Lesson 3 – Movement

Movement is a form of communication. Not only can you depict tasks through movement but also character and relationship.

Posture

Posture is one of the simplest things to utilize to illustrate character. For many, poster is often connected to status. Good posture is associated with high status characters and curved, poor posture with low status characters.

Blocking

Often this communicates plot or story. Within a play, this will be dictated to you by a director intrepreting the playwright’s intentions. Within Improv, you become a self director and where you move on the stage communicates a great deal about yourself and the other characters.

When it comes to any other movement on the stage, we will discuss the different types of movement through the theory of Rudolf Laban. Rudolf Laban was a choreography, dancer and movement theorist. He dissected all movement into 4 component parts:

Space
Any movement is either direct or indirect (flexible)

Weight 
Movements can be heavy or light

Time 
Speed is either quick or sustained

Flow
Flow is either bound or free

He then would combine the different components in various ways to come up with the Eight Efforts.

  • Dab
  • Flick
  • Punch
  • Slash
  • Glide
  • Float
  • Wring
  • Press

 

laban-effort-graph