ABSTRACT
Apart from being a prolific novelist and writer, Hans Brandenburg (1885–1968) was also a pioneer of dance history. His Der moderne Tanz (Modern Dance) went through three editions (1914, 1917, 1921), each one offering an ever more detailed account of modern dance artists like Laban and Mary Wigman (amongst a host of others).
The correspondence with Hans Brandenburg and Laban reveals much about the early years of Laban’s career in dance. Brandenburg was one of the first to recognise the originality and potential of Laban’s ideas about dance and culture. We have already seen that Laban’s conception of dance as an art form included sound and word and was quite close to drama. A good example of this hybrid artform was the unrealised collaboration with Brandenburg, Der Sieg des Opfers, a kind of dance tragedy. What comes across in Brandenburg’s writings about Laban is how dance is at the centre of a vision of culture, and although this was most prominent in the first decade of his career, I would argue that it remained central in his teaching and thinking about dance.
