ABSTRACT
Divided into 29 chapters, whose titles correspond very accurately to their contents, Choreography (CH) is one of Laban’s more systematic studies of movement. The title refers to Feuillet’s Chorégraphie, ou l'art d'écrire la danse (Choreography, or the art of writing dance) published in Paris in 1700, and Laban gives examples from this script in his book. 1 Choreography could well be ‘Die Schrift des Tänzers’ (The Dancer’s Script) which was mentioned in The World of the Dancer as its forthcoming companion piece. He refers in a letter of 1 February 1920 to ‘the two books Seifert [his publisher] are going to produce’:
My ‘Choreography’ is completed, inasmuch as I have only the necessary ordering and transcribing of the manuscript to undertake, if I can only get a few weeks peace … a person cannot create a form of written notation, he can only display those natural laws on which written notation as a convention can be based. My ‘Choreography’ will be greatly enriched by the research that I have undertaken since my earliest youth into written symbols, hieroglyphs as well as formal logic. I intend to publish this research, at least in outline, at the same time as the notation, as I believe that our era is ready for these things and has an urgent need of them.
The new choreography must not only show the position but rather the tension of the whole body which automatically produces the attitude of the limbs. This can only happen through a knowledge of ‘Dance’ instead of ‘dancing’. I would be pleased if someone had relieved me of the labour of ‘creating’ choreography. I would then have time for better things. But there is, sadly, no prospect of this. 2
