Movement Analysis: Piecing Together the Puzzle

Author(s): Ann Daly

Reviewed work(s):
Source: TDR (1988-), Vol. 32, No. 4 (Winter, 1988), pp. 40-52
Published by: The MIT Press
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Movement

Analysis

Piecing Together the Puzzle

Ann Daly

"Movement analysis" is a blanket term covering methods as wideranging as Paul Ekman's Facial Affect Scoring Test, Laban Movement
Analysis (LMA), and Ray L. Birdwhistell's kinesics. The field can be divided roughly in two. Nonverbal behavior research (or nonverbal communication research), which focuses mainly on the actions and structure of
everyday life, has largely been created by psychologists, anthropologists,
and ethologists. LMA, which deals with the qualities and dynamics of
movement across the entire continuum of performance, has its roots in
dance. The interdisciplinary field of movement analysis is like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle: some of the pieces are in place, some not. The object
of this TDR issue is to put together the pieces we have while working
toward finding those that are missing.
My aim in editing this issue was also to demonstrate the applicability of
movement analysis across the continuum of performance, from representational to nonrepresentational, from trained to untrained: theatre, aesthetic dance,1 social dance, ritual, sports, aerobics, everyday behavior. The
same elements of the body-in-motion apply to a ballet as they do to an
assembly line, only the aesthetic performance is framed by additional layers of convention (form, genre, choreographer, performer). As a whole,
the articles explore the interpretive richness afforded by a close reading of
movement in any situation. And they set in motion a discussion of the
larger issues vital to the development of movement analysis as a performance studies methodology.
Movement analysis is by no means new-it goes back at least to Charles
Darwin (1872) and Francois Delsarte (Stebbins I902). Both men were
fascinated by the relationship between movement and meaning, the former
in the realm of natural history and the latter in the world of oratory. Later,
in the I940s, psychologist Wilhelm Reich (I949) and anthropologist David
Efron (1941) took up the issue in their respective disciplines. However, not
until the I96os and '70s did the field accumulate the force of a "movement
movement." Nonverbal communication research was not an unlikely
compatriate to the other movements of the era: social activism, encounter
groups, the drug culture, and avant-garde performance. The emphasis was
on process, and movement was process par excellence. The research of
40

MovementAnalysis 41
scientists like Birdwhistell, Albert E. Scheflen, Edward T. Hall, and Daniel
N. Stern was eagerly explored by performers and performance makers
such as Robert Wilson (Brecht I978:32), Steve Paxton, and Yvonne Rainer
(Schechner I973:I2I). Scholars, too, sought to adapt the findings of nonverbal communication research (see Schechner 1973; Schechner with Mintz
I973).
The study of movement flourished during the late '6os and '70s because
of a decisive shift in paradigms from text to performance, from speech to
gesture, from passive reception to active perception/participation. The
I98os have not sustained the momentum of the movement movement;
performance studies theory and methodology is dominated by poststructuralist literary theory. As humanist thought once privileged language over
the body as the source of truth and identity, poststructuralist thought
currently privileges the remove of the spoken word over the now redefined
and suspect literality of the performing body.
The movement movement notwithstanding, nonverbal behavior has always had a relatively low status in Western culture. Nonverbal behavior
was considered only supplementary to language; it could only be defined as
"not verbal." As infant psychiatrist Stern (1985) pointed out, the nonverbal portion of the human communication system remains unformalized
and thus deniable; people are only held accountable for verbal messages.
Among the most deniable aspects of movement are formal properties
that are, in a sense, "invisible" and yet still observable. Spatial focus and
interaction rhythms, for example, cannot be touched, yet they are palpably
perceived. Movement (particularly dance movement) is both absence and
presence, becoming only a trace of itself with the passage of time. There is
nothing so powerful and extraordinary but at the same time so mundane
and overlooked as movement. Just consider the equilibrium quickly negotiated in a crowded elevator, or an infant's tearful response to its mother's
silent abruptness.
The movement qualities and dynamics that LMA addresses2 are especially deniable. As a result, LMA has had to struggle to establish its legitimacy within the larger, scientifically oriented movement analysis
community. LMA refers to any system developed by Rudolf Laban (I8791958) or by his students, such as Warren Lamb's Action Profiling System
and the Kestenberg Movement Profile. Rooted in Laban's theories of Effort and Space Harmony, LMA flourishes in the Laban/Bartenieff Institute
of Movement Studies (LIMS) in New York City and at colleges such as
Ohio State University, Goldsmith's College in London, and the Department of Performance Studies at New York University.
Laban's influence has been felt in many spheres: in choreography,
through pupils such as Mary Wigman and Kurt Jooss; in dance criticism,
especially the American descriptive school of the late '6os and '70s (see Dell
1977); in dance preservation and reconstruction, through his notation system;3 in performance scholarship, through certification programs in New
York City and Seattle and in intensive study programs at the above named
universities; in corporate management, through Warren Lamb's Action
Profiling System (Lamb and Watson 1979; Lamb and Turner 1969); in
human development, through the research of Judith Kestenberg (1965,
1967); and in clinical psychology through the work of Irmgard Bartenieff
(1980), Martha Davis (1984), and Marion North (1972). At LIMS research
also focuses on sports and dance therapy.
Despite its considerable achievements within LIMS, the larger nonverbal
behavior field has been reluctant to accept LMA without reliability data

42

Ann Daly
(Rosenfeld I982:249). In order for a test or tool to be accepted in the
sciences, its reliability must first be established empirically. A reliable instrument is one that yields the same information for different observers and
for the same observer across time. In order to establish the reliability of
Effort-Shape Analysis, Davis (I987) assessed two kinds of reliability: repeat reliability and interrater reliability. In the first part, she asked raters to
observe the same movement segments on separate occasions. In the second, she compared the responses of a number of raters to identical movement segments.
Davis found that raters generally were individually consistent across
time, and she found a high degree of consistency among raters on the
occurrence of posture-gesture merging and on strong, direct, quick, and
sustained qualities. Davis summarized that "the LIMS Reliability project
did produce evidence of the reliability of most of the basic concepts studied
here. But more importantly, it generated methods and tools for facilitating
ongoing assessment of observer agreement within LMA training programs
and research projects" (I987:I7). Similar reliability studies are being conducted for other Laban-based observational systems: the Action Profiling
System (Winter 1987), the Kestenberg Movement Profile (Sossin 1987),
and the Davis Nonverbal States Scales (Davis and Hadiks 1987). Proof of
reliability will be an important step toward LMA's full credibility and
wider use by movement analysts.
Beyond LMA reliability as an observational tool, movement analysis as
a whole needs to turn its attention to the larger, semiotic issues concerning
the relationship between movement and meaning. If movement analysis is
to become a standard performance studies methodology, practitioners
must address three basic questions: (I) does movement have its own meaning?; (2) if so, how does movement mean?; and (3) if so, where is the locus
of meaning? Asking these questions will lead us to a better understanding
of movement and also provoke the debate needed to demystify its role in
performance.

Does movementhave its own meaning?

A hundred years after Delsarte and Darwin, it would seem hard to
believe that the very significance of movement is still at issue. And yet the
fact that movement is so often left unconsidered in the study of performance suggests that the question is still unresolved. There was no doubt in
the minds of nonverbal communication researchersin the I970s that movement had its own meaning; the question was, "What kind?" Today we can
find in their work, especially in Scheflen's, the means to go further: to ask
what social and political significance movement has in our culture and
social order.
One of the galvanizing issues of nonverbal communication in the I970s
centered on epistemological paradigms and their attendant methodologies
(see Skupien I982). On one side there were those such as Ekman who
studied movement as individual expression. On the other side there were
those, such as Birdwhistell and Scheflen, who insisted that behavior could
not be studied as a sender-receiver phenomenon; they argued that behavior
is a socially conditioned, patterned system of interactions that cannot be
wrenched from its contexts. Movement, they insisted, communicated
more than just discrete referential information.
Scheflen, a visionary psychiatrist whose many contributions to the field
of nonverbal communication have yet to be fully mined, helped to mend

MovementAnalysis 43
this seemingly impassable breach. Behavior, he asserted, can have many
simultaneously different and sometimes contradictory kinds of meanings.
In How BehaviorMeans(I974)-an important volume for anyone interested
in the past and the future of nonverbal communication research-Scheflen
outlined four types of meaning: (I) denotative references; (2) the meaning
derived from the immediate context of the interaction or transaction; (3)
the cultural origins and personality of the speaker; and (4) meta-acts that
comment on and qualify one's own behavior. Although these types can be
separated for purposes of analysis, he warned, they are fully integrated in
the act of communication.
Scheflen readily conceded in the introduction to How BehaviorMeansthat
its focus on information was already
somewhat limited and traditional; it is now clear that language and
non-linguistic behavior have much broader roles in human affairs
than simply the exchange of meaning and information. The communicational system is a means of regulating transactions of all types
of behavior and of maintaining social order and social control
(1974:4).

as BehavioralConHis book Body Languageand Social Order:Communication

trol (1972) took this next step, demonstrating with prose and photographs
that behavior is also significant in that it maintains the dominant social
order. Scheflen, in effect, went beyond description and methodology to
social criticism. He concluded that:
Any sweeping claim that communication has thepurposeof individual
expression or social change must be regarded as idealized myth-or
else as a political gambit to give us the illusion of freedom we rarely
attain. [. . .] On the basis of the data described in this book, we
conclude that the usual purpose of kinesic and territorial systems is
preservation of the existing order (1972:132).
Scheflen's insights into the political implications of nonverbal communication were not lost on the women's movement, which dovetailed with the
movement movement in the I970s. A substantial amount of research into
socialized gender differences in nonverbal behavior was undertaken (Fortier 1977; Frances 1979; Mayo and Henley 1981; Weitz I976; Wex 1979).

For her book Body Politics:Power, Sex, and NonverbalCommunication(1977)

Nancy Henley investigated the rich store of movement analysis/nonverbal
communication research to lear how movement communicates power
and maintains asymmetrical relationships, especially in regard to gender.
Gender is a doubly important issue in movement analysis, not only
because movement style and interaction patterns are fundamental ingredients in the cultural construction of gender, but also because movement
itself has traditionally been consigned to the realm of the feminine, set in
opposition to male mastery over language.
Gender dichotomy is still a very powerful underpinning of Western
theatrical dance convention. As such, feminist inquiry into the way dance
regulates cultural notions of "feminine" and "masculine" is dangerous to
aesthetic dance as we know it. Bill T. Jones and Johanna Boyce are two
choreographers who have endeavored to destabilize gender conventions on
stage, experimenting with forms that are sometimes uncomfortably unfamiliar. In this issue Jones and Boyce talk with Carol Martin and myself

44

Ann Daly
about the significance of gender imagery on the stage. How do cultural
conventions of movement regulate what is considered "feminine" and
"masculine" in dance? How do we tease out these conventions and reconstruct them along less hierarchical lines? Can the purpose of nonverbal
behavior-to preserve the dominant order, as Scheflen demonstrated-be
overturned?

How doesmovementmean?
Once one accepts that movement possesses and communicates its own
meanings, the next, more difficult question is: how does movement mean?
There is no simple answer; the idea of a "body language," though successful for the popular media, is an inaccurate reduction. Movement is a nexus
of intersecting elements and systems-semantic, syntactic, formal, and
contextual-clustered in infinitely complex and varying ways.
Three basic principles coming from the systems paradigm of the I970S
still hold fast.
First, behavior is a patterned system. Scheflen's (1973) classic film analysis of a family therapy session demonstrated the elaborately cyclical nature
of interaction, from gross-level postural shifts which demarcate distinct
periods of behaviors to the most subtle shifts of the head and eye that serve
as regulatory signals.
Second, all behavior in an interaction is seen as functioning in its structure and therefore as contributing to meaning as well. Whether consciously
"intentional" or not, all behavior-postural shifts or the relinquishing of
direct gaze, for example-potentially functions to establish, maintain, and
terminate patterns of relationship between interactants.
Third, meaning is created by the relationships between behavior and its
many layers of context. A smile, for example, though it is generally considered a discrete affect of pleasure, has no hard and fast meaning (Birdwhistell I970:29-39; Scheflen 1978). Its manner of execution might signify
deference, or discomfort, or even disdain, depending on the situation; at
the same time it may also function in the flow of interaction. Its meaning
also varies from culture to culture-a "Japanese smile" does not always
mean what an "American smile" means. The significance of any given
behavior can only be determined in its individual, interactional, institutional, and cultural contexts and in relation to behavioral expectations, for
what is not done may be as significant as what is done.
Each of these principles is applicable to representationalperformance: it,
too, is patterned and gains meaning from everything within its frames.
Form and structure are important expressive elements of any performance,
whose meaning is greatly affected by its relation to the contexts of performance traditions, to other works by the same director or choreographer, and even to its presenters, its physical environment, its spectators,
and its patrons.
Most nonverbal behavior research has, of necessity, focused on a single
phenomenon such as interaction rhythm or facial expression or gesture.
Though the legacy of the movement movement is indeed rich, the many
different strains of research are rarely synthesized. Individual studies need
to be integrated with each other and with LMA. The scientific preoccupation with the "what" of movement and LMA's preoccupation with the
"how" of movement need not be at odds with each other. They are complementary-like intersecting axes of a single grid. One without the other
is an incomplete picture of how movement means. Eliot D. Chapple and

MovementAnalysis 45
Davis have made an important step toward completing the picture with
"Expressive Movement and Performance: Toward a Unifying Theory,"
their contribution to this issue of TDR. Their essay synthesizes cultural,
neurophysiological, structural, and qualitative aspects of movement into a
single model of what they call the "body's infralanguage." Similarly, part
of Susan Leigh Foster's project in ReadingDancing (1986), reviewed in this
issue by Philip Auslander and Marcia B. Siegel, is to outline the factors
that, working together, give rise to meaning in dance.
The challenge is to devise a theory that takes into account the dynamic,
complex nature of movement. "If a word should be sought to denote the
logic or harmony of movement," wrote Laban, "it might be the term
'confluence,' because it is the peculiar form of the flowing together of
several movement constituents, which gives character to any meaningful
dance-movement" (Laban 1971:3 ). Birdwhistell's kinesics system has not
proven useful as a means of analyzing the through-time phenomenon of
movement because of its atomistic approach to behavior. Its roots in the
unit-and-structure technique of structural linguistics tends to impose on
movement an inappropriately static framework. One of the fundamental
strengths of LMA is its ability to deal with the processual aspects of performance.
Though the subject of Ekman's work is discrete categorical affects (facial
expressions of happiness, disgust, surprise, sadness, anger, and fear) rather
than full-body motion, his research into the links between emotion, facial
expression, and the autonomic nervous system (Ekman, Levenson, and
Friesen 1983) cuts to the heart of essential questions performance scholars
are asking about the nature of representation. In this issue Ekman raises
some of these questions in his summary remarks made at a New York
University symposium on his work and its application to performance
studies. For example, what are the differences between performing a spontaneous expression, a simulated expression, and an emblematic expression
(Schechner 1988)? How much can display rules-or performance conventions-tell us about a given culture or genre of performance?Which comes
first, motion or emotion? Or rather, where do the two meet and form each
other?
Perhaps the most fundamental question of all, and one that remains
dormant and scattered amidst the literature, is the principle of correspondence or rules of transformation linking movement to meaning. That is,
what are movement's modes of representation? Is movement compatible
with the traditional semiotic typology: symbol (arbitrary), icon (resemblance), and index (cause-effect)? Of particular importance to movement
analysis are the theory of iconism and the notion of intrinsic meaning. If
iconic similitude is a matter of cultural convention, as Eco (I979) has
convincingly argued, then by what process(es) are new conventions of
resemblance achieved? How did Martha Graham's contraction-andrelease, for example, come to look like inner turmoil rather than a torso
spasm? And is there, as Davis (1975) has suggested, an intrinsic meaning to
some formal aspects of movement? If so, how is the intrinsic aspect of a
behavior negotiated with its situational and arbitrary characteristicsin the
making of meaning? Does this intrinsic meaning override context? Is it
universal and innate? How might it be related to the universal categorical
affects?
The question of how movement means involves not just the phenomenon itself but also the observer as active meaning-maker. The challenge to
LMA to establish empirical reliability bespeaks a skepticism not only about

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Ann Daly
the susceptibility of movement qualities and dynamics to replicable description but also about the perceptual powers of its observers. Because
movement is so overlooked in our culture, movement analysts are sometimes viewed as virtual mystics, divining information that the "naked eye"
cannot see, despite the fact that movement analysts are merely capitalizing
on an ability we all exercise everyday to get through even the most mundane interactions-an ability which is honed extremely early in life.
According to Stern (I985), all humans show a basic capacity to perceive
and interpret the most subtle of movement qualities during infancy. His
empirically-based theories corroborate Laban's insistence on the primacy
of movement qualities both in the creation of the self and in interpersonal
communication. Like Laban, he emphasizes the importance of the way
movement is performed. "There are a thousand smiles," Stern wrote, "a
thousand getting-out-of-chairs, a thousand variations of performance of
any and all behaviors" (1985:56). His findings echo basic LMA principles,
only Ster has behind him what Laban did not-the force of empirical
research.
Stern rejects the accepted psychoanalytic theory that infants start out in
"pre-verbal"4 symbiosis with their mothers and progress toward the differentiation of selfhood that ultimately comes with the acquisition of language. Stern posits the opposite: a progression from differentiation to
relatedness. Very early on an infant gains a sense of self through its own
bodily experiences. One of the ways that the infant then begins to gain a
subjective self is through "vitality affects," a concept that echoes Laban's
Effort theory.
"Vitality affect" is Stern's term for the observable way behavior is
enacted. Distinguished from discrete categorical affects, vitality affects are
"those dynamic, kinetic qualities of feeling that distinguish animate from
inanimate and that correspond to the momentary changes in feeling states
involved in the organic processes of being alive" (1985:156). Like Laban
before him, Stern points out that it is not just a smile that we interpret-it
is the smile's impulsiveness, its explosiveness, or its reluctance that communicates. The vitality affects that Stern describes-intensity, time, and
shape-are strikingly similar to Laban's four Effort elements: weight,
flow, time, and space. By "attuning," or sharing, vitality affects, infants
can interact as a self with others. They can share inner experiences on an
almost continuous basis.
For Stern, as for Laban who not only worked in the field of dance but
also in industry as an analyst of work movement patterns, movement runs
the continuum between art and behavior:
It is inescapable that the infant and child first learn about vitality
affects [. . .] from their interactions with their own behavior and
bodily processes and by watching, testing, and reacting to the social
behaviors that impinge on and surround them. They must also learn
or somehow arrive at the realization that there are transformational
means for translating perceptions of external things into internal feelings, besides those for categorical affects. These transformations
from perception to feeling are first learned with spontaneous social
behaviors. It seems that only after many years of performing these
transformations and building up a repertoire of vitality affects is a
child ready to bring this experience to the domain of art as something that is externally perceived but transposed into felt experience
(I985:I60).

MovementAnalysis 47
At this point, just what those rules of transformation are-how we get
from describing an action as direct and quick to interpreting it as abruptremains undiscovered.

Whereis the locusof meaning?

Movement analysis does not always stop at observation. LMA has been
established as an objective observational tool, but the purpose of movement analysis in performance studies is to help yield meaning-an essentially subjective undertaking. As with any interpretive methodology,
meaning is ultimately mediated by the observer and by the purpose of the
study. As Paul Byers cautions,
The word "observation" is a joker in the deck since we cannot "observe" anything directly-only through our perceptions (scientific or
other) which implies that some part of observation is always of ourselves (and what we find analytically is as much about our unrecognized premises as about that which we believe we are studying)
(I986).

Profound in any discipline, the question of where meaning is located is

even more anxiously posed when the subject matter itself is so slippery, so
unlocatable. How much of the meaning that analysts see in movement is
"really there," and how much is imposed on it? Where is the boundary
between observation and interpretation? Is there a boundary? Is analysis
always interpretive? These questions are particularly important to anthropologists. Using Laban's Western-rooted principles, can we do justice
to the performance of a non-Western culture? As questionable as Alan
Lomax's conclusions about the choreometrics project may have been, the
coding sheet that Irmgard Bartenieff and Forrestine Paulay developed as a
framework for discerning cultural movement style is a valuable observational tool (Lomax, Bartenieff, and Paulay I968).
It is true that observation and interpretation are part of the same perceptual package, but training enables analysts to reflexively discriminate between the two. Being able to discern the elements of movement and
understand how they are put together enables movement analysts to figure
out why they make the interpretations they do and, if necessary, to reconsider them. Movement analysis is a means of expanding our crosscultural
understanding, not of embalming it.
Anthropologist Allison Jablonko and movement analyst Elizabeth Kagan take up these issues in their article, "An Experiment in Looking:
Reexamining the Process of Observation." They suggest that using rather
than suppressing one's cultural movement biases is a useful starting point
for analyzing unfamiliar movement; in their observational project, they
found that they could better discern what was present in Maring behavior
throughits differences from their own culture's behavior, without necessarily reading meaning into those differences.
Meaning, as Sally Ann Ness points out in her analysis of the film TrobriandCricket:An IngeniousResponseto Colonialism, cannot be determined
through movement analysis alone. "By itself," she writes, "it cannot go
beyond descriptive interpretations into explanatory statements of origin,
function, and meaning." Nevertheless, movement analysis can yield valuable insights that, in turn, serve as the basis for a more extended and
integrated interpretive analysis. In "Looking at Movement as Culture,"

48

Ann Daly
Cynthia J. Novack illustrates the ambiguity as well as the clarity of movement as a cultural phenomenon: "certain movement qualities appear
through time, yet meanings suggested by these qualities subtly shift; contrasting movement styles exist simultaneously, sometimes embodying the
same meanings and sometimes opposite meanings."
The importance of movement-in the production of the self and in the
production of culture-can no longer be denied. Movement analysis,
which is already gathering outward momentum through efforts such as the
LIMS LMA Theory Network,5 the American Association of Laban Movement Analysts (AALMA), and the Dance and Movement Analysis section
of the American Folklore Society, is faced with an opportunity to join
what seems to be a growing interest in the humanities for the study of
the body.6 Movement analysis needs to connect with these other ways
of looking at the body; it is only through engagement with other
methodologies and theories that movement analysis can make its own
contribution.

Notes
I. In this articleI use the term "aesthetic"danceto distinguishit from socialdance;

however, other authorsin the field and in this issue use terms such as "stage
dance"or "theatredance."
2. Laban'sEfforttheorydealswith the dynamicstructureandrhythmof movement
(see Bartenieff,Davis, and Paulay 1972). He identifiedthe irreducibleformal
elementsof movement (what he called "Efforts")as weight, time, flow, and
space. His theory investigatingspatialstructureand relationshipsis known as
SpaceHarmonyor Choreutics.Laban'sconceptof the affinitybetweenthe effort, or energy,investedin movementandits spatialunfoldingwas developedby
WarrenLambinto the Americanmethodknown as Effort-ShapeAnalysis.
Laban'stheoryof movementsuccessfullyavoidsreductiveness.VeraMaletic's
Body, Space, Expression: The Developmentof Rudolf Laban'sMovementand Dance

makesclearhis holisticapproach,herejust in termsof Effort:

Concepts
The significanceof particularqualitiesemergewithin the macrostructure,
the contextof a movementsequence,and these qualitiesgain meaning
when they are relatedto what precedesand what follows. Thus the sequencing,phrasing,or the rhythmof effortsequencesis identifiablefrom
severalpoints of view:
a) how particularqualitiesbuild up with regardto the optimalsequence
of attention(space),intention(weight), decision(time), andprecisionor
progression(flow).
b) how effort qualitieschangeinto anotherquality;these mutationscan
occureithergraduallywith the changeof one element,more surprisingly
with the changeof two, or they can be contrastedwith the changeof all
elements.
c) what the compositionalpatternof the sequenceis, such as repetition,
rebounding,contrasts,variations,development.
d) whetherthe effort sequenceis performedwith the whole body being
attunedto it or whetherdifferentqualitiesareperformedat the same time
by different body parts (I987:I03-04).

3. Laban'stheoriesof Effort and SpaceHarmonyas well as his notationsystem,

now calledLabanotation,were meantto have both descriptiveand prescriptive
applications.The laws of movementhe uncoveredwere not only to help us to
betterobserve, analyze,and recordmovementbut also to help performersexpandtheirpersonalrangeof movement.

Movement Analysis
Laban's concept of movement as expression coincided with that of early modern dancers like Wigman and Jooss, who embraced his theory for the purpose of
choreography. Though expression is no longer the dance paradigm it was then,
choreographers still use Laban's theories to generate movement. William Forsythe, director of Frankfurt Ballet, for example, uses Laban's principles of Space
Harmony to generate movement for dances such as Same Old Story (1987).
This issue deals with the usefulness of LMA to the performance scholar rather
than to the performance maker. Notation, too, falls outside the scope of this issue
(see Topaz 1988).
4. The term "pre-verbal" has always been a subtle way of marginalizing movement: of relegating it to the negative role of "other" in a world supposedly
constructed solely in language.
Stern's theoretical move is an important one to a politics of movement analysis. His argument defuses the rhetoric of the "pre-verbal" by pointing out that (I)
the infant does experience a sense of self before learning to talk, (2) the infant does
relate to others through movement before learning to talk, and (3) these bodily
senses of self and means of interpersonal communication persist even after the
acquisition of language. Nonverbal communication, then, is not "pre-verbal" at
all. Movement and language share in the process of creating the self and communicating with others.
5. The LIMS LMA Theory Network has gathered a bibliography (which will be
annually updated) of unpublished manuscripts that deal with LMA theory. It was
published in the AALMA February 1988 Newsletter.
6. More and more scholarship is exploring how the body is inscribed in various
institutions and social discourse: medicine and sexuality (Foucault 1978; Gallagher and Laqueur I987); psychoanalysis; art and photography (Banta 1987;
Dijkstra I986); patriarchy (Suleiman 1986); fashion (Banner I983); health, fitness,
and sports (Green 1986); postmodernism (Foster 1986; Auslander forthcoming;
and Auslander's review of Foster's Reading Dancing in this issue); and performance (Steinman I986).

References
Auslander, Philip
(forthcoming)"Vito Acconci and the Politics of the Body in Postmodern Performance." In Postmodernism,edited by Gary Shapiro. Albany, NY:
SUNY Press.
Banner, Lois W.
AmericanBeauty. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago
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Banta, Martha
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Imaging American Women: Idea and Ideals in Cultural History. New
York: Columbia University Press.
Bartenieff, Irmgard, with Dori Lewis
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Body Movement:Coping with the Environment.New York: Gordon and
Breach Science Publishers, Inc.
Bartenieff, Irmgard, Martha Davis, and Forrestine Paulay
Four Adaptationsof Effort Theory in Researchand Teaching.New York:
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Dance Notation Bureau.
Birdwhistell, Ray L.
Kinesicsand Context. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
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Brecht, Stefan
The Theatre of Visions: Robert Wilson. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag
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Frankfurt am Main.
Byers, Paul
Personal correspondence, I5 December. New York City.
I986

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Darwin, Charles
[I872] I965 The Expressionof the Emotionsin Man and Animals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Reprint.
Davis, Martha
TowardsUnderstanding
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51

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Ann Daly is a contributing editor to TDR. She has written dance criticismfor
TDR, High Performance, Ballett International, and Women and Performance.