About LIMS

ABout lims

What We Do

The Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies

The Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, LIMS® is a non-profit educational organization, centered in New York City, with a global network of movement professionals. As an accredited school of higher education, research center, and cultural arts institution, we have been training movement observers, teachers, and coaches for forty years.

We believe and teach that everyone should be able to fully experience and understand movement as our life force, and that it is every human being’s first and foundational language. Our goal is to educate people from all walks of life in the language of movement, by providing quality services and programs that enhance the awareness of how movement guides all our lives. We teach, study, and create in order to help people live more embodied, vital and rich lives.

We understand that people are the real wealth of nations, at the center of social, political, and economic development. We use our work to build human capacities for adaptability, virtuosity, connection, communication to unleash potential, increase choices and enjoy the freedom to lead lives of personal value.

From a systemic and integrative perspective, involving whole body movement, gesture, speech, facial expressions, and the Laban aspects of Body, Effort, Space, and Shape, etc. as the unifying force of being alive and present in the moment, the institute faculty and staff have created a multicultural learning environment in which people can develop their full potential to lead productive, creative lives in accord with their needs and interests.

Our international network includes over 1000 Certified Movement Analysts (CMAs) who apply the movement analysis work in a diverse and ever-changing world, making a difference in the way people perform, communicate, observe, learn, and negotiate. We are proud of the impact our graduates have on fields as diverse as health care, the performing arts, sports, education, diplomacy, leadership studies, and communications.

From research on how children learn in the classroom to observation of and commentary on political candidates, from a neurophysiology-based movement program for people with Parkinson’s to movement-based interventions with women in remote villages, from conflict resolution to motion-capture projects, CMAs are making a profound difference globally.

Our Mission
  • To maintain and grow a vital movement center, comprised of a School, an Arts & Culture Unit, and a Research Unit — dedicated to the preservation and advancement of the movement theories and practices created by Rudolf Laban and Irmgard Bartenieff.
  • To introduce Laban Movement Analysis (LMA), the Bartenieff Fundamentals (BF), and related work to the general public, and to qualify movement professionals as Certified Movement Analysts (CMAs) through LIMS’ Certification Programs.
  • To encourage Laban/Bartenieff-influenced artistic work, dance research and community engagement dance programs, and to seek the investment needed to publicize and support such endeavors.
  • To bring together a dynamic network of international movement specialists and to promote communication, interaction and growth within the global community of LMA/BF professionals through continuing education, conferences, research, publications, workshops, performing arts events, media appearances, and Internet resources.
Our Core Values
  • Our organizational culture is informed by: mutual respect, constant improvement, high quality, honesty, integrity, and empowerment of ourselves and of others. LIMS is deeply engaged in making people aware of the value of seeing movement more clearly, of perceiving that being alive is being in movement, of moving with greater consciousness and of understanding the connections between movement and its wealth of meanings.
  • In our almost 40 years of existence, we have been able to establish a powerful network of organizations and professionals around the world. The needs of our community and the demands of the current global challenges for the kind of work we provide compel us to develop new programs, approaches, and innovative research, and to create an ever-expanding range of services and products.
+
Years in Service
+
Graduated CMAs
ABout lims

Who We Are

LIMS’ Founder

Irmgard Bartenieff

Irmgard Bartenieff (1900–1981) was a dancer, physical therapist, cross-cultural scholar and pioneer in the field of dance/movement therapy. A Renaissance woman who enjoyed weaving disciplines together, she was always ready to investigate movement in a variety of fields—including child development, ethnic dances, nonverbal communication and physical rehabilitation.

One of Rudolf Laban’s star pupils, Bartenieff was among the first to promote his work in the United States, ultimately founding what would become the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, LIMS® in New York City. As a physical therapist, she applied Laban’s theories and the principles of human development to her work with polio patients as well as dancers, originating a physical reeducation method that develops movement efficiency and expressiveness. The work came to be known as Bartenieff Fundamentalssm.

Born in Berlin, Germany, in 1900, Bartenieff was first trained as a dancer and later expanded her studies to biology, and visual and performing arts at the university. In 1925, she began studying with Laban. Trying to find a common ground between her mentor’s movement experiences and her previous dance training, Bartenieff formed a company, the Romantisches Tanztheatre Bartenieff, which toured throughout Germany until 1932. With the expansion of Nazism, Bartenieff and her husband, Michail Bartenieff, who was Jewish, relocated to the U.S. in 1933.

In the mid-1950s, Bartenieff decided to go to England to study further with Laban, and she returned every summer for five years. Meanwhile, in New York City, she taught classes in Effort/Shape for professional dancers at the Turtle Bay Music School, where she started to create the material that formed the basis for the Bartenieff Fundamentalssm.

Meanwhile, excited by the possible correlations between dance styles and everyday behavior, Bartenieff joined Columbia University ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax on the Choreometrics Project, which sought to analyze dance in a variety of cultures. She worked on the project from 1964 to 1966, sharing the richness of the experience with students in her Effort/Shape classes. The foundation was being laid for the establishment of a Laban/Bartenieff approach to movement and dance.

In 1965, Bartenieff and two assistants established the first Effort/Shape training program at the Dance Notation Bureau in NYC. The first certification program in Laban Movement Studies, an amalgam of Laban’s movement theories and Bartenieff’s approach, followed in 1973. This in-depth graduate-level program offered the title of CMA (Certified Movement Analyst), and over the years has acquired international prestige. In 1980, Bartenieff’s comprehensive text, Body Movement: Coping with the Environment, was published. Today Bartenieff’s students carry on her work in ever-broadening applications.

The Founder of our Field

Rudolf von Laban

Rudolf Laban (1879-1958) was born in Bratislava, Hungary in 1879 (in what is now Slovakia) to a military family. Known historically as the father of European modern dance, Laban was a visionary, humanist, teacher and theoretician, whose revolutionary ideas bridged the gap between the performing arts and science.

He applied his theories to many areas—from the performing and visual arts to education to efficiency studies of factory workers. As an author and teacher, he influenced artists and thinkers as diverse as Kurt Jooss, Mary Wigman, and DH Lawrence. He shaped the philosophical basis of the new German Dance Theatre that flourished after the 1960s with Pina Bausch and Susannah Linke and others.

In 1965, Bartenieff and two assistants established the first Effort/Shape training program at the Dance Notation Bureau in NYC. The first certification program in Laban Movement Studies, an amalgam of Laban’s movement theories and Bartenieff’s approach, followed in 1973. This in-depth graduate-level program offered the title of CMA (Certified Movement Analyst), and over the years has acquired international prestige. In 1980, Bartenieff’s comprehensive text, Body Movement: Coping with the Environment, was published. Today Bartenieff’s students carry on her work in ever-broadening applications.

Our Team

Meet Our Board

  • Bob Bejan
  • Karen Bradley | ex officio – President
  • Jane Bonbright
  • Marcia Feuerstein
  • Marjorie Hamilton | Treasurer
  • Billie Lepczyk
  • Bala Sarasvati
  • Curtis Stedge | ex officio – Executive Director
  • Jan Whitener | Chairperson

Meet Our Staff

Curtis Stedge

Executive Director

Si-Hyun Yoo

Director of Education

Susan L Wiesner

Director of Research

Vannia Ibarguen

Artistic Director – GWD

Rommie Stalnaker

Education Associate

Angela Wiele

International Students Advisor

Kim Maldonado

Social Media Manager – GWD