Background
Rudolf Laban was born December 15, 1879, in Bratislava, Slovakia. After studying
architecture at the École des beaux arts in Paris, Laban moved to Munich at age 30 and began
his research on Bewegungskunst, or the movement arts. In 1915 Laban established the
Choreographic Institute in Zürich and later founded branches in Italy, France, and Europe.
His greatest contribution to dance was his 1928 publication of Kinetographie Laban, a dance
notation system that came to be called Labanotation. It is still used as one of the primary
notation systems for movement in dance. In 1930 Laban became the director of the Allied
State Theatres in Berlin but left in 1938 for Great Britain, where he turned to the study of
human movement in the workplace. In 1947 he published a book related to his research
entitled Effort. He continued to teach and do research in Britain until his death in
1958.
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