework is fundamentally about creating conscious and effective inroads to the heightened perception of movement. As you use L/BMA to perceive movement in your life, you may feel as though you are learning a new language, and in some ways you are. Your understanding of movement will shift as you apply the Laban/Bartenieff framework to your life. You may notice that you can see movement with greater distinction and that you have new words and approaches to talking about it. You may also notice that you are better able to organize and frame your pursuits around movement, and that you have new options for being creative with your movement goals. Finally, you may notice that as a mover you are more prepared to increase the range of movements you execute and enjoy.
Total Body Connectivity—Breath Patterning
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop.
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop. It is fundamental to life and among our first experiences upon entering the world. Before an infant's first breaths, the fetus practices the movements of breathing in utero, as the mother breathes for the fetus by sending oxygen through the umbilical cord.
Figure 3.1 Breath symbol.
For an infant, breath affords sensation of the inside of the body, including the body's inner volume. Through breathing you feel the internal body growing and shrinking through the swelling of the inhalation and the contracting of the exhalation. The gentle expansion and contraction of the breath's rhythm provides the basic material of human life, oxygen, and the important release of carbon dioxide.
Breath patterning assists the coordination of the internal body that is vital in human movement. Functionally, every inhalation and exhalation is a complex event. Upon inhaling, the five lobes of the lungs expand to engulf the heart and welcome oxygen. The diaphragm is pulled downward toward the pelvis by the central tendon, filling up like an inverted hot-air balloon (see figure 3.2). Oxygen is taken into the body via the lungs, where it is transferred through small air sacs called alveoli into the blood, which is pumped throughout the body by the heart—a process that allows every cell in the body to respire. Carbon dioxide is released via exhalation, eliminating waste products. As you exhale, the central tendon releases, the diaphragm contracts upward, and the pelvic floor moves up, back, and in. Deliberately bringing your awareness to your breath as support for your movement is a precursor to whole-body coordination and virtuosity in movement. This is true for movers of all levels as breath allows the entire body to be supported from within in complex coordination.
Figure 3.2 Lungs, diaphragm, and central tendon, at the height of exhalation and inhalation
Illustrated by Sydney P. Celio.
As long as there is life, breath is present; it is the baseline of life force, the river on which all movement and expression runs. As an adult, revisiting the breath pattern is a useful way of connecting with sensation. Tuning into sensation within the body offers a way of becoming present within yourself and identifying what is needed in the moment. As a way of checking in with yourself, you can revisit the breath pattern when you are overstimulated, exhausted, or stressed; observing your breath can sooth what feels overwhelming. You may notice your breath changing with your emotional states. Agitation may shorten or truncate the breath, and rest may deepen it. You can alter and shift “emotional tone” by inviting the breath. The breath pattern is a reminder that you have the choice to affect your feelings and thereby your responses. Paying attention to the sensation of breath with its wave-like, rolling inhalations and exhalations can release muscle tension associated with stress.
Notice how the breath pulses inside of your body. Sensing the breath may bring you home to yourself. Many spiritual and centering practices, like meditation and stress reduction, use a focus on the breath as a key principle because it brings centeredness. It is a way of returning to a fundamental aspect of being alive. When stressed or feeling distanced from yourself, connecting to the breath can help you reconnect to yourself and feel calmer and more present.
Breath also provides access to the sense of yielding, bonding, and being with that will be discussed in depth later in this chapter. Imagine that as you attend to your breath you can soften the surfaces of your body and bond with the surfaces of support around you.
Breath brings with it a sense of the connection between one's inner and outer worlds, an experience that can be life-giving and profoundly essential. The exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide changes the torso as it expands and contracts. Allow this internal to growing and shrinking to support and fill your movement. Breath support is a concept used by Irmgard Bartenieff to illustrate the breath's ability to support and enliven full-bodied movement.
Visiting the breath pattern can provide another way of getting ready for activity. Breath supports movement. To accompany and support movement, the breath can be activated and vigorous, or soft, sustained, and elongated. Beginning an activity by getting the breath going is like preparing the insides of the body for what will later become activated outwardly. By using breath as part of a warm-up, you activate sensations of the internal three-dimensional support for movement, and you recruit the tissues of the body to be responsive and pliable.
For many adults who lead sedentary lives, the torso can feel tense and stuck, while their attention is directed outward. Attending to the flow of breath by directing attention inward can help them find movement and ease in the torso. When tension headaches or fatigue arises due to limited and contained movement, a person can deliberately deepen the flow of breath to nourish tissue and find new movement potential throughout the torso. To help you visualize the flow of breath, imagine a surfer riding a wave into shore. Like the wave that catches the surfboard, “catch” your exhalation and “ride” its undulating pattern through your body, noticing how and where it moves. You can also explore the feeling of being filled and expanded by the inhalation.
Bringing breath patterning into the forefront of your movement gives you the opportunity to let breath guide and initiate and influence the movement. In this way, the breath stimulates support of the core, the supple undulations of the spine, and massages the connection between upper and lower body. Fully receiving the exhalation allows for the area around the belly button to gather and hollow inward toward the organs, providing the first inklings of what will come next in movement.
As an expression of inner life, breath patterning has an audible nature, revealed in sounding and speaking. Every verbal or sounded expression rides on the breath; we can either use it fully or diminish and stunt it. An example of breath support in sound is the grandeur of passionate song or chanted liturgy; an example in which breath struggles to support us is hyperventilation. As the expression of inner life, another person's use of breath allows us to perceive the states of his or her thoughts and feelings. Listening to someone talk and sensing the congruence between breath, voice, and body gives the sense that they are coming from a grounded, centered, and committed place. We sense them as believable.
Finally, breath patterning supports big, exuberant, and virtuosic movement. It increases the strength of a boxer's punch or the quick burst of a swimmer's takeoff. The horseback rider uses her breathing to control and communicate to the horse, and the dancer exhales as he prepares to turn.
Explore the Breath Pattern
Check in with your breath. No need to boss it around. Bring your attention to what is currently happening with your breath, and allow it to change as it will. Notice the movement your breath is inspiring in your body. Can you send breath to areas that feel tight or bound up to change the tension of your tissues? Follow and ride the breath pathway like you might follow and ride a wave. Notice where in your body the organs and tissue grow with your breath, and where your internal world is softening or shrinking. Take some time here, and notice how you feel and what this experience has brought. Try singing or sounding the song of your breath. Have your feelings shifted? Where might actively focusing on your breath patterning be useful for you? How might your awareness serve you in your daily life?
Key Points for the Breath Pattern
- Connecting to breath is a way of connecting to and centering the self.
- Breath brings oxygen to the blood and tissues, and releases carbon dioxide waste.
- Breath is the infant's first experience of the inner volume of the body.
- The end of the exhalation, when the breath empties and the diaphragm floats upward, sets up the core-softening necessary for the next pattern.
- Breath support enlivens movement throughout the whole body and promotes complexity and virtuosity in movement.
L/BMA and Physical Humor
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor.
Contributed by Sarah Donohue, CLMA, MFA. Used with permission.
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor. An unexpected peek-a-boo delights a baby into laughter, the universal indicator of humor. A story is told in which the associated mental images are contradicted by an unforeseen twist at the end. With a shift in perspective, we experience humor on many perceptual levels.
This application explores the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective and suggests that incongruities in movement not only contribute to humor, but are subconsciously accessed on a kinesthetic level. While acknowledging that humor is situational and relational, my research isolates the movement of the body during a humorous event and reveals that incongruent movement patterns can explain physical humor.
Since determining what is humorous is in the funny bone of the beholder, I have selected a group of individuals whose movements are generally deemed humorous: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Rowan Atkinson, and others. I am not asking if their movement is humorous. Rather, I am assuming that it is and asking if they exhibit common movement patterns. Using the Laban/Bartenieff system, I have also analyzed the movement of humorous dance, such as the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes. Additionally, this inquiry prompts a search for humorous quotidian movement, such as someone walking into a spider web, which is difficult to spontaneously encounter and simultaneously analyze. Although the elements of humor-producing movement vary, I identify patterns of incongruity within the Laban/Bartenieff categories of Body, Effort, Shape, and Space.
Body
Which parts of the body are moved or held and how they are moved or held is culturally and socially significant. In the prototypical clown, we see the legs in external rotation, knees bent and adaptable, and a narrow torso being held in line with the head. There is often superfluous action of the lower legs and feet, and walking is initiated by spoking with the knees. Picture the gait of Charlie Chaplin. This bodily posture appears paradoxically inviting (with legs turned out) and protective (with spine and torso held). The contradictory posture contributes to a pattern of incongruence.
Body-Half and Upper-Lower Patterns of Total Body Connectivity
In the movement of physical comedians and clowns, there is a tendency for locomotion to take place in a body-half pattern instead of in the natural cross-lateral gait, perhaps an intentional indication of being less physically developed. We find familiarity, and often humor, in the body-half waddling of a penguin or toddler. Perceiving someone walk in a body-half pattern is incongruent with the naturally developed human gait of cross-laterality. Additionally, an apparent separation between the upper and lower parts of the body is a trait often present in physical humor. A common theme in cartoons involves the lower body running away from peril before the upper body gets the message to flee as well. In human form, the disassociation between the upper and lower body of physical comedians indicates an incongruity on a basic level of development, as if regions of the body are being controlled by separate forces. Monty Python's sketch “Ministry of Silly Walks” demonstrates an elaborate disconnection between body parts, with the upper and lower body often moving incongruently against one another.
Shape Flow Support and Shape Qualities
The Laban/Bartenieff category of Shape reveals meaning by focusing on the growing and shrinking of the torso and how the shaping of the body connects to Space. How we move our torsos can send very clear messages to perceivers, or, conversely, incongruent messages. If a person lengthens his torso vertically while rising with his entire form to pick an apple from a tree, the experience of all parts organizing toward place high—and the apple—is both functional and congruent. Incongruence in Shape would have the apple-picking man shorten his torso like a compressed spring while the frame of his body attempts to rise to place high. This incongruence may indicate that the mover does not physically embody efficient movement phrasing, which, to those inclined to schadenfreude, is perhaps a humorous situation. From a less vindictive perspective, incongruity between shape qualities and shape flow support is prevalent in clowning and particularly humorous in dance, where the expectation is for efficient movement patterns.
Phrasing in movement corresponds well to phrasing in written language. A movement phrase, or movement sentence, is complete and congruent when there is preparation, initiation, action, and follow through. A dart player prepares by focusing on the bull's-eye, both visually and kinesthetically. To initiate throwing the dart, she carefully pulls it back toward her shoulder before suddenly and directly sending it toward the target in the main action of the phrase. To complete the phrasing, her hand follows the pathway of the dart, guiding it empathetically to the bull's-eye. In dance, a well-executed grand jeté, or leap, is an example of congruent phrasing.
Physical humor often relies on the interruption of phrasing and the viewer's preconceived expectations being altered unpredictably, as is often utilized in the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes—a pelvic gyration in the midst of a flowing modern phrase or a giant cardboard box flying onstage to hit the dancer at the height of a graceful arabesque. Incongruities in phrasing are closely related to surprise, a key element in humor (Weems 2014, 26). Our sense-making minds are stringing together visual input to create a narrative or expected outcome. When what we believed would take place shifts unpredictably, humor is the result.
Effort
Phrasing can also be interrupted in regard to Effort. Listening to your favorite song and remembering sweet memories of the past may take you into what Laban calls passion drive (free Flow, light Weight, and sustained Time). However, an unexpected knock on the door will take you into an awake state (direct Space and sudden Time). The complete shift on the effort spectrum, from indulging qualities (free, light, sustained in this case) to condensing qualities (direct and sudden) is incongruent, surprising, and can be humorous. Stand-up comedians exhibit wonderful incongruent Effort phrasing in their verbal delivery. Conversely, congruent effort phrasing is created through effort loading. The effort is a natural progression that develops out of and returns to an established effort constellation.
However, in incongruent effort phrasing, like moving from passion drive to awake state, all the Effort qualities change at once. What was sustained becomes sudden; what was missing (Space effort) suddenly appears in direct Space. We can picture the effort phrasing making a complete shift across the effort spectrum in progressions such as walking to slipping or reading a book to being startled. In choreography, being aware of how effort phrasing falls naturally into, or out of, metered music can mean the difference between predicable musicality and delightful surprise.
Space
How the human body is organized in Space is meaningful not only in humor studies but also in everyday interaction with the environment. A congruent interaction with space allows you to get to the bus stop safely and efficiently. “Natural,” unaffected walking takes place in the sagittal plane (forward, with a little bit of up and down). In many clowning examples as well as Charlie Chaplin's walk, space is approached incongruently, by ambulating in the vertical plane (more side to side than forward).
Incongruence in Space is also revealed by countertension, which is what the body uses to balance when one slips or falls. From walking along in two spatial pulls of the sagittal plane, slipping requires the body to balance by moving into the third, previously absent spatial pull, the horizontal dimension (or some deflection of it). The need to move into a countertension is in opposition to the previous action or movement goal. Our expectations for regular locomotion are broken on many levels. While dance lives in the world of countertension, everyday actions meet extreme countertension when something unpredictable has happened—something incongruent.
As a choreographer and dance educator, my aim is not necessarily to create humorous dances. However, humor is an inroad to interpersonal connection, and my aim is to create dances with which a wide range of audiences can connect. Humor, like dance, has the capacity to be nonverbal and to reach beyond boundaries of culture, society, ability, and age (Weems 2014, 154). Infants laugh before they possess language—often they are laughing at motion. Humor is a primal human experience that we understand innately and kinesthetically.
The study of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective offers various benefits to the arts and education. Humor in the classroom serves memory retention, allowing students to create knowledge through their individual, humorous connection to learning. Understanding the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff analysis of incongruent movement patterns allows choreographers to develop innovation in their movement, audiences to access dance on a subconscious level, and everyday people to connect with each other through the kinesthetic language of humor.
Using Touch to Facilitate Body Connectivity
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch is a vulnerable and powerful experience. In the Laban/Bartenieff work, touch is not a given or an expectation. It is important to learn that you can say yes and no to touch from another person. Saying no to touch can be an empowering reminder of your ownership of and agency over your body. When working with others, ask permission to touch that includes where on their body the touch will be and what kinds of touch you will deliver. If someone decides not to be touched they can use their own hands, or you can assist them in finding other ways to experience the purpose of the touch.
The following are basic ideas for incorporating touch that are easy to learn and particularly useful for enhancing body connectivity. The types of touch discussed below are part of a larger body of work developed by Peggy Hackney and Janice Meaden with Ed Groff and Pam Schick as part of Integrated Movement Studies' “Touch for Repatterning” curriculum. Each brought other training perspectives including Body-Mind Centering, Irene Dowd's kinesthetic anatomy and neuromuscular re-education, and massage therapy to the curriculum. This is part of a much larger body of work, but this will get your started.
Being with Touch
Use this method to become present with the connection between your body and your partner's. Being with touch asks the toucher to be present with and listen to what is underneath their hands. It does not seek to do anything or ask that the person being touched do anything besides be present with what is there. Try this type of touch on the torso. As the toucher, you may want to check in with the person you are touching, asking questions like, “What are you noticing?” Or, “Is this pressure okay? Would you like more or less?” Keep the dialogue going to demonstrate that conversation about what is happening is part of the experience.
Locating Touch
Use locating touch to help your partner get a sense of where different parts of the body are sited and how they relate to other parts. Locating touch can go to one body part or slide along a pathway. It is like using your hands to say, “Focus your attention right here.” Try this type of touch to locate the hip joint or the lesser trochanter or the base of the scapula. After locating an area or part of the body, cue your partner to notice how that area relates to another area.
Sliding Touch
Locating touch can phrase into a sliding touch, where the toucher uses her hand to slide along or trace a line or connection on the body as if to bring awareness to the connection between one area and another.
Sending Touch and Receiving Touch
Use these techniques to find a connection or pathway through the body. Sending touch has directionality that give an energetic quality of sending information through the body's tissues. Receiving touch gathers or receives the sending touch somewhere else in the body. For example, try placing a hand on the sternum, and imagine you can send a message through the sternum. Place another hand on the sacrum, and imagine this hand can receive the message being sent by the top hand. The directionality in this kind of touch is clarified by the receiving touch. In this example, the hand on the sternum is sending a message in a down and back direction. Explore this type of touch with multiple pathways through the body.
Applying L/BMA to Aerial Dancing
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance.
Elizabeth Stitch
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance. Due to safety concerns and initial lack of strength, beginning aerialists often utilize spoke-like directional modes. This allows the aerialist to form a direct link between her body and the environment, or apparatus, which provides safety while she's in the air. When teaching beginning aerial students, I use this functional approach and encourage them to exactly model my steps into each skill.
Over time, I have noticed that it is difficult to break this initial pattern and begin to explore other options for changing the form of the body and connecting with the apparatus. In analyzing my personal aerial performance, I was surprised to observe my own strong preference for the directional mode, particularly the Arc-like form. While this mode can lend a more graceful feeling to a movement, it is essentially similar to the spoke-like mode in terms of the expressive statement it makes in connecting to the apparatus. In this context, both directional modes of shape change are straightforward and utilitarian, which is by no means negative, but they are expressively limited and not what I always want to convey.
One of the things I love most about Laban theory is that it gives me a map into lesser-known places in my movement signature. Following this map into the co-creative realm of carving has offered me not only a different relationship with my apparatus, but also new possibilities for movement invention. It has also guided me as a performer into the vulnerability of sharing my inner life with the audience through specific moments of shape-flow mode of shape change. With this full palette of expressive possibilities, my movement experience feels more satisfying, which keeps me coming back to my apparatus for further exploration in the air!
Perceiving Movement Through Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests.
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests. In any context, the Laban/Bartenieff lens is especially useful for observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning from, and experiencing movement.
Observing Movement
Movement happens quickly and is constantly in flux. As soon one movement ends, another has already begun, making comprehensive and accurate observations of movement difficult. Observing what is happening in movement is a common use of the Laban/Bartenieff framework. Using L/BMA to observe movement allows the observer to be precise and specific about what is happening, it also encourages the observer to recognize how movement calls forth feelings and associations that make it expressive. This is facilitated by the multiple aspects of the L/BMA lens, which enable the observer to comb through movement for its elemental parts and then integrate those parts together towards a larger whole. The ability to be precise in one's observations of movement, despite the movement's complexity, is important to many fields that study and address movement.
Describing Movement
Translating movement into words can feel like juggling two disparate systems of experience. Movement is felt, kinesthetic, and constantly morphing. Language is verbal, intellectual, and relatively durable—words do not change in the same moment they are spoken. Yes, language evolves and words change meaning overtime, but not so fast that we cannot keep up with them. Movement is infinitely faster and more difficult to “pin down”; as soon as you realize what is there, it has passed. Finding words that convey the experienced and changing nature of movement while being precise, accurate, and evocative can be a challenge. In many fields that involve movement, the ability to accurately describe what is happening is essential to conveying how movement is manifesting and how it is important in the context. L/BMA offers a specific lexicon for articulating human movement; explaining these terms makes up the majority of part II of this book. Of course, the L/BMA terminology is probably unfamiliar to those who have not studied this material, so part of using L/BMA is knowing how to translate the specialized language into words that inspire movement, no matter how much or how little L/BMA terminology the other person knows.
Coaching and Teaching Movement
For those who coach and teach movement, the act of facilitating growth and improvement involves many aspects of perceiving movement. The coach or teacher analyzes what is happening in relationship to what is desired, and then communicates that information, confirming what is serving the mover and offering strategies for growth. That information is then integrated into the movement, and then, the cycle begins again, including observing how the new information impacted the movement. This complex process is aided by the clear framework for observation, description, and analysis provided by Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis.
Making Meaning from Movement
The biological body is the basis for movement; it produces and makes movement possible, and is itself formed by movement. Yet, the picture of movement in human life is far more complex than that of a biological body moving from synaptic impulses. From the moment of conception, the body is molded by movement, and movement informs the ongoing and shifting perceptions of the self (Bryan 2018). Throughout the human life, movement is meaningful. Movement arises to meet needs: to get closer to what is desired or to create distance from what is not desired, to express inner thoughts and desires, and to accomplish the tasks that maintain and give meaning to life. Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis allows those who use it to address the meaningful aspects of movement while honoring the context and sequencing of movement.
Making meaning from movement is different from interpreting movement, and there is a time for both. People are always making meaning from movement, usually unconsciously—for example, someone might interpret how her father moves when he is tired or when he is angry. Making meaning emphasizes the influence of the observer in how movement is understood. Interpretation is about seeking to understand someone else's meaning, as if an observer could use movement in order to “read the mover's mind.” In the former, the observer is an active participant in making meaning; in the latter, movement is interpreted without recognizing the influence of the interpreter, potentially leading to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. For example, crossing the arms or nodding the head means different things to different people, in different cultures and contexts, and any interpretation one might place upon either of those actions will necessarily change with each mover and each context. I highlight this distinction to emphasize that L/BMA does not provide a dictionary or one-to-one correlation between a movement and “what it means” in any general sense. Movement always happens in a context, and our analysis of any particular movement must honor the particular mover within the particular context, as well as the complexity of what happened and how it happened in movement.
Experiencing Movement
Movement is a constant. Experiencing movement within the Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis framework can heighten and refine your awareness of a movement as you do it, and can help you recognize your preferences in movement. It can also help you gain new options in your movement. The specificity of the Laban/Bartenieff framework heightens sensation to bring greater clarity in movement so that you can manifest what you intend. When you bring your L/BMA knowledge to your lived experiences, you will notice new things about your movement, gaining a greater sense of presence, a sense of being “in your body.” As you work through the Laban/Bartenieff system you will generate awareness of your personal preferences and patterns for movement. As you learn what you like to do, you can also “style stretch,” that is develop movements that you have been less likely to inhabit, thus expanding your range of physicality. You'll increase your expressive range and functional skills.
All of the above—observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning, and experiencing—are ways of perceiving movement. The Laban/Bartenieff framework is fundamentally about creating conscious and effective inroads to the heightened perception of movement. As you use L/BMA to perceive movement in your life, you may feel as though you are learning a new language, and in some ways you are. Your understanding of movement will shift as you apply the Laban/Bartenieff framework to your life. You may notice that you can see movement with greater distinction and that you have new words and approaches to talking about it. You may also notice that you are better able to organize and frame your pursuits around movement, and that you have new options for being creative with your movement goals. Finally, you may notice that as a mover you are more prepared to increase the range of movements you execute and enjoy.
Total Body Connectivity—Breath Patterning
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop.
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop. It is fundamental to life and among our first experiences upon entering the world. Before an infant's first breaths, the fetus practices the movements of breathing in utero, as the mother breathes for the fetus by sending oxygen through the umbilical cord.
Figure 3.1 Breath symbol.
For an infant, breath affords sensation of the inside of the body, including the body's inner volume. Through breathing you feel the internal body growing and shrinking through the swelling of the inhalation and the contracting of the exhalation. The gentle expansion and contraction of the breath's rhythm provides the basic material of human life, oxygen, and the important release of carbon dioxide.
Breath patterning assists the coordination of the internal body that is vital in human movement. Functionally, every inhalation and exhalation is a complex event. Upon inhaling, the five lobes of the lungs expand to engulf the heart and welcome oxygen. The diaphragm is pulled downward toward the pelvis by the central tendon, filling up like an inverted hot-air balloon (see figure 3.2). Oxygen is taken into the body via the lungs, where it is transferred through small air sacs called alveoli into the blood, which is pumped throughout the body by the heart—a process that allows every cell in the body to respire. Carbon dioxide is released via exhalation, eliminating waste products. As you exhale, the central tendon releases, the diaphragm contracts upward, and the pelvic floor moves up, back, and in. Deliberately bringing your awareness to your breath as support for your movement is a precursor to whole-body coordination and virtuosity in movement. This is true for movers of all levels as breath allows the entire body to be supported from within in complex coordination.
Figure 3.2 Lungs, diaphragm, and central tendon, at the height of exhalation and inhalation
Illustrated by Sydney P. Celio.
As long as there is life, breath is present; it is the baseline of life force, the river on which all movement and expression runs. As an adult, revisiting the breath pattern is a useful way of connecting with sensation. Tuning into sensation within the body offers a way of becoming present within yourself and identifying what is needed in the moment. As a way of checking in with yourself, you can revisit the breath pattern when you are overstimulated, exhausted, or stressed; observing your breath can sooth what feels overwhelming. You may notice your breath changing with your emotional states. Agitation may shorten or truncate the breath, and rest may deepen it. You can alter and shift “emotional tone” by inviting the breath. The breath pattern is a reminder that you have the choice to affect your feelings and thereby your responses. Paying attention to the sensation of breath with its wave-like, rolling inhalations and exhalations can release muscle tension associated with stress.
Notice how the breath pulses inside of your body. Sensing the breath may bring you home to yourself. Many spiritual and centering practices, like meditation and stress reduction, use a focus on the breath as a key principle because it brings centeredness. It is a way of returning to a fundamental aspect of being alive. When stressed or feeling distanced from yourself, connecting to the breath can help you reconnect to yourself and feel calmer and more present.
Breath also provides access to the sense of yielding, bonding, and being with that will be discussed in depth later in this chapter. Imagine that as you attend to your breath you can soften the surfaces of your body and bond with the surfaces of support around you.
Breath brings with it a sense of the connection between one's inner and outer worlds, an experience that can be life-giving and profoundly essential. The exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide changes the torso as it expands and contracts. Allow this internal to growing and shrinking to support and fill your movement. Breath support is a concept used by Irmgard Bartenieff to illustrate the breath's ability to support and enliven full-bodied movement.
Visiting the breath pattern can provide another way of getting ready for activity. Breath supports movement. To accompany and support movement, the breath can be activated and vigorous, or soft, sustained, and elongated. Beginning an activity by getting the breath going is like preparing the insides of the body for what will later become activated outwardly. By using breath as part of a warm-up, you activate sensations of the internal three-dimensional support for movement, and you recruit the tissues of the body to be responsive and pliable.
For many adults who lead sedentary lives, the torso can feel tense and stuck, while their attention is directed outward. Attending to the flow of breath by directing attention inward can help them find movement and ease in the torso. When tension headaches or fatigue arises due to limited and contained movement, a person can deliberately deepen the flow of breath to nourish tissue and find new movement potential throughout the torso. To help you visualize the flow of breath, imagine a surfer riding a wave into shore. Like the wave that catches the surfboard, “catch” your exhalation and “ride” its undulating pattern through your body, noticing how and where it moves. You can also explore the feeling of being filled and expanded by the inhalation.
Bringing breath patterning into the forefront of your movement gives you the opportunity to let breath guide and initiate and influence the movement. In this way, the breath stimulates support of the core, the supple undulations of the spine, and massages the connection between upper and lower body. Fully receiving the exhalation allows for the area around the belly button to gather and hollow inward toward the organs, providing the first inklings of what will come next in movement.
As an expression of inner life, breath patterning has an audible nature, revealed in sounding and speaking. Every verbal or sounded expression rides on the breath; we can either use it fully or diminish and stunt it. An example of breath support in sound is the grandeur of passionate song or chanted liturgy; an example in which breath struggles to support us is hyperventilation. As the expression of inner life, another person's use of breath allows us to perceive the states of his or her thoughts and feelings. Listening to someone talk and sensing the congruence between breath, voice, and body gives the sense that they are coming from a grounded, centered, and committed place. We sense them as believable.
Finally, breath patterning supports big, exuberant, and virtuosic movement. It increases the strength of a boxer's punch or the quick burst of a swimmer's takeoff. The horseback rider uses her breathing to control and communicate to the horse, and the dancer exhales as he prepares to turn.
Explore the Breath Pattern
Check in with your breath. No need to boss it around. Bring your attention to what is currently happening with your breath, and allow it to change as it will. Notice the movement your breath is inspiring in your body. Can you send breath to areas that feel tight or bound up to change the tension of your tissues? Follow and ride the breath pathway like you might follow and ride a wave. Notice where in your body the organs and tissue grow with your breath, and where your internal world is softening or shrinking. Take some time here, and notice how you feel and what this experience has brought. Try singing or sounding the song of your breath. Have your feelings shifted? Where might actively focusing on your breath patterning be useful for you? How might your awareness serve you in your daily life?
Key Points for the Breath Pattern
- Connecting to breath is a way of connecting to and centering the self.
- Breath brings oxygen to the blood and tissues, and releases carbon dioxide waste.
- Breath is the infant's first experience of the inner volume of the body.
- The end of the exhalation, when the breath empties and the diaphragm floats upward, sets up the core-softening necessary for the next pattern.
- Breath support enlivens movement throughout the whole body and promotes complexity and virtuosity in movement.
L/BMA and Physical Humor
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor.
Contributed by Sarah Donohue, CLMA, MFA. Used with permission.
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor. An unexpected peek-a-boo delights a baby into laughter, the universal indicator of humor. A story is told in which the associated mental images are contradicted by an unforeseen twist at the end. With a shift in perspective, we experience humor on many perceptual levels.
This application explores the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective and suggests that incongruities in movement not only contribute to humor, but are subconsciously accessed on a kinesthetic level. While acknowledging that humor is situational and relational, my research isolates the movement of the body during a humorous event and reveals that incongruent movement patterns can explain physical humor.
Since determining what is humorous is in the funny bone of the beholder, I have selected a group of individuals whose movements are generally deemed humorous: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Rowan Atkinson, and others. I am not asking if their movement is humorous. Rather, I am assuming that it is and asking if they exhibit common movement patterns. Using the Laban/Bartenieff system, I have also analyzed the movement of humorous dance, such as the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes. Additionally, this inquiry prompts a search for humorous quotidian movement, such as someone walking into a spider web, which is difficult to spontaneously encounter and simultaneously analyze. Although the elements of humor-producing movement vary, I identify patterns of incongruity within the Laban/Bartenieff categories of Body, Effort, Shape, and Space.
Body
Which parts of the body are moved or held and how they are moved or held is culturally and socially significant. In the prototypical clown, we see the legs in external rotation, knees bent and adaptable, and a narrow torso being held in line with the head. There is often superfluous action of the lower legs and feet, and walking is initiated by spoking with the knees. Picture the gait of Charlie Chaplin. This bodily posture appears paradoxically inviting (with legs turned out) and protective (with spine and torso held). The contradictory posture contributes to a pattern of incongruence.
Body-Half and Upper-Lower Patterns of Total Body Connectivity
In the movement of physical comedians and clowns, there is a tendency for locomotion to take place in a body-half pattern instead of in the natural cross-lateral gait, perhaps an intentional indication of being less physically developed. We find familiarity, and often humor, in the body-half waddling of a penguin or toddler. Perceiving someone walk in a body-half pattern is incongruent with the naturally developed human gait of cross-laterality. Additionally, an apparent separation between the upper and lower parts of the body is a trait often present in physical humor. A common theme in cartoons involves the lower body running away from peril before the upper body gets the message to flee as well. In human form, the disassociation between the upper and lower body of physical comedians indicates an incongruity on a basic level of development, as if regions of the body are being controlled by separate forces. Monty Python's sketch “Ministry of Silly Walks” demonstrates an elaborate disconnection between body parts, with the upper and lower body often moving incongruently against one another.
Shape Flow Support and Shape Qualities
The Laban/Bartenieff category of Shape reveals meaning by focusing on the growing and shrinking of the torso and how the shaping of the body connects to Space. How we move our torsos can send very clear messages to perceivers, or, conversely, incongruent messages. If a person lengthens his torso vertically while rising with his entire form to pick an apple from a tree, the experience of all parts organizing toward place high—and the apple—is both functional and congruent. Incongruence in Shape would have the apple-picking man shorten his torso like a compressed spring while the frame of his body attempts to rise to place high. This incongruence may indicate that the mover does not physically embody efficient movement phrasing, which, to those inclined to schadenfreude, is perhaps a humorous situation. From a less vindictive perspective, incongruity between shape qualities and shape flow support is prevalent in clowning and particularly humorous in dance, where the expectation is for efficient movement patterns.
Phrasing in movement corresponds well to phrasing in written language. A movement phrase, or movement sentence, is complete and congruent when there is preparation, initiation, action, and follow through. A dart player prepares by focusing on the bull's-eye, both visually and kinesthetically. To initiate throwing the dart, she carefully pulls it back toward her shoulder before suddenly and directly sending it toward the target in the main action of the phrase. To complete the phrasing, her hand follows the pathway of the dart, guiding it empathetically to the bull's-eye. In dance, a well-executed grand jeté, or leap, is an example of congruent phrasing.
Physical humor often relies on the interruption of phrasing and the viewer's preconceived expectations being altered unpredictably, as is often utilized in the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes—a pelvic gyration in the midst of a flowing modern phrase or a giant cardboard box flying onstage to hit the dancer at the height of a graceful arabesque. Incongruities in phrasing are closely related to surprise, a key element in humor (Weems 2014, 26). Our sense-making minds are stringing together visual input to create a narrative or expected outcome. When what we believed would take place shifts unpredictably, humor is the result.
Effort
Phrasing can also be interrupted in regard to Effort. Listening to your favorite song and remembering sweet memories of the past may take you into what Laban calls passion drive (free Flow, light Weight, and sustained Time). However, an unexpected knock on the door will take you into an awake state (direct Space and sudden Time). The complete shift on the effort spectrum, from indulging qualities (free, light, sustained in this case) to condensing qualities (direct and sudden) is incongruent, surprising, and can be humorous. Stand-up comedians exhibit wonderful incongruent Effort phrasing in their verbal delivery. Conversely, congruent effort phrasing is created through effort loading. The effort is a natural progression that develops out of and returns to an established effort constellation.
However, in incongruent effort phrasing, like moving from passion drive to awake state, all the Effort qualities change at once. What was sustained becomes sudden; what was missing (Space effort) suddenly appears in direct Space. We can picture the effort phrasing making a complete shift across the effort spectrum in progressions such as walking to slipping or reading a book to being startled. In choreography, being aware of how effort phrasing falls naturally into, or out of, metered music can mean the difference between predicable musicality and delightful surprise.
Space
How the human body is organized in Space is meaningful not only in humor studies but also in everyday interaction with the environment. A congruent interaction with space allows you to get to the bus stop safely and efficiently. “Natural,” unaffected walking takes place in the sagittal plane (forward, with a little bit of up and down). In many clowning examples as well as Charlie Chaplin's walk, space is approached incongruently, by ambulating in the vertical plane (more side to side than forward).
Incongruence in Space is also revealed by countertension, which is what the body uses to balance when one slips or falls. From walking along in two spatial pulls of the sagittal plane, slipping requires the body to balance by moving into the third, previously absent spatial pull, the horizontal dimension (or some deflection of it). The need to move into a countertension is in opposition to the previous action or movement goal. Our expectations for regular locomotion are broken on many levels. While dance lives in the world of countertension, everyday actions meet extreme countertension when something unpredictable has happened—something incongruent.
As a choreographer and dance educator, my aim is not necessarily to create humorous dances. However, humor is an inroad to interpersonal connection, and my aim is to create dances with which a wide range of audiences can connect. Humor, like dance, has the capacity to be nonverbal and to reach beyond boundaries of culture, society, ability, and age (Weems 2014, 154). Infants laugh before they possess language—often they are laughing at motion. Humor is a primal human experience that we understand innately and kinesthetically.
The study of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective offers various benefits to the arts and education. Humor in the classroom serves memory retention, allowing students to create knowledge through their individual, humorous connection to learning. Understanding the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff analysis of incongruent movement patterns allows choreographers to develop innovation in their movement, audiences to access dance on a subconscious level, and everyday people to connect with each other through the kinesthetic language of humor.
Using Touch to Facilitate Body Connectivity
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch is a vulnerable and powerful experience. In the Laban/Bartenieff work, touch is not a given or an expectation. It is important to learn that you can say yes and no to touch from another person. Saying no to touch can be an empowering reminder of your ownership of and agency over your body. When working with others, ask permission to touch that includes where on their body the touch will be and what kinds of touch you will deliver. If someone decides not to be touched they can use their own hands, or you can assist them in finding other ways to experience the purpose of the touch.
The following are basic ideas for incorporating touch that are easy to learn and particularly useful for enhancing body connectivity. The types of touch discussed below are part of a larger body of work developed by Peggy Hackney and Janice Meaden with Ed Groff and Pam Schick as part of Integrated Movement Studies' “Touch for Repatterning” curriculum. Each brought other training perspectives including Body-Mind Centering, Irene Dowd's kinesthetic anatomy and neuromuscular re-education, and massage therapy to the curriculum. This is part of a much larger body of work, but this will get your started.
Being with Touch
Use this method to become present with the connection between your body and your partner's. Being with touch asks the toucher to be present with and listen to what is underneath their hands. It does not seek to do anything or ask that the person being touched do anything besides be present with what is there. Try this type of touch on the torso. As the toucher, you may want to check in with the person you are touching, asking questions like, “What are you noticing?” Or, “Is this pressure okay? Would you like more or less?” Keep the dialogue going to demonstrate that conversation about what is happening is part of the experience.
Locating Touch
Use locating touch to help your partner get a sense of where different parts of the body are sited and how they relate to other parts. Locating touch can go to one body part or slide along a pathway. It is like using your hands to say, “Focus your attention right here.” Try this type of touch to locate the hip joint or the lesser trochanter or the base of the scapula. After locating an area or part of the body, cue your partner to notice how that area relates to another area.
Sliding Touch
Locating touch can phrase into a sliding touch, where the toucher uses her hand to slide along or trace a line or connection on the body as if to bring awareness to the connection between one area and another.
Sending Touch and Receiving Touch
Use these techniques to find a connection or pathway through the body. Sending touch has directionality that give an energetic quality of sending information through the body's tissues. Receiving touch gathers or receives the sending touch somewhere else in the body. For example, try placing a hand on the sternum, and imagine you can send a message through the sternum. Place another hand on the sacrum, and imagine this hand can receive the message being sent by the top hand. The directionality in this kind of touch is clarified by the receiving touch. In this example, the hand on the sternum is sending a message in a down and back direction. Explore this type of touch with multiple pathways through the body.
Applying L/BMA to Aerial Dancing
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance.
Elizabeth Stitch
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance. Due to safety concerns and initial lack of strength, beginning aerialists often utilize spoke-like directional modes. This allows the aerialist to form a direct link between her body and the environment, or apparatus, which provides safety while she's in the air. When teaching beginning aerial students, I use this functional approach and encourage them to exactly model my steps into each skill.
Over time, I have noticed that it is difficult to break this initial pattern and begin to explore other options for changing the form of the body and connecting with the apparatus. In analyzing my personal aerial performance, I was surprised to observe my own strong preference for the directional mode, particularly the Arc-like form. While this mode can lend a more graceful feeling to a movement, it is essentially similar to the spoke-like mode in terms of the expressive statement it makes in connecting to the apparatus. In this context, both directional modes of shape change are straightforward and utilitarian, which is by no means negative, but they are expressively limited and not what I always want to convey.
One of the things I love most about Laban theory is that it gives me a map into lesser-known places in my movement signature. Following this map into the co-creative realm of carving has offered me not only a different relationship with my apparatus, but also new possibilities for movement invention. It has also guided me as a performer into the vulnerability of sharing my inner life with the audience through specific moments of shape-flow mode of shape change. With this full palette of expressive possibilities, my movement experience feels more satisfying, which keeps me coming back to my apparatus for further exploration in the air!
Perceiving Movement Through Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests.
The L/BMA framework is particularly useful in contexts in which movement is studied and taught. Practitioners of the many movement studies in which movement matters will apply the L/BMA theories and practices in unique ways, specific to the needs of that discipline and their interests. In any context, the Laban/Bartenieff lens is especially useful for observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning from, and experiencing movement.
Observing Movement
Movement happens quickly and is constantly in flux. As soon one movement ends, another has already begun, making comprehensive and accurate observations of movement difficult. Observing what is happening in movement is a common use of the Laban/Bartenieff framework. Using L/BMA to observe movement allows the observer to be precise and specific about what is happening, it also encourages the observer to recognize how movement calls forth feelings and associations that make it expressive. This is facilitated by the multiple aspects of the L/BMA lens, which enable the observer to comb through movement for its elemental parts and then integrate those parts together towards a larger whole. The ability to be precise in one's observations of movement, despite the movement's complexity, is important to many fields that study and address movement.
Describing Movement
Translating movement into words can feel like juggling two disparate systems of experience. Movement is felt, kinesthetic, and constantly morphing. Language is verbal, intellectual, and relatively durable—words do not change in the same moment they are spoken. Yes, language evolves and words change meaning overtime, but not so fast that we cannot keep up with them. Movement is infinitely faster and more difficult to “pin down”; as soon as you realize what is there, it has passed. Finding words that convey the experienced and changing nature of movement while being precise, accurate, and evocative can be a challenge. In many fields that involve movement, the ability to accurately describe what is happening is essential to conveying how movement is manifesting and how it is important in the context. L/BMA offers a specific lexicon for articulating human movement; explaining these terms makes up the majority of part II of this book. Of course, the L/BMA terminology is probably unfamiliar to those who have not studied this material, so part of using L/BMA is knowing how to translate the specialized language into words that inspire movement, no matter how much or how little L/BMA terminology the other person knows.
Coaching and Teaching Movement
For those who coach and teach movement, the act of facilitating growth and improvement involves many aspects of perceiving movement. The coach or teacher analyzes what is happening in relationship to what is desired, and then communicates that information, confirming what is serving the mover and offering strategies for growth. That information is then integrated into the movement, and then, the cycle begins again, including observing how the new information impacted the movement. This complex process is aided by the clear framework for observation, description, and analysis provided by Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis.
Making Meaning from Movement
The biological body is the basis for movement; it produces and makes movement possible, and is itself formed by movement. Yet, the picture of movement in human life is far more complex than that of a biological body moving from synaptic impulses. From the moment of conception, the body is molded by movement, and movement informs the ongoing and shifting perceptions of the self (Bryan 2018). Throughout the human life, movement is meaningful. Movement arises to meet needs: to get closer to what is desired or to create distance from what is not desired, to express inner thoughts and desires, and to accomplish the tasks that maintain and give meaning to life. Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis allows those who use it to address the meaningful aspects of movement while honoring the context and sequencing of movement.
Making meaning from movement is different from interpreting movement, and there is a time for both. People are always making meaning from movement, usually unconsciously—for example, someone might interpret how her father moves when he is tired or when he is angry. Making meaning emphasizes the influence of the observer in how movement is understood. Interpretation is about seeking to understand someone else's meaning, as if an observer could use movement in order to “read the mover's mind.” In the former, the observer is an active participant in making meaning; in the latter, movement is interpreted without recognizing the influence of the interpreter, potentially leading to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. For example, crossing the arms or nodding the head means different things to different people, in different cultures and contexts, and any interpretation one might place upon either of those actions will necessarily change with each mover and each context. I highlight this distinction to emphasize that L/BMA does not provide a dictionary or one-to-one correlation between a movement and “what it means” in any general sense. Movement always happens in a context, and our analysis of any particular movement must honor the particular mover within the particular context, as well as the complexity of what happened and how it happened in movement.
Experiencing Movement
Movement is a constant. Experiencing movement within the Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis framework can heighten and refine your awareness of a movement as you do it, and can help you recognize your preferences in movement. It can also help you gain new options in your movement. The specificity of the Laban/Bartenieff framework heightens sensation to bring greater clarity in movement so that you can manifest what you intend. When you bring your L/BMA knowledge to your lived experiences, you will notice new things about your movement, gaining a greater sense of presence, a sense of being “in your body.” As you work through the Laban/Bartenieff system you will generate awareness of your personal preferences and patterns for movement. As you learn what you like to do, you can also “style stretch,” that is develop movements that you have been less likely to inhabit, thus expanding your range of physicality. You'll increase your expressive range and functional skills.
All of the above—observing, describing, coaching and teaching, making meaning, and experiencing—are ways of perceiving movement. The Laban/Bartenieff framework is fundamentally about creating conscious and effective inroads to the heightened perception of movement. As you use L/BMA to perceive movement in your life, you may feel as though you are learning a new language, and in some ways you are. Your understanding of movement will shift as you apply the Laban/Bartenieff framework to your life. You may notice that you can see movement with greater distinction and that you have new words and approaches to talking about it. You may also notice that you are better able to organize and frame your pursuits around movement, and that you have new options for being creative with your movement goals. Finally, you may notice that as a mover you are more prepared to increase the range of movements you execute and enjoy.
Total Body Connectivity—Breath Patterning
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop.
As the first Pattern of Total Body Connectivity, breath (see figure 3.1) is the baseline from which all other movement patterns develop. It is fundamental to life and among our first experiences upon entering the world. Before an infant's first breaths, the fetus practices the movements of breathing in utero, as the mother breathes for the fetus by sending oxygen through the umbilical cord.
Figure 3.1 Breath symbol.
For an infant, breath affords sensation of the inside of the body, including the body's inner volume. Through breathing you feel the internal body growing and shrinking through the swelling of the inhalation and the contracting of the exhalation. The gentle expansion and contraction of the breath's rhythm provides the basic material of human life, oxygen, and the important release of carbon dioxide.
Breath patterning assists the coordination of the internal body that is vital in human movement. Functionally, every inhalation and exhalation is a complex event. Upon inhaling, the five lobes of the lungs expand to engulf the heart and welcome oxygen. The diaphragm is pulled downward toward the pelvis by the central tendon, filling up like an inverted hot-air balloon (see figure 3.2). Oxygen is taken into the body via the lungs, where it is transferred through small air sacs called alveoli into the blood, which is pumped throughout the body by the heart—a process that allows every cell in the body to respire. Carbon dioxide is released via exhalation, eliminating waste products. As you exhale, the central tendon releases, the diaphragm contracts upward, and the pelvic floor moves up, back, and in. Deliberately bringing your awareness to your breath as support for your movement is a precursor to whole-body coordination and virtuosity in movement. This is true for movers of all levels as breath allows the entire body to be supported from within in complex coordination.
Figure 3.2 Lungs, diaphragm, and central tendon, at the height of exhalation and inhalation
Illustrated by Sydney P. Celio.
As long as there is life, breath is present; it is the baseline of life force, the river on which all movement and expression runs. As an adult, revisiting the breath pattern is a useful way of connecting with sensation. Tuning into sensation within the body offers a way of becoming present within yourself and identifying what is needed in the moment. As a way of checking in with yourself, you can revisit the breath pattern when you are overstimulated, exhausted, or stressed; observing your breath can sooth what feels overwhelming. You may notice your breath changing with your emotional states. Agitation may shorten or truncate the breath, and rest may deepen it. You can alter and shift “emotional tone” by inviting the breath. The breath pattern is a reminder that you have the choice to affect your feelings and thereby your responses. Paying attention to the sensation of breath with its wave-like, rolling inhalations and exhalations can release muscle tension associated with stress.
Notice how the breath pulses inside of your body. Sensing the breath may bring you home to yourself. Many spiritual and centering practices, like meditation and stress reduction, use a focus on the breath as a key principle because it brings centeredness. It is a way of returning to a fundamental aspect of being alive. When stressed or feeling distanced from yourself, connecting to the breath can help you reconnect to yourself and feel calmer and more present.
Breath also provides access to the sense of yielding, bonding, and being with that will be discussed in depth later in this chapter. Imagine that as you attend to your breath you can soften the surfaces of your body and bond with the surfaces of support around you.
Breath brings with it a sense of the connection between one's inner and outer worlds, an experience that can be life-giving and profoundly essential. The exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide changes the torso as it expands and contracts. Allow this internal to growing and shrinking to support and fill your movement. Breath support is a concept used by Irmgard Bartenieff to illustrate the breath's ability to support and enliven full-bodied movement.
Visiting the breath pattern can provide another way of getting ready for activity. Breath supports movement. To accompany and support movement, the breath can be activated and vigorous, or soft, sustained, and elongated. Beginning an activity by getting the breath going is like preparing the insides of the body for what will later become activated outwardly. By using breath as part of a warm-up, you activate sensations of the internal three-dimensional support for movement, and you recruit the tissues of the body to be responsive and pliable.
For many adults who lead sedentary lives, the torso can feel tense and stuck, while their attention is directed outward. Attending to the flow of breath by directing attention inward can help them find movement and ease in the torso. When tension headaches or fatigue arises due to limited and contained movement, a person can deliberately deepen the flow of breath to nourish tissue and find new movement potential throughout the torso. To help you visualize the flow of breath, imagine a surfer riding a wave into shore. Like the wave that catches the surfboard, “catch” your exhalation and “ride” its undulating pattern through your body, noticing how and where it moves. You can also explore the feeling of being filled and expanded by the inhalation.
Bringing breath patterning into the forefront of your movement gives you the opportunity to let breath guide and initiate and influence the movement. In this way, the breath stimulates support of the core, the supple undulations of the spine, and massages the connection between upper and lower body. Fully receiving the exhalation allows for the area around the belly button to gather and hollow inward toward the organs, providing the first inklings of what will come next in movement.
As an expression of inner life, breath patterning has an audible nature, revealed in sounding and speaking. Every verbal or sounded expression rides on the breath; we can either use it fully or diminish and stunt it. An example of breath support in sound is the grandeur of passionate song or chanted liturgy; an example in which breath struggles to support us is hyperventilation. As the expression of inner life, another person's use of breath allows us to perceive the states of his or her thoughts and feelings. Listening to someone talk and sensing the congruence between breath, voice, and body gives the sense that they are coming from a grounded, centered, and committed place. We sense them as believable.
Finally, breath patterning supports big, exuberant, and virtuosic movement. It increases the strength of a boxer's punch or the quick burst of a swimmer's takeoff. The horseback rider uses her breathing to control and communicate to the horse, and the dancer exhales as he prepares to turn.
Explore the Breath Pattern
Check in with your breath. No need to boss it around. Bring your attention to what is currently happening with your breath, and allow it to change as it will. Notice the movement your breath is inspiring in your body. Can you send breath to areas that feel tight or bound up to change the tension of your tissues? Follow and ride the breath pathway like you might follow and ride a wave. Notice where in your body the organs and tissue grow with your breath, and where your internal world is softening or shrinking. Take some time here, and notice how you feel and what this experience has brought. Try singing or sounding the song of your breath. Have your feelings shifted? Where might actively focusing on your breath patterning be useful for you? How might your awareness serve you in your daily life?
Key Points for the Breath Pattern
- Connecting to breath is a way of connecting to and centering the self.
- Breath brings oxygen to the blood and tissues, and releases carbon dioxide waste.
- Breath is the infant's first experience of the inner volume of the body.
- The end of the exhalation, when the breath empties and the diaphragm floats upward, sets up the core-softening necessary for the next pattern.
- Breath support enlivens movement throughout the whole body and promotes complexity and virtuosity in movement.
L/BMA and Physical Humor
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor.
Contributed by Sarah Donohue, CLMA, MFA. Used with permission.
In the moment of humor, the senses are tickled by information and messages, both commonplace and incongruent. In fact, the juxtaposition of sense-making and altered expectations is the recipe for humor. An unexpected peek-a-boo delights a baby into laughter, the universal indicator of humor. A story is told in which the associated mental images are contradicted by an unforeseen twist at the end. With a shift in perspective, we experience humor on many perceptual levels.
This application explores the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective and suggests that incongruities in movement not only contribute to humor, but are subconsciously accessed on a kinesthetic level. While acknowledging that humor is situational and relational, my research isolates the movement of the body during a humorous event and reveals that incongruent movement patterns can explain physical humor.
Since determining what is humorous is in the funny bone of the beholder, I have selected a group of individuals whose movements are generally deemed humorous: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Rowan Atkinson, and others. I am not asking if their movement is humorous. Rather, I am assuming that it is and asking if they exhibit common movement patterns. Using the Laban/Bartenieff system, I have also analyzed the movement of humorous dance, such as the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes. Additionally, this inquiry prompts a search for humorous quotidian movement, such as someone walking into a spider web, which is difficult to spontaneously encounter and simultaneously analyze. Although the elements of humor-producing movement vary, I identify patterns of incongruity within the Laban/Bartenieff categories of Body, Effort, Shape, and Space.
Body
Which parts of the body are moved or held and how they are moved or held is culturally and socially significant. In the prototypical clown, we see the legs in external rotation, knees bent and adaptable, and a narrow torso being held in line with the head. There is often superfluous action of the lower legs and feet, and walking is initiated by spoking with the knees. Picture the gait of Charlie Chaplin. This bodily posture appears paradoxically inviting (with legs turned out) and protective (with spine and torso held). The contradictory posture contributes to a pattern of incongruence.
Body-Half and Upper-Lower Patterns of Total Body Connectivity
In the movement of physical comedians and clowns, there is a tendency for locomotion to take place in a body-half pattern instead of in the natural cross-lateral gait, perhaps an intentional indication of being less physically developed. We find familiarity, and often humor, in the body-half waddling of a penguin or toddler. Perceiving someone walk in a body-half pattern is incongruent with the naturally developed human gait of cross-laterality. Additionally, an apparent separation between the upper and lower parts of the body is a trait often present in physical humor. A common theme in cartoons involves the lower body running away from peril before the upper body gets the message to flee as well. In human form, the disassociation between the upper and lower body of physical comedians indicates an incongruity on a basic level of development, as if regions of the body are being controlled by separate forces. Monty Python's sketch “Ministry of Silly Walks” demonstrates an elaborate disconnection between body parts, with the upper and lower body often moving incongruently against one another.
Shape Flow Support and Shape Qualities
The Laban/Bartenieff category of Shape reveals meaning by focusing on the growing and shrinking of the torso and how the shaping of the body connects to Space. How we move our torsos can send very clear messages to perceivers, or, conversely, incongruent messages. If a person lengthens his torso vertically while rising with his entire form to pick an apple from a tree, the experience of all parts organizing toward place high—and the apple—is both functional and congruent. Incongruence in Shape would have the apple-picking man shorten his torso like a compressed spring while the frame of his body attempts to rise to place high. This incongruence may indicate that the mover does not physically embody efficient movement phrasing, which, to those inclined to schadenfreude, is perhaps a humorous situation. From a less vindictive perspective, incongruity between shape qualities and shape flow support is prevalent in clowning and particularly humorous in dance, where the expectation is for efficient movement patterns.
Phrasing in movement corresponds well to phrasing in written language. A movement phrase, or movement sentence, is complete and congruent when there is preparation, initiation, action, and follow through. A dart player prepares by focusing on the bull's-eye, both visually and kinesthetically. To initiate throwing the dart, she carefully pulls it back toward her shoulder before suddenly and directly sending it toward the target in the main action of the phrase. To complete the phrasing, her hand follows the pathway of the dart, guiding it empathetically to the bull's-eye. In dance, a well-executed grand jeté, or leap, is an example of congruent phrasing.
Physical humor often relies on the interruption of phrasing and the viewer's preconceived expectations being altered unpredictably, as is often utilized in the choreography of Monica Bill Barnes—a pelvic gyration in the midst of a flowing modern phrase or a giant cardboard box flying onstage to hit the dancer at the height of a graceful arabesque. Incongruities in phrasing are closely related to surprise, a key element in humor (Weems 2014, 26). Our sense-making minds are stringing together visual input to create a narrative or expected outcome. When what we believed would take place shifts unpredictably, humor is the result.
Effort
Phrasing can also be interrupted in regard to Effort. Listening to your favorite song and remembering sweet memories of the past may take you into what Laban calls passion drive (free Flow, light Weight, and sustained Time). However, an unexpected knock on the door will take you into an awake state (direct Space and sudden Time). The complete shift on the effort spectrum, from indulging qualities (free, light, sustained in this case) to condensing qualities (direct and sudden) is incongruent, surprising, and can be humorous. Stand-up comedians exhibit wonderful incongruent Effort phrasing in their verbal delivery. Conversely, congruent effort phrasing is created through effort loading. The effort is a natural progression that develops out of and returns to an established effort constellation.
However, in incongruent effort phrasing, like moving from passion drive to awake state, all the Effort qualities change at once. What was sustained becomes sudden; what was missing (Space effort) suddenly appears in direct Space. We can picture the effort phrasing making a complete shift across the effort spectrum in progressions such as walking to slipping or reading a book to being startled. In choreography, being aware of how effort phrasing falls naturally into, or out of, metered music can mean the difference between predicable musicality and delightful surprise.
Space
How the human body is organized in Space is meaningful not only in humor studies but also in everyday interaction with the environment. A congruent interaction with space allows you to get to the bus stop safely and efficiently. “Natural,” unaffected walking takes place in the sagittal plane (forward, with a little bit of up and down). In many clowning examples as well as Charlie Chaplin's walk, space is approached incongruently, by ambulating in the vertical plane (more side to side than forward).
Incongruence in Space is also revealed by countertension, which is what the body uses to balance when one slips or falls. From walking along in two spatial pulls of the sagittal plane, slipping requires the body to balance by moving into the third, previously absent spatial pull, the horizontal dimension (or some deflection of it). The need to move into a countertension is in opposition to the previous action or movement goal. Our expectations for regular locomotion are broken on many levels. While dance lives in the world of countertension, everyday actions meet extreme countertension when something unpredictable has happened—something incongruent.
As a choreographer and dance educator, my aim is not necessarily to create humorous dances. However, humor is an inroad to interpersonal connection, and my aim is to create dances with which a wide range of audiences can connect. Humor, like dance, has the capacity to be nonverbal and to reach beyond boundaries of culture, society, ability, and age (Weems 2014, 154). Infants laugh before they possess language—often they are laughing at motion. Humor is a primal human experience that we understand innately and kinesthetically.
The study of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff perspective offers various benefits to the arts and education. Humor in the classroom serves memory retention, allowing students to create knowledge through their individual, humorous connection to learning. Understanding the physicality of humor through a Laban/Bartenieff analysis of incongruent movement patterns allows choreographers to develop innovation in their movement, audiences to access dance on a subconscious level, and everyday people to connect with each other through the kinesthetic language of humor.
Using Touch to Facilitate Body Connectivity
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch can facilitate greater connectivity, ease, and awareness in movement by increasing sensation in ways that will foster new possibilities for movement.
Touch is a vulnerable and powerful experience. In the Laban/Bartenieff work, touch is not a given or an expectation. It is important to learn that you can say yes and no to touch from another person. Saying no to touch can be an empowering reminder of your ownership of and agency over your body. When working with others, ask permission to touch that includes where on their body the touch will be and what kinds of touch you will deliver. If someone decides not to be touched they can use their own hands, or you can assist them in finding other ways to experience the purpose of the touch.
The following are basic ideas for incorporating touch that are easy to learn and particularly useful for enhancing body connectivity. The types of touch discussed below are part of a larger body of work developed by Peggy Hackney and Janice Meaden with Ed Groff and Pam Schick as part of Integrated Movement Studies' “Touch for Repatterning” curriculum. Each brought other training perspectives including Body-Mind Centering, Irene Dowd's kinesthetic anatomy and neuromuscular re-education, and massage therapy to the curriculum. This is part of a much larger body of work, but this will get your started.
Being with Touch
Use this method to become present with the connection between your body and your partner's. Being with touch asks the toucher to be present with and listen to what is underneath their hands. It does not seek to do anything or ask that the person being touched do anything besides be present with what is there. Try this type of touch on the torso. As the toucher, you may want to check in with the person you are touching, asking questions like, “What are you noticing?” Or, “Is this pressure okay? Would you like more or less?” Keep the dialogue going to demonstrate that conversation about what is happening is part of the experience.
Locating Touch
Use locating touch to help your partner get a sense of where different parts of the body are sited and how they relate to other parts. Locating touch can go to one body part or slide along a pathway. It is like using your hands to say, “Focus your attention right here.” Try this type of touch to locate the hip joint or the lesser trochanter or the base of the scapula. After locating an area or part of the body, cue your partner to notice how that area relates to another area.
Sliding Touch
Locating touch can phrase into a sliding touch, where the toucher uses her hand to slide along or trace a line or connection on the body as if to bring awareness to the connection between one area and another.
Sending Touch and Receiving Touch
Use these techniques to find a connection or pathway through the body. Sending touch has directionality that give an energetic quality of sending information through the body's tissues. Receiving touch gathers or receives the sending touch somewhere else in the body. For example, try placing a hand on the sternum, and imagine you can send a message through the sternum. Place another hand on the sacrum, and imagine this hand can receive the message being sent by the top hand. The directionality in this kind of touch is clarified by the receiving touch. In this example, the hand on the sternum is sending a message in a down and back direction. Explore this type of touch with multiple pathways through the body.
Applying L/BMA to Aerial Dancing
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance.
Elizabeth Stitch
As an aerialist, I have found the modes of shape change to be extremely useful for moving beyond the functional limitations of the skills of aerial technique and into the more expressive world of aerial dance. Due to safety concerns and initial lack of strength, beginning aerialists often utilize spoke-like directional modes. This allows the aerialist to form a direct link between her body and the environment, or apparatus, which provides safety while she's in the air. When teaching beginning aerial students, I use this functional approach and encourage them to exactly model my steps into each skill.
Over time, I have noticed that it is difficult to break this initial pattern and begin to explore other options for changing the form of the body and connecting with the apparatus. In analyzing my personal aerial performance, I was surprised to observe my own strong preference for the directional mode, particularly the Arc-like form. While this mode can lend a more graceful feeling to a movement, it is essentially similar to the spoke-like mode in terms of the expressive statement it makes in connecting to the apparatus. In this context, both directional modes of shape change are straightforward and utilitarian, which is by no means negative, but they are expressively limited and not what I always want to convey.
One of the things I love most about Laban theory is that it gives me a map into lesser-known places in my movement signature. Following this map into the co-creative realm of carving has offered me not only a different relationship with my apparatus, but also new possibilities for movement invention. It has also guided me as a performer into the vulnerability of sharing my inner life with the audience through specific moments of shape-flow mode of shape change. With this full palette of expressive possibilities, my movement experience feels more satisfying, which keeps me coming back to my apparatus for further exploration in the air!
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