A drawing from the 1920s
Rudolf Laban his life and work
Rudolf Laban's life as told through archives in Leeds University Special Collections.
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Der Freie Tanz - The Free Dance
Laban moves to Ticino. Part of an interactive resource at Leeds Special Collections about the life and career of Rudolf Laban.
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Laban and two women by a tree
Laban moves to Ticino. Part of an interactive resource at Leeds Special Collections about the life and career of Rudolf Laban.
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Laban in Zurich
Laban over winters in Zurich. Part of an interactive resource at Leeds Special Collections about the life and career of Rudolf Laban.
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Laban schools in 1927
Laban develops dancing schools in Germany. Part of an interactive resource at Leeds Special Collections about the life and career of Rudolf Laban.
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A floorplan for Titan
Laban's notation for 'Titan'. Part of an interactive resource at Leeds Special Collections about the life and career of Rudolf Laban.
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Schrifttanz
Laban develops dancing schools in Germany. Part of an interactive resource at Leeds Special Collections about the life and career of Rudolf Laban.
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A drawing from the 1920s
Laban develops dancing schools in Germany. Part of an interactive resource at Leeds Special Collections about the life and career of Rudolf Laban.
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Laban in Berlin
Laban develops dancing schools in Germany. Part of an interactive resource at Leeds Special Collections about the life and career of Rudolf Laban.
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The 1936 Berlin Olympics
Laban develops dancing schools in Germany. Part of an interactive resource at Leeds Special Collections about the life and career of Rudolf Laban.
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The Art of Movement Studio
Laban develops dancing schools in Germany. Part of an interactive resource at Leeds Special Collections about the life and career of Rudolf Laban.
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Laban first trained as an artist. When he was in Munich, he produced cartoons for newspapers to supplement his income.
The archive holds a large number of his original artworks and some copies.
Laban's work falls into several discrete categories:
- a small number of portraits and landscapes in coloured crayon and watercolour
- a great number of cartoons and grotesques which reveal Laban’s considerable humour
- movement studies (illustrated by the three figures seen here).
Some of these drawings are the starting point of studies for spatial movement.
Solid geometry fascinated Laban. He had a gift for representing three-dimensional shapes such as the cube, the octahedron and the icosahedron (a 20-sided solid with equilateral triangle faces).
Within these solids, Laban devised what he called “movement scales that figured pathways”. Laban thought about and explored movement through his drawing.
Dick McCaw