We present a unified methodology for humanoid robot control and activity, classification using motor primitives (Mataric, M, 2002), computationally efficient behaviors capable of perception and control. These primitives constitute a vocabulary for humanoid control capable of generating a large variety of complex movement through sequencing and superposition. We demonstrate how such primitives can be automatically derived from human motion-capture data, how they can be used to construct upperbody controllers, and how they can be applied to classification of observed humanoid behavior in real time.