ABSTRACT
This long chapter deals with Laban’s choreography for his smaller professional group of dancers. It begins with accounts (perspectives) of Laban at work in rehearsal and his flair for improvisation. Hertha Feist and Sigurd Leeder offer particularly vivid accounts of Laban at work, along with his conception of dance (and gymnastics). This is followed by critiques of Laban’s choreographies which are far less sympathetic than those from the 1910s. Increasingly we see Laban being compared unfavourably to Mary Wigman and Kurt Jooss – the suggestion being that he was a visionary, an inspirer, but ultimately not a great choreographer. Was Laban more of a thinker than a dance creator? For all that, he had his supporters one of whom wholly affirmed Laban’s vision of dance as a new form of artistic composition that is ‘absolute and in its own right’. At the core of this vision was dance performed without music.
Of the four texts by Laban, two explore the nature of dance theatre, one describes his production of Don Juan, in the programme of which is an article on Classical and Romantic dance. There is his full scenario for Gaukelei (which dates back to the early 1910s) and a documentation of the opening of Die Nacht (1927).
