Movement: Rudolf Laban

Rudolf Laban was born in Bratislava, Hungary in 1879.  He was an architect and painter and became fascinated with rituals, folklore, mythology, dancing, art and mathematics.  He saw life as a dynamic movement experience.  He founded several dance/movement schools in Germany and in 1930 became Director of Movement at the State Theatres in Berlin.  Eventually, however, the Nazis banned his notation and books.  Laban fled to Paris and later travelled to England where he turned his energies to education and improving the efficiency and harmony of the industrial workforce.  He died in 1958.

Laban looked upon movement as a two way language process through which the body could communicate by giving and receiving messages.  He believed that movement stems from the inter-dependence of body, mind and spirit and he understood that our inner life relates to the outer world.  Laban created a theoretical language in order to help the observer understand and record movement objectively.  This is still widely used in many fields of the movement/dance and therapy worlds.

In the therapeutic field, studying and using the basic fundamentals of Laban movement, these come under the titles of body, space, relationship and effort, enables one to obtain a greater understanding of one’s own movement patterns and preferences.  It helps to increase observation skills of others and to record and assess the movement needs of clients in the clinical setting.

“The astonishing structure of the body and the amazing actions it can perform are some of the greatest miracles of existence.  Each phase of a movement, every small transference of weight, every single gesture of any part of the body reveals some feature of our inner life.” 
Rudolf Laban

For more on Laban's theories see Movement and Body Language