ABSTRACT
When Laban came to England, his artistic emphasis shifted from Dance Theatre to a Theatre of Movement. Once Lisa Ullmann and Sylvia Bodmer (another of Laban’s former students from Hamburg in 1924) had established the Art of Movement Studio on Manchester’s Oxford Road, he developed close relations with the Theatre Workshop of Joan Littlewood and Ewan McColl, whose base was almost opposite the Studio. From 1947, he started teaching in the Northern Theatre School in Bradford that was created by the Actor/Director Esmé Church whose pupils included actors Tom Bell and Bernard Hepton, educationalist Dorothy Heathcote and director David Giles. At the end of each year the school performed plays, two of which were taken to London and are described in a review from The Times Educational Supplement of 3 April 1948:
In the hands of producers, Miss Esmé Church and Mr Rudolf Laban, this was more than an adaptation; it was the re-creation of fairy-tale in terms of the theatre. The producers all captured the sense of pattern which belongs to all fairy stories. Dance was woven through the whole presentation: the gay dance of the people of Fandango, the sinister dance caused by the kettle, dances celebrating the first meeting and final betrothal of the soldier and the princess, all giving intricate form to the play. Movement was stylised, mime was used delightfully. 1
