Rudolf Laban’s early teenage years were full of travel: to Sarajevo, Mostar, Istanbul and the like. During his travels, Laban was exposed to both eastern and western sensibilities, studying under an Imam for a time. His training included riding, social dancing, military maneuvers, fencing, French, German, and "nationalist dogma". According to Valerie Preston-Dunlop, Laban started in Munich as a pageant director. Laban's philosophy of living an essential and organic lifestyle and his generous and bemused approach to the women in his life fostered a sense of the communal over the materialistic. In the years immediately following World War I, Laban found himself with a number of children, an open marriage, followers, colleagues and a fairly transient lifestyle. Laban proposed that his research-based approach to creating dance meant a new direction for the art form. In 1946, Laban and Lisa Ullmann established a school in Manchester, called the Art of Movement Studio, with funding from the Elmhirsts.