ABSTRACT
Rudolf Laban (1879–1958) was one of the pioneers of modern dance in Germany in the 1910s and 1920s and of movement education in England in the 1940s and 1950s. Although his career focused on dance and movement, he succeeded in applying this seemingly specialised knowledge to a bewildering breadth of fields – architecture, aesthetics, theatre, education, ethics, mental and physical health, industry, and management. As a pioneer of dance, he created institutes of dance to promote research, helped organise congresses, and wrote ten books and countless articles to raise awareness of dance as an art and of dancers as artists. As a social visionary, he created ideal communities and retreats. This list of his achievements is far from complete and will be filled out over the course of this book whose primary aim is to give readers an idea of the astonishing breadth of his writing about, and activities in, the field of dance and movement.
