Lila Bauer (Tape 63)

Biography

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(1912 - 2011) 

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Lilla Bauer was a ballet dancer and dance teacher. Born in Budapest where she trained and later joined the modern Ballet Jooss. She danced in some of Jooss’ most famous productions, including The Green Table. She was with the company during their stay at Dartington Hall, subsequently returning home to form her own company. She taught Modern Dance at Goldsmith’s College, London until her retirement, also lecturing and examining around the country. 

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Summary of Interview

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A vivid account of working in Dartington with the Ballets Jooss, being taught by Sigurd Leeder and the difficulty for both Lisa Ullmann and Laban in this set-up. A description of the creation of The Green Table and a stay with Laban and Ullmann in Newtown. Her critique of Laban’s lack of dialogue with other great thinkers who could change or challenge his ideas.

LB: A strange person who didn’t speak Hungarian, or very little. She lifted up a sheet and on which were these peculiar shapes, you see and handed it around without explanation. And we thought she was crackers. And later on I found out that she was trying to explain Laban notation. 

Tape 63 Side B

JH: And that was the first time you’d come across it? What year was this, roughly? 

LB: Roughly, well I came to England in ’34. It must have been ’29 or ’30, something like that.

JH: She had been working with him on the notation for some time with him. Was that your first hearing of Laban was it? 

LB: I’d heard of Laban but not the notation. 

JH: When did you first hear of him?

LB: At a Dalcroze course and our teaching who had a very flourishing private school in Hungary where I was trained for three years. [inaudible] was really trained in Hellerau with Dalcroze. She developed her own modern dance and then in Luxembourg, you know, outside Vienna. But I wasn’t trained in Laban at all until I got to Essen. 

JH: One thing that you might be able to tell me a little bit about. Whereabouts in Hungary were you living and being trained. 

LB: In Budapest. Nothing ever happened there in those days. 

JH: What was the general atmosphere like at that point?

LB: Well it was … I don’t want to say very much about it now because it will be a special story.

JH: It is pertinent in a sense because I suppose when Laban was brought up in the Austro-Hungarian empire days, I often wonder what the atmosphere and the climate. 

LB: Oh, I think that was his view, mostly in Vienna as I understand, in Bratislava, there was much more of a free livable-in climate. But that was before the First World War and after the First World War Hungary became very bad after the white revolution. The [inaudible] clamped down and [sound quality deteriorates] and after that life was still quite  [inaudible] but everyone knew there was something coming and then there was no freedom. 

JH: Tell me about your first meeting with Laban or your first hearing of Laban. How did you first hear of him and then how did you first meet him?

LB: Our first meeting was in Essen. Not that I met him, [inaudible] examining. And I was only there for three months before the [inaudible]. I had a scholarship and when they toured Hungary they had auditions and I was very lucky. I thought I was going to train in Essen but that didn’t last long. A friend of mine who was also later in the ballet asked me, she was doing composition examinations, to partake, [inaudible] both herself and myself and I was terribly excited because I was very fresh and raw. And we did a duo in front of Laban, Laban was examining. That is my first memory of him. 

JH: He didn’t make any comments on the duo? 

LB: No, no I don’t think he would remember. And we met again in England. 

JH: Can you tell me anything about the influence of the work then, at that period of time? 

LB: I don’t know whether this should be confidential or how much of this will be public. But throughout, mainly because of Lisa, how she would feel about it. Throughout my training with Jooss and Leeder in Essen and in Dartington when the name Laban came up it was somehow always treated with some sort of …

JH: Amusement? 

LB: Yes, I think so. That’s perhaps the right word. ‘Oh that man who does the movement choirs’, you know. That was somehow mentioned. And also Lisa … I don’t know how happy she was. I was under the impression that she was very unhappy and fed up. I don’t know whether she would talk about this a bit? 

JH: Well other people have done a lot, sure

LB: But it always happens in so-called artistic circles, this kind of break, because they feel so strongly about what they are doing and they never have tolerance for what others are doing. I think it’s utter lack of tolerance. It’s been very hard for me. All she was teaching was ballet steps, which wasn’t her strength. She was not really used wisely. She was so tense that … and so unhappy - but she wouldn’t talk about it, there was nothing on the surface - that her teaching became extremely rigid. How could you in this surroundings? And I remember I was in the top year then, in the third year, and the second years revolted and said, ‘We don’t want to be taught by her.’ It was quite a bust-up. It just shows how unhappy she must have been. 

JH: And they did in fact, after that, limit her, when she was in England, to just working with the second years. 

LB: I can’t remember, but certainly she didn’t have us and those in the group who were training to go into the ballet and rehearsing. Except the ballet training. But that really is not concerning Laban, not Lisa’s position. Only from the point of view of perhaps that it illustrates this non-recognition from a break-away group, not ‘break-away’, but a group who had developed with different interests. They have used Laban theories in their curriculum but not really recognising that it’s his theories really. Not emphasising. We worked on Effort and Space, Choreutics and Eukinetics and technique. 

JH: Which were the three years you were there in Essen?

LB: Three months I was in Essen, that was all. That was the time when Jooss realised he has to move. They all came over with Lisa on the boat. I remember they came from Ostend to Dover. It was very exciting. They were almost all foreign students came over. We had quite an international crowd there. I couldn’t because my father couldn’t get money out of Hungary, so I had to rely on scholarships which the Elmhirsts offer, luckily. There were two of us, a Dutch girl, Athée; she lives in the States, married.  That was very exciting. 

JH: Yes, it would be. And so you came…

LB: I have put the coffee on. 

VB: Can I help you?

LB: No dear. 

[Break in tape]

LB: I think it’s typical for artistic circles. 

JH: Well, Jooss tells it very… I mean, he’s quite open about it, now. 

LB: When did you see him? 

JH: Oh well, I saw him twice actually. The last time was in September last year and then before that in August. I saw him in Salzburg first and then he came to… in fact he lectured at Hull. And then he came over to Bretton and stayed over for a couple of days there. 

LB: Did I meet you? Because your face is familiar.

JH: Probably. 

LB: What’s that Hall called? 

JH: I’ll think of it in a minute. Yes, I think it is important and I think this is also, it’s the climate into which, when Laban arrived at Dartington, he came as a man who was, well, not used by the company, and to some extent, still rather a figure of

LB: Ridicule? But Lisa worked with him and I think the fact that he had arrived was Jooss’ studios. There must have been a tremendous appreciation and a very strong bond. And the state in which he arrived, anyway was something that was very much felt by everyone who was around him. I think it … you had to… there was no feeling of well anything but kindness. 

JH: Between Jooss and him? 

LB: Yes. The fact that he wasn’t used. Well, there was no room, because the choreography was all done by Jooss, and that was the idea of the Jooss Ballet. Not until later [drifts off into inaudibility]. So I don’t think he was not used. He was dejected, he was ill and he was not used because there was no room for him. And he wanted to do his research, he lived in a little pavilion where the children used to be, or worked there. That was his working place. And was very happy when he was better to get down to his work. I don’t know how he could have been used because his choreography, his ideas of choreography – I hadn’t seen any of his work – but they were so utterly different from what the Jooss Ballet stood for. 

JH: Really? 

LB: Oh yes. Well Jooss Ballet was done theatre 

JH: Wasn’t Laban interested in that? 

LB: I don’t know. I only heard one report [Laughs] of the Berlin production of the Mandrake [??] from my husband who was in Germany at the time and it sounded very different from anything Jooss was trying. 

JH: And yet Jooss drew, or says he drew his inspiration from Laban and in fact The Green Table was supposed to be the expression of all that Laban stood for. 

LB: Well, Jooss said an awful lot of things. If you read the Cotton book [The New Ballet] it’s amazing the things he says or said, and the things that were real. I mean if you compare the two, there are incredible discrepancies. 

JH: As so often happens. 

LB: He probably saw it like he says it. He imagined that what was happening but it was far from the truth. But The Green Table was Lola Botka who was my other Hungarian friend of mine, she is now in Chile. She, Uthoff’s wife, she was there before I arrived, I got in the Ballet, when the original Green Table was done and she said the beauty of it was how everyone contributed. How, when rehearsals came, people brought their ideas and it was tried out. It wasn’t ready-made. Now that is what Jooss is talking about, here and there. But by the time he had reached fame and came to Dartington, that wasn’t what it was all about. He came to the rehearsals and showed you what steps to do and then you did it. We didn’t even know where it fits in. Whether it was a [inaudible] we didn’t know, but that was the sequence you had to learn. So it changed very much because he lost his roots and acquired fame and success and that was the way he thought he will keep up his standards and his ideas. 

JH: In fact that was the way he lost them. 

LB: it’s very tragic. 

JH: I think you’re right. He half realises it, I think, because he gets to point of saying, ‘I don’t know really whether you can say I’m a great choreographer, or just a lucky one.’ 

LB: Well I think he’s an unlucky one

JH: Well, I mean lucky in having got fame, or whether it was deserved fame. 

LB: Yes, but to lose fame and to go down [inaudible] is so tragic for someone who was so gifted, as he was. 

JH: That’s what I think he meant. He didn’t know whether he really was gifted and I think that possible he isn’t all that gifted a choreography but he was able at that point to work with people and for a combination, a series of things, and I think this is possibly the way Laban worked when he was working at his best. He let people bring contributions and he with his eye rejected, accepted. 

LB: I think he probably did. To a certain extent. I mean, those large groups you can’t. You have to have a plan. 

JH: Exactly, yes, with a movement choir, it tends to be a bit … except even then you can have a certain amount of individuality but you have an overall shape. 

LB: You can have a plan which isn’t so rigid and can be adjusted as things arrive. 

JH: Were those days by the time you’d got to Dartington, were they not artistically exciting? 

LB: Oh, very exciting. Because there was Leeder who was the most wonderful teacher for technique and trainer of dancers, I think, in those days. He also lot quite of man [???] but I think with that background where he was training for something to pass on, to pass on those into a living situation, into the ballet. He was a very inspiring teacher and very able. And that was very exciting. I also think Jooss’ rehearsals were also exciting sometimes. To me, personally, this was a disappointment because I heard from Lola that’s how The Green Table was created and then The Big City was created and they all gave ideas and then… she told me these steps and who contributed, which relationship and so on. There was nothing of that any more, or very little. 

JH: So what about living in Dartington and being as a group resident in a climate which … well was it fairly conducive to…

LB: At first it was very exciting, coming out of Germany where you saw nothing but [inaudible] marching, it was, you know, a haven, unbelievable. We enjoyed it tremendously. The various artists who were there, it was very difficult from now. There were much less musicians. Oppenheim was there, but he was on and off. But it was very stimulating. And so on and so on. But it is stimulating for a while and then you realise that you are on an island and away from reality, and it’s not good for people to be in this situation, I don’t think. Intrigues start. The usual thing. But it was a lovely place to work and to be and work in. Coming back from tour, especially, exhausted and start rehearsals again and don’t have to travel overnight and so on, it was really very nice. 

JH: And so you as a company were all aware that Laban had arrived, but saw very little of him? 

LB: Oh yes. I can’t remember exactly. When he arrived, when did he arrive? 

JH: He arrived in 1936. [He arrived in January 1938]

LB: At the very end that I was there. Because we were away on tour and only went back for rehearsal sessions in the summer. So I think it was only one session, rehearsal session that we knew he was there, but we didn’t see much of him. But he wasn’t very strong. I just remember that we kept passing that little building, the year before that, you saw the children playing with their nanny, the Elmhirst children. There were these funny crystal things. You could peep through the window and see funny constructions, the Octahedron and the Icosahdron and so on. We were rather intrigued. He was more a myth to us than a real person. 

JH: Someone told me that in fact during that period of time when, once Lisa, once Laban arrive and Lisa began

LB: Started working with him

JH: And began, in fact, started working with him, but also to try and nurse him back to health, I think. 

LB: I don’t know that

JH: But did her movement qualities change? Did you notice any change in Lisa? 

LB: I don’t know because, you see Lisa was… first of all, I wasn’t taught by Lisa except in Ostierre, for ballet technique, and I really don’t know. I’m sure she was much happier, with some purpose in her working life. 

[More coffee is served]

LB: I just mentioned this intolerance and not being able to get on and I appreciate the different contributions that people can make to same idea in their own way because that goes right through, I think, later life, in the reverse way, coming from Lisa and Laban. It somehow seems to be that it’s an inevitable part of people who are inventing and pioneering or working on something new that they can’t possibly appreciate other people diverging the core because that happened. You probably came in at a certain stage during Laban’s work here. I think it goes right through … and Lisa’s 

JH: It’s quite difficult. I have a 

LB: It’s nothing one can do about. 

JH: I’m trying to write about it because I have a theory about this. 

LB: Oh have you? Tell me your theory because 

JH: I have a theory that 

LB: I may be quite wrong but…

JH: I have to say that the intolerance … this is why I was talking about Lisa and Laban when he arrived, I would say that the intolerance stemmed more from Lisa than from Laban and that it was all to do with Lisa’s, what I would say, taking over Laban, becoming his 

LB: Protector

JH: Yes. The person who took him on, as it were, who had nursed him back to life in fact, because I think he was a very sick man, a very depressed man. A life’s work had gone when he left Germany, he was found in Paris, I don’t know if you know, by Jooss, you know, and was dying. And I think those years were not so much that he was getting on with his own work but he was getting himself back together again. He would arrive in a country where he was totally unknown from a country where he had been the father of the German dance. No? 

LB: I don’t know either. I don’t think it’s very simple. 

JH: It isn’t simple, I’m sure it’s more complex, I’m sure quite often Laban accepted the kind of direction that Lisa was putting him into 

LB: I don’t know. I wasn’t close enough to know. I kept myself at a distance because I felt … I couldn’t be a yes man to everything and I saw how younger people arrived with tremendous enthusiasm for the master, and then when they go to the stage, that they had something to contribute which was not just repetition of what was handed out, they were not appreciated, on the contrary. You know, even younger people who had much more fight and much more enthusiasm and didn’t have … married and didn’t have a child and so on … even they broke down under it. I thought that’s not for me. I kept at a distance. I did go to courses because I think Laban was a genius and I always felt this coming through, in spite of everything else that surrounded him, all those females trotting around goggle-eyed. But it wasn’t a healthy atmosphere for me, it wasn’t an atmosphere in which I could participate wholeheartedly. I was always glad, a summer school, when I went to Manchester or to Wales or to Addlestone, to get a glimpse and get some inspiration. And then I would have to go away and continue my own work. I think many people felt like that. 

JH: To some extent, Laban encouraged that. His life was a series of paradoxes anyway. We’re all a bit paradoxical. 

LB: Laban said, kept saying, that the whole idea of dance is your creative power and this and that, all these wonderful things and when it came to it, you didn’t feel that it was welcome that you use your own creative imagination, so it was not logically carried through at all. You say Lisa might have been… I don’t know, I really don’t know. Lisa felt all the time a tremendous responsibility. She still is sitting on the archive, isn’t she? No-one can have a look because she’s responsible, what will happen to that. A lot of good things could happen, and a lot of bad things. 

JH: You say bad things but she just sits on them. 

LB: You get the feeling a responsibility for things to go right. 

JH: I explain it differently. I think it is not just that… I mean that’s the excuse one gives to oneself. But really, this is mine and I’m not going to share it with you, and the papers are what I have left of him and keep off. 

LB: But there was a long period when Laban was still about and the papers were set upon as well. You see Laban, to my mind, made a tremendous mistake of not exchanging ideas, cooperating, collaborating, living with people who were of his standard of… people who would… where exchange of ideas could come about, appreciation of people, of his work, who are equals, standard to him, you don’t deny 

JH: Do you think he got the chance? 

LB: You don’t deny it. If you go out of your way you find the chance. [JH talks over LB]. I mean he wrote things which are partly unacceptable to me, anyway. They are so mystical and metaphysical utterings at times that I think it did damage to him. Now if he had been working with philosophers of some stature and scientists or anyone whom he could interest in his work, of his stature, I think he wouldn’t have been able to put his ideas down in the way he has put them down, in this woolly way. 

JH: You’re talking about The World of the Dancer? 

LB: No, I don’t know that well enough. I read it in German originally and I can’t remember much about it. I had a copy and it got lost. The Mastery of Movement, for instance. 

JH: You consider that philosophical?

LB: Well, it tried to be. His lectures, too. 

JH: His lectures were very woolly. I think this is the problem with Laban as a, as a broad figure rather than a particular thinker. He never really wanted to get down to detailed thinking of that sort. 

LB: His particular thinking was about dance, wasn’t it? 

JH: Yes. Not philosophical. I think what he enjoyed was a broad vista. I don’t know whether he considered himself to be a philosopher, you see. I sometimes think that we misjudge him by trying to see him as a philosopher when he was just somebody who was philosophising about the dance. 

LB: Well, philosophising. If you read books about aesthetics or exchange ideas with people who have written books about aesthetics or about philosophy, I think you immediately somehow adjust your standard of writing and uttering… 

JH: Yes, I think you can fault him more on the not reading. I don’t think he did read other people’s works. I don’t think it interested him. I wonder how far he had the opportunity of meeting these people at his own level. I feel that one of the very sad about his life in England was that he never met anybody of stature. 

LB: That’s what I’m saying! 

JH: I know you are, but I think, what I’m saying, he never had the opportunity. He was an alien in a country which was at war. He was a German national in a country that’s fighting the Germans. That must narrow your social …no?

LB: Wittgenstein met a lot of people. There are others. What he did, he surrounded with these lesser people. 

JH: It is actually very sad. 

LB: I may be wrong. Maybe it wasn’t possible. But .,.

JH: I was going to say I was going to ally that with the other side which I feel about Laban is that by this stage, he had been, from the beginning of his life, always put up on a pedestal by his birth and standing, by his women, by the people who acclaimed him with that kind of broad philosophy they liked in Germany between the wars. I mean that’s what made him. 

LB: And are you put on a pedestal, just because everyone wants to put you up? Or

JH: Do you put yourself up? 

LB: Or is it reciprocal? 

JH: Yes, I’m sure it is. I was going to say, then you come to England and by that stage you are fifty some [59] and you have been a ‘great man’ in inverted commas. And it is, I think, the pride of Laban, something I feel very strongly about, a false pride, it may well be, but it’s there in his whole carriage and the world is my oyster and always has been, and, you know, everybody is here to serve me, and I think by that stage he could only see himself as a guru who would be consulted rather than would consult. 

LB: He has incredible warmth and influence which sometimes came out [inaudible] believe it. 

JH: That’s what I’m saying, it was there but it was submerged. 

LB: A real humanity. When I stayed with them at Newtown [in Wales] in that farm, that was really one time … because I lived then. I didn’t have money. I was awfully poor at that moment, and Lisa said, ‘Would you like to come, I know you can’t pay, would like to come and you help me keep the flat going?’ You see, and I helped picking apples. And I lived there and had to clean the flat and so on and then went to the classes in the church hall. And in the evenings Laban would sit down and relax and talk and he was so lovely and so human and it was just pouring out of him. Not only listening to himself but listening to others, as well. I mean it was just Lisa and I. there weren’t many other people. They had perhaps sometimes Betty Meredith Jones because she was nearby in a caravan. And it was … 

JH: [Interrupting] that’s not the same thing as I’m talking about. He was very, very generous if he had something in the way of goods. He never had any money, I don’t think, because he was always very generous. He didn’t particularly care about that side of it. But what I meant was, in terms of ‘I am the movement expert and you can’t know as much as I do, and I should be consultant by the world, rather than consult the world.’ I’m really coming back to your comment about why didn’t Laban test out his mind against other big minds, or even bigger ones, why did he always surround himself with the lesser… I don’t think he was very generous. I think there’s a lack of generosity in some aspects of it. Like us all. We’re all contradictions, I suppose. Yes, I mean I think that was very, very generous, that was very generous of Lisa too, I suppose. Can you remember any of the particularities of that period? 

LB: It’s all very nice when they didn’t talk about dance. 

JH: There were times when he didn’t? 

LB: Oh yes. 

JH: what did you talk about? 

LB: I can’t remember, I don’t … too long ago. About the war and the blitz and 

JH: What did Laban [inaudible] about the war and the blitz? He always seemed, again, to me, to be rather apolitical. 

LB: I can’t remember that. Certainly politics didn’t enter 

JH: Didn’t? 

LB: No. A concern about 

JH: Human suffering and so on and the [he talks over LB]

[pause]

LB: That said, of course, being an enemy alien I don’t think he could have been giving away or wanting to give away anything that he felt [inaudible] it was not an easy situation. 

JH: Did you have your Hungarian nationality at the time? 

LB: Mmm

JH: You see, he’d given his up [he was stateless]. And become a German and so was quite [inaudible] and yet I wonder how much you felt Laban was German or how much you felt he was Hungarian, do you know what I mean? Temperament. 

LB: I felt Lisa was very German and Jooss was very German. But I don’t think Laban was very German and I could tell that. But there are Germans and Germans, but the sort of thing I did feel 

JH: Fellow Hungarian? 

LB: No, no. He was a sort of cosmopolitan. 

JH: Yes, this another thing I think about him. He really had three nationalities. 

LB: His Hungarian was very bad. [Laughs long and loud]. We sometimes tried to speak and just a few words came. 

JH: I think he also forgot his German heritage. [inaudible] You find him writing to André [Perrottet] in English. It was quite interesting that he wrote to some people in Germany in English. 

VB says something unintelligible. 

[the sound quality deteriorates as the tape speeds up after 00.40]

JH: Did you ever talk about Hungary then, at that point?

LB: no

JH: I think he probably addressed those roots very strongly. 

LB: So did I, you know. Thinking about it. [inaudible]

JH: Did he ever talk about his own family? Did he ever reminisce? 

LB: I didn’t like to bring it up [laughs] because you know, [inaudible] children and wife and so on. I really didn’t bring it up. [inaudible]

JH: Did he ever talk about his childhood or … 

LB: No. I can’t remember. I don’t think any of them mentioned to him that I met Juanna in Hanbury. I didn’t like to [inaudible] she was obviously bored enough for a time because there was no one else for her to go. I didn’t [inaudible]. It is difficult to bring up things when you are not so close, so personal. 

JH: Can you tell me anything about the house and the general pattern of life then. Presumably it was not so hectic as the Manchester days. 

LB: Well, I was only there for a few weeks. I can’t remember, two or three weeks. I did a summer school. It was their first summer school. I never [inaudible] they a permanent pupil who was Betty Meredith Jones sitting in the caravan. I know that Lisa travelled a great deal giving classes in various places. Lisa used to come down to give evening classes in Camden and Watford and places like that to which I went. Then she couldn’t come down any more and asked me to continue them. They were teacher’s evening classes. 

JH: Did you find Lisa a different teacher? Was she more open? Because I feel she is really quite a good teacher. 

LB: I think Lisa’s excellent at times and very disappointing at other times. I think they all are. I think her great strength is choreutics. 

JH: How do you feel about that? 

VB: [inaudible] a kind of emotive sequence. It’s hard to put into words. She understands the [inaudible] but then afterwards [inaudible]

LB: I don’t think Lisa ever claimed to be a [inaudible] or anyone I know. [inaudible] Just a very good teacher of the practice of movement. But I think choreutics at times, but when I found that her [inaudible] inspiring, exciting, sensual. 

[break in tape] 

LB: And this warmth that came from him. [inaudible] … he was dreaming, enjoying meeting a person. They always kissed and hugged and [inaudible], I don’t know why. Very affectionate. 

JH: Which is nice actually because it isn’t… again, he could if he wanted to keep you at a distance. But he could also come off it. 

LB: [inaudible] … many people around, and the situation was, or the meeting situation, the lecturing situation, and so on, but not [inaudible]. I didn’t feel that at all. I formed a very strong relationship in which I was accepted as a human being. 

JH: Did he ever joke with you?

LB: Oh yes. 

JH: What sort of things?

LB: [Laughs] I can’t remember. He made a funny drawing of me. [inaudible]

JH: Have you got it?

LB: I’ve got it somewhere.

JH: Could I see it? 

LB: it’s not [inaudible] [laughs]

JH: He often…

LB: On the back of a serviette in a café, or something. 

JH: He often did that, he offered did cartoon-ey figures. He saw them often as animals. 

LB: That was, in a way, joking. Having fun. 

JH: Did you ever have any correspondence with him at all? 

LB: Only very brief things, you know. I destroyed a lot of letters … two or three, nothing of personal correspondence at all. They’re just about books he leant me, the Knust books and would I return it to him, and so on. That kind of thing. 

JH: Did you ever have any philosophical conversations with him? 

LB: No, but I listened to his philosophical conversations. His conversations were full of [inaudible]…

JH: And did you always find him vainworthy and unacceptable or did you find him

LB: No, I think he was much better in conversation because you don’t expect such precision in his speaking than in writing. You can ask a question 

JH: I mean do you think that some of the non-clarity in Mastery of Movement was anything to do with his non-command of the language? After all, it was still a very new language to him. 

LB: No, I have read papers and [inaudible] I think it was a lack of experience of, or a lack of criticism coming from other people who are his equals. A lack of having worked ideas out in exchange with people, and then put it down. I don’t know how to make it clear. I don’t know whether it just failed to appeal to me. [inaudible]  It might not be the right word but it almost felt mystical to me. We don’t quite know how you could support these various statements.

JH: He didn’t always attempt to [inaudible]

LB: No, and then he said, for instance, he would quote things and never acknowledge it, where the quotes come from. Saying natives [inaudible] and their drums and so on. [inaudible] Things of this kind, which I think it’s a pity [inaudible] because he came from so many sides and I think it’s a tremendous pity because he had very wonderful ideas but he hadn’t defended them, or hadn’t pointed to the page where they can become convincing. 

JH: Was that period when you stayed with him, the best period for you for getting to know Laban, or did you think you got to know him before that? 

LB: No, no. I hardly met him before. What about after, then? 

JH: When they were in Manchester I came to them some times, but very shortly. And then usually he was an old man. I think that was the only time that I was nearest to him as a person. It was very [inaudible]. He didn’t teach very much, so it was just a sort of private context which I am very glad to have had. Beautiful. 

​

​Germany's Kurt Jooss Ballet company toured South America in 1941, including Santiago, Chile. The Institute of Musical Activities at the University of Chile approached some of the Jooss company's dancers about establishing a dance school at the University of Chile in Santiago. Ernst Uthoff left the Kurt Jooss Ballet to remain in Santiago, establishing a School of Dance at the university. Uthoff was the dance school's director, choreographer, and first master teacher. Along with Uthoff, Lola Botka and Rudolf Pescht left the Jooss company to join the School of Dance as master teachers. 

Frau Bohme (Tape 62)