about

LESLIE BISHKO is an animator, movement educator, Certified Laban Movement Analyst (CLMA), and Professor Emerita of Animation at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. For more than three decades she has explored the relationship between movement, expression, and character performance, developing a unique approach that applies Laban Movement Analysis directly to animation.

Leslie has taught animation, 2D and 3D production, storytelling and filmmaking at the university level for over thirty years. She has presented internationally, and contributed to books, journals, and conferences on animation, acting, movement, and nonverbal communication. Her research bridges embodied movement practice with the creative process of animation, helping artists understand how characters move and communicate.

MY STORY

Movement has always been at the center of my creative identity. At fourteen, my mother enrolled me in a life drawing class where the models were dancers. The art center also offered dance classes, and as I learned to draw the human figure, I began taking the dance classes upstairs. As drawing and movement became integrated for me, I invented my own way of designing movement by storyboarding and describing my own dance choreography, long before I knew what storyboarding was.

In the late 1980s, computer animation was still in its infancy. After earning my BFA in animation, I entered graduate studies at The Ohio State University’s Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD), where I found myself working with some of the earliest computer animation systems. There were no graphical user interfaces as we know them today. Creating movement meant typing commands into a computer, keyframe by keyframe.

As someone rooted in drawing, classical animation and dance, I found the process technically fascinating—but creatively frustrating. I missed the physical, gestural experience of making movement. So, I did as I had done before and sought dance classes on campus.

One evening, my teacher introduced a series of simple floor exercises developed by Irmgard Bartenieff. When we stood up afterward, my movement felt noticeably more connected, grounded, and expressive. I remember thinking, how can I bring this feeling into my animation?

That question changed the course of my career.

I learned that the Dance Department at Ohio State, in collaboration with the Dance Notation Bureau, was developing computer software for movement notation and arranged to meet the developer. I arrived convinced that movement notation would help me make detailed movement notes for animation. When he understood my vision, he suggested that I take the notation class.

That class introduced me to Labanotation, the movement notation system developed by Rudolf Laban. As I learned to read and embody movement from notation scores, I realized I had stumbled into something much larger than a writing system. It opened the door to Laban Movement Analysis (LMA)—a comprehensive framework for experiencing, observing, describing, and understanding human movement.

That curiosity grew into more than thirty years of study, research, teaching, and professional practice. Along the way, I became a Certified Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst and discovered that LMA gave me something I had been searching for as an animator: a language for understanding not only what characters do, but how and why they move.

As my own animation practice evolved, so did my teaching. For more than three decades, including my time as Associate Professor at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, I integrated LMA into my teaching wherever it could help students create more convincing, expressive performances. Again and again, I saw that animators were eager for creative tools that connected body mechanics, intention, and character performance in a practical way.

That realization eventually became Laban for Animators™.

Rather than teaching LMA as dancers and actors learn it, I developed an approach that speaks directly to the way animators observe, think, and create. My goal isn't to turn animators into movement analysts. It's to give them practical ways of seeing movement more clearly, making stronger creative choices, and crafting performances that feel truly embodied.

Today, Laban for Animators™ brings together everything I've developed over the course of my career as an animator, educator, movement analyst, dancer, and certified Pilates instructor. Whether through courses, coaching, writing, or speaking, my goal is the same as it was when I first asked that question in a dance studio decades ago:

How can a deeper understanding of human movement help us create more authentic, expressive animation?

More than three decades later, I'm still exploring that question. I hope you'll join me.