Movement psychology is a tool through which you can consciously decide what ‘story’ your character is portraying in any given moment. The practice of Movement Psychology opens us up to the many psycho/physical possibilities that exist within us.
Laban theory
| Motion factors | Elements | Description |
| Weight | Light or strong | Does this character have a ‘light’ or a ‘strong’ intensity about them? |
| Space | Flexible or direct | When expressing themselves are they ’round about’ and flexible, or direct and to the point? |
| Time | Sustained or quick | Does this character have a sustained or a quick tempo? |
| Flow | Free or Bound | Are they relaxed and free flowing or tense and bound up? |
Working Actions
These are working actions, they are made up of combinations of the elements. These working actions can be executed with either bound or free flow which would affect on how the character is being perceived.
| Working Actions | Elements |
| Gliding | Light/direct/sustained |
| Floating | Light/flexible/sustained |
| Dabbing | Light/direct/quick |
| Flicking | Light/flexible/quick |
| Pressing | Strong/direct/sustained |
| Punching | Strong/direct/quick |
| Slashing | Strong/flexible/quick |
| Wringing | Strong/flexible/sustained |
Exercise
We, as a group, participated in an exercise to better understand this, where we first started off by walking up to each other in a circle in gliding and then working our way up to wringing. We observed each person walking to another and saw how they move, this will better our understanding of movement within the characters that we will create. This exercise was interesting, as the way we moved differed from each other and it can portray a different feeling/emotion in the movement as one can be sad or happy.