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The Art of Movement Studio

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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In late 1937, Laban was in Paris. He was in terrible health; his spirits broken.

Lisa Ullmann, with whom he had worked in Hamburg in 1924, organised for him to come to Dartington Hall in the UK. Here Kurt Jooss (also a former pupil of Laban) and Sigurd Leeder had set up a dance school.

At Dartington, Laban met the management consultant, F W Lawrence, with whom he would create a new approach to industrial production. In 1947 they published Effort (London: MacDonald and Evans) where they introduced a new form of notation for the dynamic aspects of movement.

The previous year, Lisa Ullmann and Sylvia Bodmer had opened the Art of Movement studio. It consisted of two rooms on the first floor of a building on Oxford Road in Manchester.

It was very different from the glory days in Germany, but it was the beginning of Laban’s second life as an educator in the field of dance and movement.

His ideas quickly attracted the attention of two Schools Inspectors, Ruth Foster and Myfanwy Dewy. Laban’s ideas rapidly filtered into primary school curriculum.

Through his 60s and 70s, Laban pioneered two new approaches to movement: in industry and school education.

Dick McCaw