Rudolf Laban Professional Lineage

Laban did not really have any formal training because his dad wanted him to follow in his foot steps in the military field.  It was not until after he studied architecture in Paris that he really began to follow through with his love of the arts.  In 1909 he moved to Munich to begin studying the arts and went on to open his own studios and work on his own research.

Laban collaborated with many different artists including, but not limited to, Lisa Ullman, who he founded a studio with, Mary Wigman, who was first a student, then an assistant and later broke off to start her own practice, and Kurt Jooss, who was a dancer for Laban and his assistant.  There is not much record of details of who Laban worked with because his research was primarily by himself with little to no help.

Throughout Laban’s life, he had many different “aha” moments and different forms of inspiration from other people and from self-discoveries and nature.  When he was a young child, his grandma used to tell him different stories which sparked his imagination for nature and that there was an alternate reality, something spiritual beyond material form.  Once he began studying with Mary Wigman, he became inspired by German expressionism because it was something Wigman took to heart when she was researching and dancing.  Later, his choreography was inspired by how forms from nature were assembled from abstract elements and brought into harmonious relationships with other elemental forms, similar to the organic-abstract principle.  This could have been a reason why he enjoyed having his students improv outside in nature, naked in their most pure form.  Later, he used functionalism and its abstract-analytical methods as his inspiration and he was concerned with the laws of forms and their metamorphoses.  He also at one point in his life appeared in the role of a founder of a religion, which had an effect on his choreography and his research. 

Rudolf Laban Timeline











1879 - Laban was born
1902 - Studied architecture in Paris
1909 - Moved to Munich to study movement arts
1910 - Founded first center in Munich
1912 - Laban founded summer dance program in Switzerland
1913 - Wigman studied with Laban
1915 - Established training centers in Zurich
1921 - Directed two groups: choreographed and directed them
1927 - Moved to Berlin and initiated dance congress
1930 - Directed Allied State Dance in Berlin
           Uses functionalism and its abstract analytical methods
           Concerned with the laws of forms and their metamorphosis
1933 - Promoted to director of Dentsche Tanzume
1937 - Moved from Germany to Paris to England after Olympic "scandal"
1946 - Founded a studio with Lisa Ullman
1953 - Studio moves to Addleston
1958 - Laban dies