Karen, Cat and Ali presented online in EUROLAB’s conference, 2024. Thank you, EUROLAB!

Above: EUROLAB conference co-organizer Rajyashree Ramesh chairing questions following our presentation.

In WM we have been exploring the development, shaping and sharing of the Laban/Bartenieff Movement System (LBMS) Motif. We see Motif is a tool, a practice and a creative process as a part of LBMS. Engaging in it stimulates creative approaches to learning, and opens the door to further choice-making, new experiences and refined perception. The development of Motif has been occurring through faculty discussion and in the context of the classroom.

The Laban/Bartenieff Movement System (which is what we mean when we say LBMS – a whole, so not BF and LMA) is a comprehensive system used in understanding multiple aspects of human movement patterns.  Its methodology incorporates a theoretical framework and language for movement including LBMS Motif, the symbolic representation of parts and patterns of movement.  The system is used to identify, record and interpret both macro and micro aspects of human movement.  As a system of movement analysis, LBMS is unique as it identifies and codifies both the qualitative as well as quantitative aspects of movement. To use the words of one of the Themes of LBMS, the system takes into account both Functional as well as Expressive content of actions. 

WholeMovement faculty are connected to one another through a learning community model approach to teaching. We are generally present in all classes not just the ones we are teaching. We reference and build on what has occurred in other’s classes and in addition often co-teach. We engage in collective reflection on ourselves and our work, with a shared philosophical and pedagogical approach.

We use LBMS Motif in ways that have emerged from conversations around the dissatisfaction with fragmentation of educational praxis in which different parts of movement are differentiated but often not sufficiently synthesised – connected to the context of the whole. In teaching, we teach by foregrounding different parts at different times – this is of course curricular content , but always with the whole as the container in mind. In LBMS as Motif reflects the whole system, we interweave the practice of Motif throughout essentially all classes, and not a separate idea.

The incorporation of Motif addresses crucial aspects of Movement Analysis training, including choice and consensus in capturing and interpreting movement. And the Pattern of Developmental Progression of the system is built in through how we use Motif as a reflection of this pattern. Through the processes of analysis and synthesis, we acknowledge the complex nature of movement and that there is a multiplicity of meanings, unfolding in ongoing complex ways.

Motif is an idea or a way of rendering the significant essence of a concrete experience or the abstraction of an idea through image or sound or structure. Motifs are generally brief or succinct elements that represent a perceivable pattern. This is a common part of many forms of expression – notably in the visual arts as well as in literature, music etc. In other words, Motif is not an idea limited to the body of knowledge/inquiry that is movement analysis but is seen across disciplines as an expression of what is essential. Metaphor is often linked to Motif as it paradoxically links the simple to the complex through associations of concrete/literal to the abstract and the possibility of multiple and multi layered interpretations.  

            As many of you are probably aware, the roots of Motif go back to Kinetography Laban and has its origins in the 1930s from Laban’s work and the work of his collaborators/associates Kurt Jooss and Sigurd Leeder, developing into Labanotation, developed further by Ann Hutchinson Guest.  Thus, contemporary LBMS Motif is an example of the pattern and usual progression in which an initial idea or inspiration is taken up by and added to by others in the progression of the development of all bodies of knowledge.

            In contrast to Labanotation, LBMS Motif is not in any way linked to the art of recording dance for archiving and recreating, but rather deals with movement as a much broader phenomenon and applicable in all movement contexts. Recording the specificity of movement is not the primary intent of Motif in LBMS. The entanglement of Labanotation and Motif (a derivation coming from Labanotation) with dance however has been reiterated continually. The truncated version of Labanotation that has come to be identified as Motif. This idea and this version of Motif was to a large extent closely aligned with the concept of a ‘shorthand’ for capturing the dominant characteristics of movement, rather than the more micro perspective of recording all aspects of the body moving in space that Labanotation required. While Labanotation and LBMS Motif come from a similar origin, they differ in their intent and use.

LBMS Motif is a visual pictorial representation of movement essence to facilitate pattern recognition and the process of understanding possible meanings of movement.

In LBMS Motif we recognise three distinct ways of writing symbolically, Vertical, Horizontal and in Constellation. The Vertical Motif, that came from Labanotation, reveals relative duration of actions and events. Horizontal Motif reveals the order in which actions unfold (beginning, middle, end) but does not specify duration. It emerged alongside the development of Effort and later Effort/Shape theory. The Constellation Motif reveals the parts that are foregrounded in a movement event, but does not specify order, duration or sequencing. Rather, the Constellation Motif captures the parts of events and actions that are most salient to understanding the essence of what is happening. Each form of Motif Writing can be used for different purposes to reveal meanings, intent and patterns, for example seeing what is present or absent, like if there are no Effort symbols in a Constellation Motif.

Generally, the process of Motif-ing is undertaken physically using a pen or pencil and paper, though sometimes a finger on a track-pad or touch-screen is used to make these marks. Choosing in the action of drawing, whatever the medium, is understood as a significant embodiment and learning process.

In LBMS Motif, we can create a Motif and then move it to learn or explore new patterns from it. The symbols can be used as a conduit for new movement experiences rather than replication. We can also observe movement and then Motif it, practicing observation skills of discerning, differentiating, and choosing. Understanding LBMS Motif as a technique is not to argue that it must be practiced in a specific way. Rather, the more facility you have with the symbols and how you explore meaning-making with them, the more possibilities are made available for movement experience, and observation or perception skills. LBMS involves processes of coming to consensus and the versatility of LBMS Motif communicates both outwards with others and inwards to your own understanding.

It is problematic that sometimes LBMS Motif is referred to as a ‘short-hand’ of Labanotation, or the ‘highlights’ of movement. ‘Highlight’ does not imply pattern or progression. Rather it isolates and edits, much like a still image of a photograph, which is not a helpful way of describing movement and change. Distillation of essence does not necessarily mean being as brief as possible. Becoming more specific does not necessarily mean becoming more micro (for example, the left little finger of the hand vs the larger macro idea of a distal body part). ‘Short-hand’ does hint at brevity and a process of contraction, but it is more appropriate to understand LBMS Motif as an expression of the whole system of LBMS itself.
It is clear that LBMS Motif operates under different terms and procedures than Labannotation, as well as having different symbols. The different symbols, some of which we will share here, can refer to micro details whilst others designate broader concepts. The following list is the way in which we articulate LBMS Motif for students in our training programs.

LBMS Motif contributes to the process of the part/whole thematic duality of analysis and synthesis. Patterns are not individual parts but phrases of parts in relationship, understood as whole in themselves. Whilst Body, Space, Shape and Effort are used to subdivide or categorise movement phenomena, there are three other overarching, or macro patterns LBMS uses: 1. Developmental Progression, 2. Thematic Duality and 3. Phrasing.

These have specific, micro usages, as well as referring to larger macro patterns.  In relation to today’s subject of Motif I want to start by addressing the Pattern of Thematic Duality

Symbols for the Thematic Dualities have emerged through a particular story. Starting quite a long time ago in a discussion led by Antja Kennedy symbols were proposed for the Themes.

However The Laban/Bartenieff community internationally had no formal process to come to consensus to use or not. But a PDF was shared amongst colleagues. Karen began sharing this particular PDF citing its source and saying that it was “unofficial”. It was met with great enthusiasm in part due to an emphasis on the large idea of Patterns that we were emphasising in support of synthesis. These particular symbols have repeatedly shown their usefulness and appropriateness and are part of the LBMS taxonomy that we use in all our trainings. And in this vein, we are constantly encouraging students to develop symbols that meet their own needs in their particular application as part of a creative practice and need. As co-founder of WholeMovement Laura Cox always liked to tell students, there are no Motif police.

The Forward and Backwards symbols in Labanotation have been used in Laban-based trainings as part of dance education at conservatoires, as well as in movement analysis programmes such as LBMS and Language Of Dance. For those students who had not encountered Labanotation, and even for those who had, the symbol provoked confusion because of the symbol having the ‘chimney’ on the right or left side. This is historically connected to the notation system for bipedal weight support and transfer activity. The ‘chimney’ implies and conflates Body and Space. But the spatial notion is Forwards, irrespective of right or left sidedness, and so a modification to the symbol was adopted to eliminate the detail of right or left Body basis built into the old symbol. Whilst also assuaging the confusion of right or left when it does not matter to the movement experience or phenomena, this new symbol attempts to illuminate a shared notion of forward or backward that includes more bases of support other than the bipedal assumption in the Labanotation symbol. Forward is forward in the Sagittal space whether you are on two legs, a leg and a crutch, a wheelchair, and so forth. The symbol alludes to a commonality of the shared spatial phenomenon of forward/backward, rather than subtly reiterating and reinforcing a normative, ableist body expectation of human anatomy and locomotion.

Studd and Cox (2019: 150) added ‘vocalizing’ to the list of Basic Body Actions to explicate voice as an action. Whilst LMBS supports understanding non-verbal communication, the use of voice as a continuum from breath, sound, word, and sentence is a vital, foundational part of human experience, interaction and movement. The symbol acts not only to include voice, but to argue it as a kinaesthetic, kinetic phenomenon. Expertise from fields of music, drama, literature, linguistics and philosophy exists to offer immense specificity about how voice might be used and its effects. In LBMS there is no one particular way voice should be used, but rather the system can be explored to identify or support vocalization based on the context or situation, for example, communication or movement re-patterning, not forgetting the working languages, values and aims in that specific time and place. The inclusion of voice within the LBMS taxonomy explicates as well as integrates an understanding of movement that does not ignore vocalization. Including voice as movement recognises complex relations between voice and communication, and the addition of this symbol reflects how LBMS attempts to explore wholeness through different strategies. This update and addition to the Basic Body Actions symbols makes something implicit explicit. 

Likewise, it became important to differentiate and identify how a mover’s experience occurs in a context and environment. The focus of the locus of control on the mover and identifying solo movement experience that Somatic practices tend to focus on the actions of an individual and repatterning them, mover regardless of context, whereas context is always a crucial aspect of what we are looking at, in which repatterning might not be the aim or only possibility. This symbol allows reflection upon the whole of a context, not only a part. Again the update to BBAs supports what was implicit to be explicit. We have also added a symbol for Interaction – which moves beyond the solo mover and allows to recognize the mover in the larger context of environment. This symbol references the action of connecting with two action strokes.

The Innersphere symbol, and the concept of Innersphere, recognises Inner Space which unlike the specificity of Kinesphere was not explicated in the literature historically. Experience of ‘inner’ was primarily relegated to the Body Component through Breath experience (often through a process of Dimensional Breathing), but not articulated as a spatial phenomenon. The concept of Innerspere becomes foundational to a Body/Space duality in which Space can be understood as a continuum including the mover – from inner space to Kinespheric Space to General Space, and where Space can be both the content and container of human movement within in, around or outside the body. The Innersphere symbol helps to make explicit the spatial continuum of the human movement experience. Whilst this talk focuses on Motif, the large idea of Space Harmony is foundational to understanding LBMS as a theory, practice and intervention.
Space Harmony in LBMS is premised on the Body/Space duality and wholeness of the development of self/other. The human capacity for abstract thought and symbolic representation grows out of the foundational Body/Space experience and continuum. The development of symbols that help recognise and articulate experience are a significant part of this process. Hence we understand BESS in ways that are not so equivalent as the acronym suggests.

We use Motif to bridge ways of thinking, moving and learning for meaning-making and recognition. It helps to develop a shared language, which is important generally but especially in cross-cultural classrooms in which Motif continually reminds us that language is a lived and living context. We have found that both the learning and facilitation of LBMS Motif transforms our teaching and perceptual habits, and challenges our students to do the same. Teaching and using Motif in different parts of somatic movement education and observation training produces conditions for new modes of perception to arise through experience, observation and interaction. Grappling with the problems of fragmentation in learning – both for the individual student and broader community that this conference helps to overcome – we argue that LBMS Motif can be an integrative tool for bringing to consciousness habits and patterns of thought and action. Using it as an intervention to repattern the system, and the ways it is taught and learnt, continues to open the door for further choices and engagement with other bodies of knowledge.

Language evolves and develops organically, playfully and out of necessity. Indeed, emojis and text-speak reflect choice, brevity and consensus. We are constantly encouraging students to develop symbols that meet their own needs and in their particular application, as part of a creative practice and communicative intent. As WholeMovement co-founder Laura Cox always liked to tell students, there are no Motif police.

If creativity involves myriad processes of curiosity, generation of ideas and the will to produce and share with others, LBMS Motif shows enduring creative potential for explicating awareness and perception. Engaging in LBMS Motif as a tool, a practice and a creative process stimulates new approaches to learning, and supports making choices, whilst opening to new experiences, both individually and together.