A Life for Dance: Reminiscences
Book
Date:
1975
ISBN:
0878300732
Format:
Hardcover
Description:
193 p. : ill. (col.) ; 14 x 22 cm.
Summary:
"One of the most pervasive forces in the renewal of dance in this century was Rudolf Laban. Enamoured of theatre and dance from his childhood in Hungary, in his twenties he founded his own school in Munich where he developed his theories of the forms and qualities of movement. He later became Director of Movement at the Berlin State Opera and thereafter held similar posts at other theatres -- at Bayreuth working with Siegfried Wagner and Toscanini for example -- all the while continuing his efforts to help large groups of non-professionals experience with their own bodies the liberating force of dance.
Today, when so many of the seeds which were sown by Laban in the early decades of this century have already been harvested and brought into common use, it is difficult to imagine the beginnings. But in this book the reader is constantly made aware of the clear vision, revolutionary spirit and inner strength of that extraordinary genius with his freshness and delight in new learning, firmly based on his underlying conviction that dance must be reunited with its roots, which lie in the centre of our being.
'A Life For Dance' covers Laban's life up to his fiftieth year. Although published in German in 1935, this enthusiastic 'reminiscense' of Laban's discovery of dance and movement as a unifying life force has waited until today for this complete translation. How did Laban arrive at his ideas? What was he like as a man? To what kind of influences was he exposed? This book gives Laban's own answers to many of these questions, as he tells of his experiences, thoughts and ideas, and relates them to his inner vision of dance. There are accounts of actual performances -- with Mary Wigman and Kurt Jooss, among others -- and here is his eloquent presentation of the need for a system of movement notation that is universally applicable, a need later met by his own extraordinarily exact system known as Labanotation." -- from inside book cover