Who is Rudolf Laban?

    Rudolf von Laban (1879-1958)

   Rudolf von Laban was born December 15, 1879 in Bratislava. He was the oldest of three, and the only boy. Father was an officer in the army which caused him to travel a lot taking Labans mother with him. Laban stayed with his grandparents so he could attend school, though he never behaved too well.

    While in his teenage years he traveled many summers when not in school for his father’s deployments which gave him great exposure to eastern and western cultures and religions. Valarie Preston-Dunlop once commented on his travels stating, “He drank in Middle Eastern philosophy and sacred practices … Russian Orthodox Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy, Turkish-style Muslim concepts and behavior, extremist Sufi practices, as well as Catholic and Protestant Christian groups, all contributed to his awareness of religious possibilities and human behavior.”

In 1899 Laban entered the Austrian-Hungarian army to be trained as an officer. It didn’t take long for him to realize though that this was not his path, and the search as an artist won. With disgust from his father who stated that if he would not change his ways, “there was a gun in his desk drawer and that would at least be an honorable way out,” 2 Rudolf Laban and his new wife, Martha Fricke moved to Munich where he began to dapple into different art realms, seeking for a place he felt he belonged.

Laban was a student. Always learning, always growing. He studied philosophy, science, religions and social cultures and behaviors. And as an artist he tried his hand at several different art forms such as drawing, painting and sculpting but the study of movement was always his main focus. 

               "He was forced to make many detours and probably enjoyed branching off the main road from time to time, to investigate the more intimate side-streets and by-paths. But the original direction of his research was never changed by such diversions. The essential nature of his work might be caught up in one word: movement.”  - Mary Wigman

 So why the study of movement?

• First from his own experience, he found dance to be a fun and enriching activity
• Second, he had observed that dance seemed to be a basic, human need. He searched and theorized to make sense of it all, what was it that made people want to dance
• Third, came from his pride that drove him to want to prove to his father as well as the world that dance was and should be seen as respectable, prestigious and just as important as other art forms that had been socially acceptable during that time period.

And from this deep theorist and creator was a man, a complex yet driven man. A man who never owned a piece of property his entire life. A man who seemed to lose all relationship to people having divorced twice in his life never marrying again. A man who got tangled in a controversial war doing propaganda during the Nazi period, yet found a way to escape before it was too late. A man who struggled with mental illness his entire adult life, experiencing the high and low periods usually alone. But yet in all this despair and anxiety of an imperfect life, we find a man who was known to dance underneath the skies, usually completely naked, trying to connect to himself and the world around him. And it was because of that connection we find his work began to have purpose not just for him, but for all. Through all that he lived, learned and believed came some major contributions to dance as well as to the general public.