Laban's Eight Efforts: A Verb-Based Warm-Up

The whole body warms up through Rudolf Laban's eight basic effort actions: punch, float, glide, slash, dab, wring, press and flick. They give the class a shared vocabulary for composing later.

How to play

1. Guided joint mobility from feet to head while walking around the space (2 min).
2. The teacher shows each card with a verb and its mix of weight, time and space. Everyone tries it with arms, then legs, then the whole body (4 min).
3. Rapid fire: the teacher calls verbs faster and faster and the group switches quality instantly while traveling (2 min).
4. In pairs, one performs an action and the other guesses the verb and names the factor that defines it (2 min).

Rules

• Punch, slash and flick end in the air: nobody and nothing gets hit.
• Keep a safe distance when traveling with big actions.
• Everyone scales the range to how their body feels today.

Variations

Adaptations

• Deaf or hard-of-hearing students: cards are shown large and the teacher pairs each verb with a fixed gesture.
• Lower-body injury: do the actions seated, using arms, torso and head.
• Self-conscious students: during rapid fire everyone moves at once and nobody watches.

Learning goals

• Warm up the main joints.
• Identify Laban's eight effort actions.
• Link each action to weight, time and space.

Equipment for a class of 25

• cards: 8

Teacher tip

Make the cards on printer paper with the verb and three keywords (strong/light, sudden/sustained, direct/indirect). Students often mix up press and wring: press is direct, wring is indirect.

More activities like this

More warm-ups for High School