Reframing Creativity, Imagination, and Expressiveness in Dance Improvisation Education through Laban’s Movement Analysis

Abstract

This paper presents a conceptual pedagogical framework for dance improvisation education based on Laban Movement Analysis. Although improvisation is essential in contemporary dance training, existing pedagogy often relies on intuition and lacks formal structure, making it difficult to systematically cultivate creativity, imagination, and expressiveness. This study repurposes Laban Movement Analysis from a descriptive movement-analysis tool into a teaching design resource. By strategically deconstructing effort, space, body, and form, the framework operationalizes creativity through force-effort variation, imagination through structured spatial exploration, and expressiveness through force-effect coding and contextual movement tasks. A bibliometric analysis of 267 Scopus-indexed publications further identifies a significant research gap: Laban Movement Analysis is widely used in technological, computational, and therapeutic domains, but remains underutilized in formal improvisation pedagogy. The proposed framework shows that structured constraints do not necessarily inhibit creative freedom; rather, they can guide embodied exploration, expand movement vocabulary, and improve the teachability of improvisational learning. This study provides a theoretical and practical bridge between movement analysis and studio-based dance education.