ABSTRACT
We now turn to reviews of performances in Ascona, Munich and Zurich from which we can see that the critical response to performances by students from the Laban Schools was broadly supportive. Generally, it seems that critics understood Laban’s wider cultural mission, particularly in relation to his ideal community at Monté Verità in Ascona. Taken together these newspaper reports and reviews offer an overview of many themes already discussed in earlier chapters: Free Dance, the relationship between dance and music, Laban’s approach to acting for cinema, and pantomime (also related to acting for cinema). There is also a detailed report of Laban’s first Congress in Ascona, which allows us to grasp his interest in esoteric thinking. Unlike reviews from the 1920s in Part II, these ones are mostly sympathetic to his experiments.
In a letter of 1918 to Hans Brandenburg Laban mentioned he had already ‘given over two hundred performances in the past few years’. Laban’s output in the 1910s and ‘20s was staggering. Two sets of images feature Laban’s notation of The Swinging Temple and Der Sophi. From these, it is possible to see how even in his early work Laban used the same kind of colour coding for different choral groups as he would later use in the stage plan for Titan (1927). Another illustration is a poster from what was to become Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich where he is mentioned playing piano (another indication of his practical involvement with music).
