Rudolf Laban

Rudolf Laban (born Dec. 15, 1879, Bratislava, Austria-Hungary [now in Slovakia]—died July 1, 1958, Weybridge, Surrey, Eng.) was a dance theorist and teacher whose studies of human motion provided the intellectual foundations for the development of central European modern dance. Laban also developed Labanotation, a widely used movement-notation system.

Originally interested in painting and architecture, Laban began to study dance in Paris. After choreographing ballets and directing several art festivals, he established his Choreographic Institute in Zürich in 1915 and later founded branches in Italy, France, and central Europe. In 1928 he published Kinetographie Laban, a practical method for recording all forms of human motion, now commonly known as Labanotation. In 1930 he became director of the Allied State Theatres of Berlin, where he choreographed many works for large “movement choirs.”

Laban’s theories and teaching had great impact in central Europe. His analysis of forms in movement, known as choreutics, was a nonpersonal, scientific system designed, like Labanotation, to apply to all human motion. Based on the individual’s relation to surrounding space, choreutics specified 12 primary directions of movement derived from complex geometric figures. Another of his theoretical systems, called eukinetics, was designed to increase the dancer’s control of dynamic and expressional movement. Mary Wigman, one of his pupils and one of the originators of the modern dance in central Europe, based much of her dramatic choreography on a relationship between individual and space similar to the one Laban postulated in choreutics. Sigurd Leeder and Kurt Jooss, also pupils, further developed and made extensive use of eukinetics in their teaching and choreography.

In 1938 Laban joined Jooss and Leeder at their school at Dartington Hall in Devon, Eng. During World War II, Laban made a number of studies of industrial efficiency, devised a series of corrective exercises for factory employees, and published Effort (1947). In 1953 he moved to Addlestone, Surrey, where he continued his teaching and research; with Lisa Ullmann, he also conducted the Art of Movement Studio.