Laban, Rudolf

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Rudolf Laban

born Dec. 15, 1879, Bratislava, Austria-Hungary

died July 1, 1958, Weybridge, Surrey, Eng.

Hungarian modern-dance teacher, inventor of the Labanotation system of dance notation.

After studying dance in Paris, he opened his Choreographic Institute in Zürich, Switz., in 1915 and later founded branches in Italy, France, and central Europe. From 1919 to 1937 he worked in Germany, where in 1930–34 he was ballet director of the Berlin State Opera. In 1928 he published his method for recording all forms of human motion, which enabled choreographers to record the dancer's steps and other body movements, including their rhythm. In 1938 he joined his former pupil Kurt Jooss and taught dance in England, where he later formed the Art of Movement Studio. His system was further developed and maintained at centres in Essen, Ger., and New York.

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Images and Media:

“Schrifttanz”: page illustrating labanotation

More on "Rudolf Laban" from Britannica Concise:

dance notation - Written recording of dance movements.

Wigman, Mary - Pioneering German dancer.

Jooss, Kurt - German dancer, teacher, and choreographer.

Modernism - In the arts, a radical break with the past and concurrent search for new forms of expression.

More on "Rudolf Laban" from the 32 Volume Encyclopædia Britannica:

Laban, Rudolf - 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.

labanotation - system of recording human movement, originated by the Hungarian-born dance theorist Rudolf Laban.

Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts - dance school and company founded in 1915 by Ruth St. Denis and her husband, Ted Shawn. Considered a fountainhead of American modern dance, the Denishawn organization systematically promoted nonballetic dance movement and fostered such leading modern dancers as Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman. Because St. Denis and Shawn believed that all dance techniques were valid and ...

Kreutzberg, Harald - German modern dancer and choreographer best known for solos that combined dance with mime.

Wigman, Mary - German dancer, a pioneer of the modern expressive dance as developed in central Europe.

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