Mental Effort before Action: 1-5A-5A

Patrick Staff's performance Mental Effort before Action: 1-5A-5A is an experiment in re-performing a score written in the dance notation system Kinetography Laban, or Labanotation, developed by Rudolf Laban as a system of analysing and recording human movement. Used to score and document dances by a subsequent range of choreographers, his analysis of movement is based on spatial, anatomical and dynamic principles and Laban also used these systems for studies for industry, medical and psychiatric purposes.

Presented as a form of open rehearsal, performers Patrick Staff, Antje Hildebrandt and Hamish Macpherson will explore an excerpt of movements scored in Laban's method, rehearsed and performed by the group who came together with varying levels of knowledge of Labanotation. Rather than studying to reach an equilateral level of understanding and thus performing the movements 'correctly', the process explores learning and reading whilst negotiating the authority of the original and its reconstitution as established through the group's shared process. The score that the dancers are working from is also distributed amongst the audience, and shows the particular structure and shapes developed by Laban and others. The performance seeks to inquire into the slippages that occur when attempting to activate, restore or re-enact historic materials. 

Mental Effort Before Action: 1-5A-5B was presented at South London Gallery on 24 July 2013.