Rudolf Laban was no stranger to troubled times. By the time he published Mastery of Movement in 1950, he had survived the flu pandemic of 1918, the economic depression of 1929, political upheavals, and two world wars.
As a youthful painter and dancer, Laban studied longstanding artistic traditions of Europe, then witnessed and participated in iconoclastic modern movements that upended traditional visual and dance practices.
Through all this tumult, Laban maintained his balance by focusing on the artistic, social, and spiritual values of movement.
The relationship between bodily movement and these values is a theme to which the mature Laban returns repeatedly in Mastery of Movement. What he wrote in the mid-twentieth century has relevance in these stormy times.
Stay home and weather the storm — join the upcoming MoveScape Center course, “Mastering Laban’s Mastery of Movement.”