Challenges and Rewards: Using Laban/Bartenieff Fundamentals

in Movement Coaching William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

by

Stefan Sittig

CHAPTER III - MOVEMENT COACHING WITH THE LABAN TECHNIQUE

What Is A Movement Coach?

A movement coach, guided by information culled from the play text and the director's concept, is responsible for helping the actors produce clear, specific physical choices on stage.  The main skill a movement coach can instill in an actor is the ability to identify and distinguish between different kinds of movement qualities produced on stage.  I decided that the ideal way to create this ability in the actors I trained would be to teach them, and help them master, Laban's eight movement qualities.  Laban's eight movement qualities can improve the actor's skills of self-analysis and range of movement, but the method is not mathematically precise.  Like other movement methods, it requires that the movement coach and actor communicate clearly and frequently, which can be difficult in a brief rehearsal period.  Each actor also has different needs, while some actors respond immediately with little coaching, others need constant verbal and physical reminders to keep them on the right track.  Overall, I found that the positive aspects of the Laban method outweighed the negative ones and I chose it as my main coaching method.

Laban and the Eight Movement Qualities

Rudolf Laban, was a German movement coach and choreographer who established a method for describing different types of human movement, which he called "movement qualities."  Laban broke down all basic human movement into eight different movement qualities.   He gave them several different names but the clearest ones are: free flow, bound flow, sustained, quick, strong, light, direct, and indirect. (2) Laban created these terms to facilitate verbal communication between movement coach and actor as well as to help the actor better understand the different aspects of stage movement. It is valid to examine each of these movement qualities to better understand how they clarify the variety of movement choices available to the actor.

The first of the eight movement qualities Laban calls "free flow."  Jean Newlove, a protégé of Laban's, in her work, Laban For Actors and Dancers gives an excellent definition of this particular movement quality:

Flow can be considered to be free when it is difficult to stop suddenly. The mover feels there are no problems.  He is not expecting errors, a need to adjust or change his mind.  Confident, he sees no reason to put the action 'on hold.'  There is a whole-heartedness about this fluency of action. It is a confident approach. (3)

Newlove's definition is right on the money, for the style of movement in free flow often has a feeling of abandon.  Free flow is fluent, released and often uncontrolled.  Oftentimes we see examples of free flow movements when we observe people in an argument or people who are releasing a great deal of anguish with their bodies.  An actress playing a mother pleading to the heavens after seeing her son murdered, might choose to use free flow movements in her work on stage.

The second movement quality Laban mentions is "bound flow" and it is directly opposite to "free flow."   Again, Newlove's definition is the clearest available:

Flow is considered to be bound when an action can be stopped at any given moment.  This will not be a complete stoppage leading to an abandonment of the action, but a pause.  Although the movement has stopped its spatial journey, the sensation of fluency remains during the pause but is, however, controlled to the utmost.  Such pauses in action can occur for a variety of reasons: sensing an error, needing to adjust or to correct, a change of mind or any other need to put the action 'on hold'.  It is a cautious approach. (4)

A good example of bound flow movement can be found when one observes workers in an assembly line.  Their movements flow, but not with abandon, but caution, since they often are dealing with heavy machinery and costly equipment and parts.

The third movement quality identified by Laban is "sustained."  Sustained movements often are decelerating. They indulge in time and are not hurried.  There is a feeling that the actor is stretching out time.  Many activities on stage that are performed in slow motion can be viewed as sustained movement.  In our hurried modern world  sustained movement is hard to find, but often in nature, when snow falls slowly on a winter's morning, or clouds move almost in slow motion across a big blue sky, the sustained movement quality is most evident.

The forth movement quality is "quick" and it is the exact opposite of "sustained."  Its movements are defined as accelerating, immediate and hurried.  Sometimes they are abrupt and urgent as well.  Quick movements, as the name implies, happen in a split-second of time and are often hard to spot.  Many comic characters on stage make use of quick movements to provide us with laughter.  We laugh because these movements are so quick that we do not expect them, they catch us by surprise.  But not all quick movement are humor inducing.  Oftentimes an act of violence on stage, or an act of theft can also have a quick quality to it.

The fifth and sixth Laban movement qualities are "strong" and "light."  They are also opposites.  As the names suggest, strong movements are vigorous, full of impact and firm while light movements are delicate, airy and gentle.  While a weight lifter often makes use of strong movements, a ballet dancer often uses light movements.  This is not to say that either could not use the opposite movement quality at a given time, but the general quality of their movements is defined by the frequency of their usage.

The last two movement qualities defined by Laban are "direct" and "indirect."  These are often the most difficult ones to describe, but are also, in my opinion, the most influential when creating movement on stage.  Direct movements follow a straight line, the shortest path between two points.  They also can be described as aimed, accurate, and containing a single focus.  Indirect movements are the exact opposite of direct movements.  They are often wavy, they meander, they take the longest route between two points. 

The eight Laban movement quality descriptions are very useful when dealing with actor's and their movements on stage.  As I found in my work on Julius Caesar, they became a valuable tool that I was able to use to communicate quickly and succinctly with the three actors.  However, some of the actors found some of the qualities easier to master than others.  The actors who mastered most of the eight qualities were able to achieve greater success in their movement work than those who did not.  Also, actors who practiced in their own time the exercises I introduced to them faired better than those who waited for my reminders. For the most part, I found that this system worked excellently for the needs of this particular production.

(2)  Jean Newlove, Laban For Actors and Dancers (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1993), 78-85.

(3)  Newlove,  Laban For Actors and Dancers, 48.

(4)  Ibid.