Laban Resources
Warren Lamb
Interview in October 2013
Summary of Conversation
A return to the discussion of the Flow of Shape. Laban’s notion of Space and WL’s conception of Shape. Further detailed explanation of the process of growing and shrinking of shape, of freeing and binding of one’s effort. Useful for any student of movement. Flow is neither a state of movement nor a feeling, but a process of variations in growing & shrinking, etc. WL: ‘Even being Free we have to constantly… in order to keep movement alive we have to constantly renew. This renewal process is really a way of understanding keeping ourselves alive.’
The Conversation
DM: Without belittling your amazing achievement, I have to say that the notion of the Flow of Shape is such an obvious idea! I was working with a group recently and looked at them all at the beginning of the class. What do you imagine their Shape Flow was like?
WL: I would imagine it was restricted.
DM: Precisely. They were totally shrunk in fearful anticipation of the class. Oddly, because they had tightened their buttocks and drawn up their knees, they had this startled straightness and tallness.
WL: Just now you said that you understand BESS (Bartenieff’s idea of Body Effort Shape Space).
DM: I understand why they feel this is important and why you would not find such a system useful.
WL: Why do they want to do it? For marketing or to be different to me?
DM: I think it is an attempt to be faithful to Laban’s Choreutic speculations and the significance of Space, without realising that this has nothing to do with working movements and behavioural movements, the things that you are interested in. You are interested in the degrees to which a person does or does not advance.
WL: I am interested in the changes in Shape whenever we move. You can’t move in Space, you can do any of the spatial scales or the so-called space harmonies without constantly changing your shape. And that’s what I think Laban was particularly interested in. He railed when people said, ‘Well we’ll start at point 1…’
DM: You’re referring to that Italian woman who left the following day. I think this is related to the vapour trails you talk about. I think there is a level of speculation when they go into mystical ideas about space.
WL: So, Space is mysticism and Shape is discipline?
DM: I would say so. When you talk about Shape, from a Feldenkrais point of view, I start seeing bodily shape as to do with organisation, and that is the shaping that is appropriate vis a vis a task, you shape in such a way that you are left ready to move on somewhere else afterwards. So, a badly organised movement is when you snooker yourself – you can’t move.
WL: I am very aware of that now in my present condition I am vulnerable to falling over. I did have four falls, but I was conscious and I knew how I was shaped intuitively so I didn’t hurt myself.
DM: Did you roll or make yourself into a ball?
WL: It depends. One time I went backwards. They now want me to use a walker. But I think even a walking stick is an impediment to me. I think I can rescue myself from falling more by being free. If you’ve got a walking stick it may come between you and something you can get hold of or push against. I think whether somehow you are shaping your movement, I am promoting as much as I can to maintain my balance.
[Personal account and discussion of his medical state.]
WL: Every morning I try to do some figures of eight movement. Laban was always talking about figures of eight as being very significant. Is that something that you have come across much?
DM: Yes, the lemniscate. I have also come across teachers who swear by and argue that there is something intrinsic to that double loop – it has some kind of healing properties. There is so much in Lisa Ullmann’s teaching that consists of loops, mostly in the arms because it is harder to do it in the legs. There is one exercise that Geraldine taught me that includes loopings with the leg – In Out Behind Side Front. [DM demonstrates].
WL: That looks much more interesting than what one usually sees in musicals.
DM: Talking about Flow, how do you observe Flow?
WL: Flow can be understood in so many ways. Of course what you can observe can perhaps be explained in terms of a tendency to fall if we don’t preserve muscle tone and so all the time we are alive we are doing something to meet that need. The contrast between anybody alive even if they may be inert and a dead body is really very, very extreme. The shock that people feel in seeing a dead body is the absolutely stillness we see is so different from anybody who is alive. I think what we are aware of primarily in the difference between the live and the dead body is that the preservation of life requires this relative freeing and binding, and growing and shrinking. That’s what the person is doing in order to be alive. If you stop doing that then you lose tone, then you lose breathing and perish.
DM: That’s how Flow is generated through muscular tonus, but how can you pick this up through observation.
WL: They are moving all the time, only often the movement it’s too slight in order to be able to observe. That will change, I think, with technology that can measure movement. Then we will no longer have to rely on human observation. When the person interested in studying movement attempts to observe Flow it creates a lot of disagreement and misunderstanding. People talk a lot about being Free Flow and being Bound Flow. Well, I think this can happen but what they are really saying is that they are renewing their Flow variation more towards the Free abandoned polarity as compared with the Bound rigid polarity.
DM: Earlier we were talking of band-widths and these could be seen as the extents to which a person will Free before they start binding. Certain people seem to think of binding as a bad thing and freeing as good. But as you once said, ‘I wouldn’t like to have a surgeon who was all Free Flow.’
WL: You can’t be Free Flow without being relatively Bound in terms of the potential between the two polar extremes. Perhaps a person who is referred to as being more Free may be more towards the Free polarity and away from the Free polarity it may not get really over a middle point into what is a Bound controlling of the movement. Relatively, that is what is happening.
DM: So it is a question of degrees of more of less Free, as the person doesn’t go into the Binding.
WL: And those degrees are the movement. And it is with the movement that we have to do. We cannot turn the tap onto being free. Even being Free we have to constantly… in order to keep movement alive we have to constantly renew. This renewal process is really a way of understanding keeping ourselves alive. I give an example that is appropriate to me, certainly at this moment, people who are afraid of falling because the pavement is slippery, or something like that, we try to rigidize. When they can’t completely, because even with a little step there will be a slight relaxation of the Bound Flow. But they try to do as little variation as possible in order to keep the balance, but the danger is that the moment something a little unusual happens, a little dent in the pavement or something like that, then they are unprepared. But if you keep the Flow going then you are much more aware … by keeping the Flow going you are going relatively Free and relatively Bound. I am not quite sure whether your questions was to define Flow. Of course there are philosophical aspects of Flow that can be talked about.
DM: It was more about observation. I always have to come back to your MPA of me which was eerily correct. Because Flow is to do with Association and Adaptation, and you were talking of a Flow which doesn’t have a Binding initiative and has a more Labile exchange between Binding and Freeing, you are actually in a more adaptive mode, you can respond more readily to bumps and hollows in the ground beneath your feet.
WL: And a more adaptive mode in relationships with other people. The Flow of Shape tends particularly to have an emphasis on the shrinking side.
DM: Think of the expression, ‘A shrinking violet’ for somebody who holds back. When we talk about breaking the ice at a party we are talking about changing frozen movements into thawing movements. Lakoff and Johnson talk about the linguistic unconscious, and for all the terms you use there is a colloquial expression which bears them out as being an acknowledged facet of human movement behaviour. I know that intuitively I can pick up a person’s Flow, but how do you pick it up?
WL: I think I pick it up be how close a person is to falling as compared to how close the person is to being rigid, paralysed.
[DM connects Flow with the ANS and its two branches Sympathetic and Parasympathetic.]
DM: The first part of your answer was about what is Flow, and you talked about muscular tonus and this tonus is affected by either one of these branches of the ANS, either accelerative or decelerative.
[…]
DM: She (Valerie Preston Dunlop) and I were students together and always kept in touch with each other, sent Christmas Cards to each other. And then because of her Machiavellian antics, I don’t know who stopped first. We stopped around twelve or fifteen years ago. And then this Christmas just gone I received a Christmas card from her and the way in which it was phrased was aligning the two of us together as promoting the legacy of Laban’s work, and she mentioned Movement Pattern analysis. And it seems to me that she wants to be herself seen as a developer of MPA. Typical of what you might expect from this Christmas Card, was if she invited James McBridge to a job at the Laban Centre, funded perhaps by Bill Elmhirst, and then she could become an MPA person. I’m sure he’d never accept, but that’s what you might interpret, was that the Laban Centre was just as involved in MPA as I was. So, she’s up to something.
DM: But she doesn’t know about MPA. I think there is a rather fantastical approach to Laban studies. Laban put together certain elements so that they could create pleasing patterns [i.e. three Motion Factors constituting the Effort Cube]. Most movement specialists from Nikolai Bernstein to Jacques Lecoq agree that pushing and pulling are fundamental human movements: they are about selection of things in the world, what to eat what to push away. It is a fundamental relationship with the environment. Laban never asked why we move. His psychology is therefore completely abstract. Why we move for Laban was something cosmic, whereas for me it is to do with survival in the environment.
WL: It seems that you will be continuing to work in theatre in the future and will be incorporating some Laban ideas in what you do, but will not call yourself a Labanite!
DM: I am more a Lambite! Maybe you followed Laban in using everyday terms for your movement descriptors, but yours are just so much more accurate because they deal in dosages – a little more or a little less. Yes I will use Laban, but always I will use the present participle to indicate the ongoingness of a process of movement. A movement is a constant process of variation of eight variables. It is as simple as that. When you were talking about balance as a process of the Flow of Shaping on the three axes of movement: a little bounce on the vertical, a certain twisting across the centreline as you step. People who walking squarely are more likely to get mugged because they are easier to push over.
WL: I was just going to say that.
DM: Continuing our analysis of a person walking the final axis is the Saggital and this surely is where most variation would be observed.
[WL compliments DM on his understanding of Laban.]
Interview in November 2013
Summary of Conversation
DM continues his process of understanding the nature of WL’s conception of the Flow of Shaping. WL returns to Lawrence’s concept of Inertia: ‘Inertia is the dull and miserable polarity to action. Wanting to take initiative is the positive aspect. I like the word inertia.’ Final reflections on Shape.
The Conversation
DM: I have been thinking about the connection between your idea of Shape and Feldenkrais’ idea of organisation. If I am sitting down with my sit bones in contact with the seat and both my feet flat on the ground, knees over feet then I am well organised to move. If I cross one leg over the other then I have to uncross them before I can move. If I think of a task like pushing, then there is an intelligent and a stupid way of shaping. I think that what I am teaching is Shaping Initiative.
WL: This is another way of saying that there are intelligent and stupid Shapings, that there are harmonious and unharmonious Shapings.
DM: Absolutely. The affinities are where you are working with your frame. Our bodily structure is not suited to pressing up. Firstly, you are working against gravity, and secondly our musculature is better suited to pressing across or down. The more upward you push the less harmonious it becomes.
WL: That’s what we mean by the affinities.
DM: Yes, and I am starting to realise, that your attention to harmony and affinity, is something that I have had to learn. It was not innate within me, but I am getting better at it.
WL: I can see that.
DM: After Christmas David Wolfe, [Campbell Edinborough] and I are going to create a video about the Physics of Human Movement. This will account for the harmonies that you are talking about. If you’re going to push and you involve the turning of pelvis then it will be a lot more efficient of our bodily structure. [This is accompanied by demonstrations.]
WL: I think it is in the book Posture and Gesture that I use the phrase Personal Efficiency. Efficiency is a loaded word from some points of view, and Organisation is better because that’s what you’re actually doing – organising different parts of the body and getting different functions in harmony with each other. So organisation is a better term.
DM: It’s Feldenkrais’ not mine. But what I seem to be finding is that, first of all, your use of the word ‘initiative’ is becoming as important as using the present participle. Until people get away from the eight effort actions, Laban’s approach is going to be mired in unnecessary details.
WL: Lawrence proposed that the opposite to initiative was the word ‘inertia’. Inertia is the dull and miserable polarity to action. Wanting to take initiative is the positive aspect. I like the word inertia. I can feel inertia now, particularly because I am giving in to illness or disability. It is very easy to do. I feel it is important to keep some initiative going.
DM: If you were to pull me out of my seat I would employ a certain Shaping intelligence and allow you to pull me up like that. [Demonstrates a straight and slightly tensed back.] If I had no Shaping intelligence and yielded to inertia, then I would drop because there would be no connection with the leading force.
WL: There hopefully would be a collaborative effort.
DM: I know that you don’t like the word ‘efficiency’, but organised movement is efficient either in the organisation or the execution of a movement.
WL: I think bad organisation or a failure to organise is very negative.
DM: If your Shaping is poor. I like the definition of Assertion as, ‘If nobody else is going to do it, then I will.’ It is not a strategic thing, it is a personal initiative. I now feel that I am a ‘Post-Asserter’, one who used to be all about Assertion but is now prepared to use a Perspective initiative. I don’t know how much you know about the Alexander technique, but in his lessons the first instruction you are given is ‘Before you make the movement, say “no”’. Then you realise that trying to make the movement that was asked of you, you were possibly engaging many more muscles than you needed to. I think Feldenkrais gives you a much more user-friendly way of how to use Shaping and only the very necessary muscles, in other words how to stop yourself moving. When my Mother starts to move she never considers, ‘Where might I best approach this task from?’ That relation between self and task is one that Laban was incapable of theorising. Now my Mother, who suffers from dementia, is incapable of looking at a task and thinking of the ways in which it can best be done. All of them are sudden and habitual. There’s neither Flow of Shape or Effort.
WL: I know, that’s the tragedy: if only she could keep some Flow going, it would be very helpful to her.
DM: It brings us back to your fundamental concept that movement is a process of variations and not a series of snap-shots, not a series of snatches, grabs, punches, jabs. If you do the task in broken movements, inertia is restored in the gaps.
WL: It’s not so much a concept as a description.
DM: It is both, because you have this notion of what a movement is; it can inform how you move.
[A discussion of the phrasing of hammering in a nail detailing the different initiatives involved.]
If you had a photograph, there would only be the image of the hammer on the nail – the destination. You need to understand the whole process of variation, particularly the two parts of the movement: the preparatory upswing and then the descent and increasing focus on the nail. Effort and Recovery. If only people could realise that that is what movement is. There is a better and a worse organisation. If you are too close you can’t even see the nail, let alone give yourself space to freely swing the hammer. I haven’t worked at integrating Laban and Feldenkrais – it’s now 7 years since I qualified as a practitioner.
WL: I think that would be a very worthwhile thing to do. I think it would be good. All these ideas that you are developing … And creating a dialogue with James McBride, Carol-Lynne and Ritu Chanda of the Warren Lamb Trust.
DM: I have just been talking about a certain intelligence which involves putting yourself vis a vis a task. In the Martial arts this has to be quick: decision and action have to following with incredible speed. You’ve always talked about this being a kinaesthetic intelligence. I think these two initiatives [Assertion and Perspective, or Effort and Shape] are functionally quite linked. Because certain people are noticeably poor in Perspective…
WL: But you have changed in that respect…
DM; Yes, and since I’ve changed, which dates back 10 years when you did my MPA. I think there is something definable to the development of these initiatives, and I wonder if one could find the corresponding developmental stages in a child. I still have poor hand-eye coordination and will feel for something rather than look for it. Equally important, my spatial sense is pretty poor. But I think all of these can be developed through guided lessons, be it from a Warren Lamb or Feldenkrais approach. I am slightly more optimistic about the degree to which one can change somebody.
[DM returns again to connection between the ANS and Flow. Flight Fright or Freeze.]
I have a number of exercises which are dangerous, and their aim is to help a student keep in a state of Flow despite the danger. They engage the parasympathetic branch of their ANS, they are asked to breathe and decelerate. They must restore Flow to their Shaping and Effort, so that they can maintain their peripheral vision and thereby can see opportunities for action, they can see choices that are possible. In a martial arts concept if one operated with a purely Effort initiative you would have no sense of optimal distance or of an effective angle of attack.
WL: Would you say you should never divorce Effort from the considerations of Shape to some degree?
DM: Warren Lamb tells us that you cannot divorce the two!
WL: But there are appropriate associations.
DM: This is the thing! Some people are unaware of this. The choices are not just to with weight, direction and timing. The one thing that Laban takes no account of is the fact that I am standing on the floor. If I want to punch you and we were on ice and you would move backwards. The point of education, of training is to give someone choices. Even in a situation where it seems that things are happening so quickly that you couldn’t have a choice. Think of a batsman. The ball is travelling at great speed, even if the batsman is not choosing with their conscious mind, they are making an appropriate choice of stroke. It is obviously too quick for the conscious mind, but some part of the brain is making this selection of the appropriate stroke. I would argue that there are many more choices available to you if you include Shaping. People think of strength so they build up muscles in the wrong places, so they look strong.
WL: So a cricketer needs a good Shaping balancing with his Effort. It is the same thing as watching Roger Federer. Irrespective of whether he wins or loses he is so beautiful.
DM: In old Laban terms I believe he would talk about Ballung, a contracting into a tight ball, and Spannung, an extension and opening outwards. It’s not Gathering and Scattering, but they are related. I think the beauty of Federer’s tennis is in the balance of his Effort and recovery.
WL: I watched him play Nadal whose tennis is very ugly
DM: It is so effortful
WL: It translates into his facial expressions. And of course he gets injured. Federer never gets injured. I think a combined Feldenkrais and Laban approach would be valuable to almost all sportspeople. It’s hardly been attempted has it?
DM: Sportspeople work with sports scientists…
WL: To a great extent but I doubt if they’ve got much understanding of movement.
DM: This is problem I have with my dialogue with John Rothwell. The questions he asks are the ones he knows he can answer. The questions I ask him, are ones that he can’t answer because they are too general, too global. Everything we do involves so many elements. When you are working at all these different levels it is very hard collaborating with scientists who have such methodologically admirable approaches. But it is going to be a long time before dynamics, which is an aspect of physics, and the dynamics of movement, and the dynamics of the brain can actually be studied.
WL: In your lifetime, I hope.