Rudolf von Laban

Rudolf von Laban, sometimes spelled Rudolph von Laban, was a dance artist, choreographer, and movement theorist born in Austro-Hungary. He is regarded as a key figure in expressionist dance and a forerunner of modern dance. His major theoretical contributions include Laban movement analysis and Labanotation, a system for notating movement, which advanced the fields of dance notation and movement study. He also helped establish one of the main approaches to dance therapy, and his ideas about theatrical movement proved influential. Laban tried to apply his concepts to other areas such as architecture, education, industry, and management.

After a dress rehearsal of his final choral piece, *Of the Warm Wind and New Joy*, prepared for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Joseph Goebbels cancelled the work. Laban then lost favor with the Nazi government. Having worked with the regime for four years, he left Germany for England in 1937. Between 1945 and 1946, together with his longtime collaborator and former student Lisa Ullmann, he founded the Laban Art of Movement Guild in London and the Art of Movement Studio in Manchester, where he worked until his death. The Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London continues this legacy.

Laban was the son of Rudolf Laban Sr., a military governor and later field marshal in the Austro-Hungarian Army, and Marie Bridling. In 1897, his father was ennobled by the Hungarian monarchy, receiving the predicate "de" and choosing the name Laban de Váralja, which entitled the younger Laban to use "von" in German-speaking regions. He grew up in courtly circles in Vienna and Sarajevo. As a youth, he joined a csárdás dance group. At fifteen, he entered the Theresian Military Academy but soon rejected a military career. In 1899, he moved to Munich to study at the Academy of Fine Arts, where he met painter Martha Fricke, marrying her on 15 December 1900. They settled at Arcisstr 44, and their daughter Azraela was born in 1901.

Alongside his art studies, Laban took courses at a teaching and experimental studio for free and applied art, where he befriended Hermann Obrist, who led the nature studies course. In 1904, he left Munich to study architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His son Arpad was born there in 1905. After three years of a bohemian life, Martha Fricke died suddenly. Two months later, his father—who had provided substantial financial support—also died. Laban’s children then went to live with their maternal grandparents.

In the following years, Laban moved between Paris, Vienna, Sanremo, and Nice. Financially ruined, he completed an apprenticeship as an accountant in Nice, graduating successfully—his only experience with regular employment. Living with his mother in Vienna, he worked as a graphic artist and caricaturist for magazines like *Simplicissimus* and *Jugend*, while continuing his research on historical dance forms. At a cultural event, he met singer Maja Lederer and married her on 8 May 1910 in Pressburg. That year, they moved to Munich, settling in Schwabing at Hohenzollernstraße 120.

In 1911, Laban rented a room in a rear building on Theresienstraße in Munich, setting it up as a makeshift movement studio. Unable to support himself with the school, he kept working as a commercial artist and caricaturist. Overworked, he collapsed in 1912 and went to a sanatorium near Dresden that followed life-reform principles. There he met and fell in love with Suzanne Perrottet, also a patient. A largely harmonious triangular relationship developed among Perrottet, Laban, and his wife. Perrottet became one of his most important collaborators, along with Mary Wigman and Katja Wulff, and the mother of his child Allar Perrottet (later André Perrottet von Laban), born in Ascona and Zürich.

During World War I, Laban established a school on the natural healing colony Monte Verità in Ascona, Switzerland. It attracted many followers of the new dance art, and he held famous summer dance courses there from 1913 to 1919. Students lived in harmony with nature, growing their own food, practicing vegetarianism, weaving cloth, making reform-style clothing, and often dancing nude outdoors in dynamic improvisations. At Monte Verità, Laban experienced his intellectual and artistic breakthrough, celebrating the "neuen Menschen," "Fiur-Menschen," and "Anarcho."