By Kendra Loh
Staff Writer
Fifteen students pranced, skipped, swayed and moved their feet as they learned to understand movement and its effect on their minds at a Nov. 15 workshop titled “The Laban Technique: Exploring a Physical Approach to Character.”
The event, hosted by the theater department, took place in the W.D. Powell Theater.
Hungarian dancer Rudolph Laban created the “Laban technique” in the 1940s, having made observations about the movements of humans and how those movements reveal truths about an individual.
His theory studied the general laws of human movement in work and at play and how those laws affect feelings and thoughts.
Savannah Treleven, sophomore theater major, said she learned how to be comfortable with whole body movements after attending the workshop. Treleven was the lead actress in “Doubt,” a play performed recently on campus.
“After attending this workshop, I realized I could have done more with my character in “Doubt,” but I will definitely use these skills in my next play,” Treleven said.
Allison Hearn, junior theater major, said learning how movement creates a character was helpful.
“When you are acting, you get your lines but they are just words; it’s what you do with the words that is the most important,” Hearn said. “It was helpful to see the movements defined and to actually know the names of the movements and understand them.”
Chad Daniel, adjunct theater faculty member, taught the basics of the technique and explained how movement affects the psychological part of a person’s mind.
“Laban movement is an ideology about the ‘physicallization’ of a character, which means we are letting the movements affect our mind instead of the other way around,” Daniel said.
Daniel added that different movements will affect a person’s mood and how a performer feels. If the body is moving a certain way, he said, a performer will feel a certain emotion, such as happiness or depression.
Daniel introduced the theory by asking students to express themselves in different situations.
Some of the exercises involved making their movements “direct,” “non-direct,” “light,” “heavy,” “fast” and “slow.”
After each movement, Daniel asked the students to share how the movements affected them psychologically. Responses included “carefree,” “nervous,” “depressed” and “powerful.”
“Laban applied his knowledge of movement to dance and theater and came up with “Laban notation,” where actors or dancers could read certain symbols on paper and be able to translate them into movements,” Daniel said.
Daniel mentioned that attendees grasped the concept well and were able to stay focused. He said students released their “nervous energy,” which can be related to inhibition and distractions around them, and that they “understood how to work physically and channel that into their minds.”
