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A drawing from the 1920s

Laban detail from Titan floorplan
Rudolf Laban's life as told through archives in Leeds University Special Collections.
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Laban Der Freie Tanz
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 in 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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Labankurse Zurich programme
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 exhibition - schools 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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Laban exhibition - floor plan 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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Laban's Schriftanz
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 figure drawing from 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 Dornroschen programme
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 Berlin Olympics 1936
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 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