What Laban Technique is and why every actor can benefit from it

Laban technique is a system for the analysis of movement that can help actors in every medium - even in voice. But most actors in North America have only a slight exposure to its potential, if any at all.

If it weren’t for working on Heavy Rain, I doubt I would have spent the next decade of my life finding ways to physically embody every character I played in whatever medium I found myself working in. The way I walk through a dark house in “See for me”? That’s a combination of a music reference and a laban quality. The voice of Bagley in Watch Dogs: Legion? The confirmed voice was annotated in Laban terms and physically performed using a chosen reference file - meaning it was consistent across the years over which I recorded it.

When talking about Laban to fellow actors in North America, I have learned that some schools and universities touch upon Laban, but rarely is it a centerpiece technique, and even rarer is it practically applied to characterization. From my own experience in the UK, I benefited from being taught regularly by Katya Bloom, who I now realize was teaching in the best way possible - something I honor in my own classes.  Where most Laban courses fail is in the integration of Laban to script and character analysis for actors. This is symptomatic of a consistent failure of acting techniques to work on integration between mind and body, between psychology and physicality; something I try to address in my Psycho-physical technique classes too.

Heavy Rain coincided with my interest in bridging that gap. Since then we have seen a shift in the dominant storytelling medium from film to game and from digital to digital virtual. Physicality and the embodied story it tells, has come back into demand, after being pushed to the side by the mental and verbal demands of methods molded by film. Laban and other Mind-body techniques are once again being looked to, to solve the eternal challenge of becoming someone, or something else.

Traditional acting methods rely on semantic description of behavior that assume the mind is master of and separate from the body. This split between mind and body is often called “Decartian”, after the philosopher René Descartes. It’s pronounced “Day-Cart” - just in case you are unfamiliar. When I first learned of his work, I used to say “Desscarteees” - because I had only ever read the name and thought he was an ancient greek philosopher!  Whilst interviewing Gilles Monteil (Animation and movement expert Ubisoft Montpellier) for Performing for Motion Capture, he opened the Descartian split of mind and body to greater scrutiny: The division was as much moral and religious as it was philosophical. The flesh being weak and sinful has been an axiom of European and colonial culture for hundreds of years. 

Laban (US “Lebahn” or UK “LAH-bn”) working from the 1920’s as a dancer, choreographer and dance theorist, knew what modern science now proves on a regular basis - that the mind and body are inextricably linked - one affecting the other in a connected system - whether or not we are conscious of it. It is interesting to consider that although we can now understand that stress can lead to multiple physical ailments, the idea of celebrating the body by dancing naked in nature, which was part of Laban’s school, can still make us uncomfortable.

Naked dancing aside, the practical application of the theory at the time was in dance and then as ballet notation and that continues to be its primary association to this day. However, the genius of Laban’s basic principles has also been applied to movement analysis for computer gesture recognition, psychotherapy, and yes, acting.

So how can it work for an actor?

The first thing to consider is that you have probably had a lifetime of treating your mind and body separately. Moreover, physical exercise and pursuits have likely been highly formalized - whether a sport or an exercise regime. Working in ways that allow your body to be ugly, strange, weird and a-rhythmic, and increase the fluid interplay between body and mind is where we start. 

This improves your sense of movement and your body’s position in space, eventually so that there is seamless and instantly responsive communication between your mind and body.

Then, instead of starting with Laban's descriptions of qualities, we start with the physical embodiment of them. This is to establish a vital principle, that physicality is better understood/described by doing not by semantics.

Once you understand the principles from an experiential perspective, a new world opens up to you. Not only will you be able to believably move and behave as a greater range of characters, but this knowledge will be tied with, and mediated by psychological and emotional affect. You will see others' physicality and be able to embody it - feel how you would interpret their physicality. You’ll be able to order a coffee in an entirely different way and it will simply be accepted. You will see how people walk and hear how people talk with Laban qualities in their stride, in their vocal tone and delivery. You will have the keys to better embody characters in any medium and any genre.

If you are interested in embodied acting,  - “as total a psychological, physical and emotional transformation into another as possible and practical” , you should study Laban. Head over to the classes page for my next online course, or if you are in Toronto, be one of up to 6 students in In-Person classes I teach at The Dirt Underneath Actors Space

And don’t worry, naked nature dancing is not a requirement of my courses.

However to get a 10% discount on online classes, subscribing to my mailing list is ;-)