Exploring the inter-play between Rudolf Laban’s Effort framework and Prapto Suryodarmo’s Amerta Movement

Through discussion and vignettes, this article shares the author’s application of Rudolf Laban’s Effort framework – the four movement dynamics of Weight, Space, Time and Flow, and the States and Drives that result from various combinations of these – to the freeform, nature-based practice of Amerta Movement, developed by the late Indonesian movement artist/teacher Prapto Suryodarmo (1945–2019). By bringing these culturally different perspectives on the language of movement together, the author discovers ways in which they are mutually supportive. The Effort framework helps to crystallize the author’s recognition of States and Drives as they emerge and change in her Amerta practice; and because Amerta depends on a receptive attitude to what one is experiencing, it re-orients the focus of Effort from doing to receiving, which broadens and refreshes the Effort framework. Also discussed are thoughts arising from this process about the effects and the different ways of ‘naming’ nonverbal experience.