He went and immediately after came our manager, our impresario. Marvellous man Mr [??]; who was a Jew, a Russian Jew himself, and a very intelligent man.

“I know you are right but you cannot do this, it is like what they say”.

By that time I had smeared it all over already and I took the paper and took it all nicely and said, “Oh right, then we go home”. He started to shout; he was a Jew but he was a businessman. And as these were not Jews, we were in the US. And then I went, I didn’t do a thing anymore. She nearly embraced me because I was too queasy and she said, “Oh you’re marvellous, just marvellous, don’t give in, by any means don’t give in!”

So I was quite safe. Then came, well Mr [??] had gone and then he came back again, and said, “It’s all right. The thing you asked for has been granted”.

Well I had asked for the seats in the first row in the balcony, and he said, “No this isn’t possible and the chorus people themselves said they wouldn’t touch these seats because that was too audacious, too provocative, and they themselves asked for the last rows in the balcony where it was not so bright light and where there was nobody behind them.”

And they got these seats.

JH: And the show went on.

This was really a thing after the business in Germany, with the months of fighting–

[audio cuts]

… Beryl de Zoete [1879 – 1962]. Maybe you have heard her name? In the book on Bali dancing, she was a very strange woman but interesting and very difficult to assess, you never knew what she was thinking. Anyway, she had been at the performance, at the competition in Paris, and in the same evening when we were eating in a little Russian bistro I was told, “There’s a lady outside. She would like to see you, wishes to talk to you”.

Well I went out and it was Beryl. She had wanted to speak to me. Well I met her the next day in the Café de Paris. She said, “Put some lights on!” And, well so–

[audio cuts]

… here we can come to England. Anyway, so that was that, we met and we liked each other and so. And in the summer, in the August, when I started to have these difficulties with my shares in the Brown House, we had a summer school in Essen, built with someone else who turned out later on to be the sister-in-law of [??]. They participated in that summer school, so they were there. And Beryl sometimes came for a cup of coffee in the afternoon. And one day I came home, this was when I had these difficulties with the Brown House, she said, “Why don’t you come to England? You can’t stay here, you must come to England. There is a place at Dartington Hall, you must go to Dartington Hall.”

But I said, “Dartington Hall? But I’ve never heard anything about Dartington Hall” – I mean I didn’t even know where Devonshire was.

Well she said, “These are very interesting people and they are very rich, they have American money” and so on.

I said, “It’s all imagination but you can have a word” – I didn’t believe a word.

And she said, “Yes but I assure you that they are very good friends of mine”.

Well in the meantime things came to a point. We went by that bus to Holland. And on the journey, when we crossed the border she said, “But now you must ask the Baroness because you must have a home somewhere” and so on.

And I said, “Yes of course but not in Devonshire, what should I do in Devonshire? And who are these hosts?” and so on.

And it turned out, this was already before she had told us that these were the people who had seen us, both of them had seen us at The Savoy in London where we had a season in July, that same year, in July ’33. We had three weeks in The Savoy, that was our foothold in  England. And I must say that, quickly in-between, Beryl had brought the [Dorothy and Leonard] Elmhirsts, whom we didn’t know who thy were, two people who were just so, to my dressing room and I had said, “Oh it was marvellous” and invited them to have tea with them in their town flat in Braybrook Street. We went there, it was all very nice, extremely good taste, obviously very fabulously rich, and the lady said, “Well we have quite a nice place in Devonshire, why don’t you come for a weekend?” and so I said, “Oh yes why not? That will be very nice, thank you indeed”.

And when we left and went home, Anna said, “You don’t think that I go to this place with these people, I don’t go to strange people like this! Who knows who they are and so on. Altogether we do not know these people” and we did not go.

I said, “We must go to Paris” and so on.

So we didn’t know they were the Elmhirsts and Beryl said, “You must see the Elmhirsts”

We didn’t, we went on our boat to America and Sigurd–

[end of tape]

Tape 87 (Side Two)

… and I’ll never forget–

[audio cuts]

and I’ll never forget in the dining room, where we had already prepared everything for ending the journey, because we were due to the harbour, which was a short trip and that was that. Anna had already put the chairs on the tables and so on, it was most uncomfortable. But in that place we were with the Elmhirsts. But Leonard had this small booklet and a pencil and he said, “So, how many students do you reckon there? Aha, twenty-six students. And staff would be how many? Ahh, five or six? Ah right we shall see to that.” I could go on for hours to tell this story! So we went to the harbour, with dreadful experiences; Anna [their daughter], only three years old nearly came into a terrible railway accident, but all went well in the end. And we were so determined–

[audio cuts]

… and anyway we went to Paris, in the Hotel Bardeaux, the Elmhirsts were waiting for us, we came up a few days later. We had, about a week we had been in Paris and then we went out to meet them. They were on their way to Switzerland to go ski. And again, it was all like pre-arranged or something. Later on when they came back from Switzerland we met them again, and we had a season at the Adelphi Theatre at the Strand and one weekend Anna and I and Leonard went down after the performance on a Saturday, no, on Friday night after the performance we went on a train to Devon. And we arrived at a dark, dark place at six o’ clock in the morning. We were put into silken beds and didn’t know how to behave! Oh it was incredible, incredible! And then somebody came in and brought tea and biscuits, early morning tea of course, and I was so embarrassed because I had left my things out and I had holes in my socks and I looked and it had all gone. While I was asleep, she had taken it and put it all in drawers and so on and so on so she knew all my holes! And it went on and in the end we got dressed, and we didn’t meet anybody, there wasn’t a soul, not a soul anywhere. Then we heard some noise, some talking and voices and so on and followed the noise, and we went first into an empty beautiful room, which turned out later to be the music room, and then we heard people on the other side–

[audio cuts]

… an enormous buffet with sausages and eggs and this and that and so on. And for a while we just stood, we didn’t know how to behave. I had never been to an English country house before, so we just waited. Then there was that lady we had faintly remembered from summer, oh no I didn’t see her – she had such a hat on, it looked very big.

“Ooooh! How nice! Welcome! Have breakfast!” and so on and so on.

So we ate and afterwards she said, “What are your plans now?”

I said, “In fact none, we have no plans actually”.

Because I was told that they expected us to come and discuss our moving to Dartington but nobody said a word about that, but all that they asked were “what are your plans? Hmm well Leonard has a trustee meeting and I have to attend some class about the acting department – it’s only amateur acting but we like it very much, and well maybe you would like to see the moor?”

A moor, I thought, well a moor is a moor, a dark moor! And then we said, “oh, yes!” and so they gave us the car and so on and so on. 

“A chauffeur will drive you”.

And so we went in this beautiful Rolls Royce and the man drove us away, away, away, on a long, long trip to the dark moor to the river Dart and to Dartmouth and what not. And I said, “What are we doing here? Beryl is a fool; she told us all the wrong things and it’s just her crazy idea that we must come here. She has had that idea in her head for a long time, when in the meantime we have met them and talked to them. They don’t want us to come here, there’s a trustee meeting” and so.

Well we came home for lunch and then Dorothy said, “Oh we hope to hear you tonight. There’ll be a meeting of the Arts department and we hope you will tell us something about your school and your work” and so on.

I said, “Oh yes”.

And Beryl came and said, “Well of course you can’t talk English to them but talk German and I’ll translate it all”.

My English was practically non-existent, it was just school English. When in the evening then, there was about forty people in the music room and I was introduced and Leonard said, “Well Mr Jooss will tell us something about his school in Germany”.

So I started, but in German and Beryl translated. And after a couple of minutes I felt that my English was just good enough that I found out Beryl hadn’t said what I had said. That she partly misunderstood what I said or she partly then put it into her own words and it became a different tone somehow. And so I said, “Oh Beryl, thank you very much for interpreting but I think I can do it as well”. And she said, “Oh fine!”

And so I started a speech and I spoke for about five quarters of an hour, an hour and a quarter, and interrupted by tremendous laughs, because whenever I made a blunder or said something awkward, which was not English or so–

[audio cuts]

… the more they laughed the more I became confident. And I talked and talked and I must have said the most astonishing things. And in the end they applauded wildly and then they all went home and on the way out I was introduced to the headmaster of the boarding school, Bill Curry, who was very nice; we were great friends afterwards. And he clapped my shoulder and said, “Oh I think you are a marvellous man! I think you are a genius because you managed to convey the proper sense with the wrong words!”

I thought that was a great compliment. I rather liked the idea that I went on using the wrong words for years. I had to do lots of lectures and so on, often in connection we had a season we had somewhere, in Birmingham or Leicester or somewhere.  And I was always asked to give a lecture and I lectured freely however I could and people laughed and were very amused. In that way I’m not afraid, I’m quite used to saying the wrong things.

JH: So what happened when you gave your talk to the…

Well it was… That was the Saturday evening and then Sunday morning –

JH: So you still had no indication you were going to be invited yet?

No, no, no. But on the Sunday morning, the trustee meeting – it was really a weekend of trustee meetings. You know, the Elmhirsts had made Dartington, the whole of Dartington, into a national trust, to safeguard. And that was a trustees meeting that weekend. So they put on a special meeting on Sunday morning and discussed what I had said in the evening, especially because we could all be invited to Dartington? Because it could be terrible for Dartington, did they have the money and space, should they have to build things and so on. And they told me in the afternoon, or it was still before lunch even, they told me that they had decided it was to be done. That was the beginning. [01 04 ‘26]

JH: So how long after that before you all moved there?

That had been the beginning of February, and then came Easter, then Easter was at the beginning of April that year and there was Easter holiday in Essen at the school and the summer term which started after the Easter holiday, began in Dartington. Nobody noticed it! And twenty-three students and five teachers came in one go to Dartington. So that nobody’s studies had been interrupted, they just continued. 

[audio cuts]

… this predecessor.

JH: That’s exactly right, exactly.

And there is no getting away from it.

[audio cuts]

Well, you see I cannot say very much about that because there was not much utterance on Laban’s side of it, only that I felt that she ought to have come ten years later, it would have been better. She came a little too early. So she is the pioneer maybe!

JH: He spoke glowingly at Pavlova’s death. He doesn’t seem to have been eloquent about Isadora. 

He spoke at Pavlova’s death; that was already when he was in Berlin. But Isadora died in ’28. Well, Laban was nowhere then, he was more or less a private man with his school in Berlin, where should he talk about it? There was really not much opportunity to. But of course on the other hand, it must have been somehow nicer for him to be first.

[audio cuts]

… in the States.

JH: They see Isadora and Ruth St Denis and Martha Graham, and leave Laban out.

Yes, well you see on the other hand where is Laban’s influence in America?

JH: Well, through you, if any.

Yes, that’s not Laban. They leave me out also. They don’t like to say that when we came over there no American company existed. We were no doubt, I think Wigman came before us, but when we came we were the first theatrical company of modern dance. Nobody liked to talk about it but there was an interview now, oh I must show you these clippings from the American, Clive Barnes and the interviewer, I forgot her name. She says something about our influence but speaks more about Jews than Americans, evidently didn’t care for that because [José] Limon, he himself, he kissed my hand and said, “you don’t know what I owe to you” and so on and so on. But they don’t like this. [?? did everything, sort of, to glorify Americans, and to somehow rub it in that modern dance is American.

[audio cuts]

You see now as far as Isadora goes, there’s no routes in Europe for her. And there is no routes in Europe for the dancer, no Loïe Fuller. She certainly was quite an ingenuous person to get away from classical ballet with something, well you could say quite artistic because it was her own personal expression.  And it was, I saw a performance of Loïe Fuller’s “Serpentine Dances”, it was fascinating and that was without, there was no European influence. When did anything happen in Europe, well that was about 1910 or thereabouts, in Munich; very creative European modern dance with Sakharov, Laban and all these people.

JH: It would be useful if you could talk about Munich in 1910. Did Laban ever talk of a cross reference between Laban and the whole artistic circle?

No. Even there, I think different people and different opinions about that time – again this American publication said that he went to Paris to do… what?

[audio cuts]

That when he was thrown out of the cadet school, he went to Munich to paint. But he was interested in dance; he didn’t know what it was.

[audio cuts]

We went eventually after some time, we went to Paris and it seems to be that he met in Paris, a pupil of Delsarte. He never spoke about his name or so. And he learnt a little about Delsarte theories from this man. Then he said he was at the opera, playing classical ballet. [Whispers] I never believed it.

JH: Learning it you mean?

Together with that, he started with us in Stuttgart classical ballet movement, classical exercises, barre exercises, battements and a few steps and so on. Which I thought, from what sort of done, he had learnt at the opera. But later on I got a book, about the dance school, a dance-master of the nineteenth century. And I found that same book in Laban’s book! So I think that story with the opera was a little… Because what should he do?

JH: Where did he meet his first wife, in Munich or in Paris?

I should think in Munich because she was German. She dies, she was the mother of the two: Arpad and Azra. And then came Maja with five I think. 

[audio cuts]

JH: Why do you think Laban never went back to Germany after he’d been in England? You went back. It would have seemed the natural thing but he didn’t even visit Germany. 

No he didn’t. I think he disliked…

[audio cuts]

… between us decided we would never go back to Germany. That was during the war. And, well, I went back because I was so urgently invited to come.

JH: He was never invited –

But only because there was nobody to invite him.

JH: Bit he had lots of friends in Germany, or did he?

Well he had the Lieschkes at least. This was Eastern Germany. I don’t know–

[audio cuts]

… he got thoroughly interested in England, Lisa Ullmann [1907 – 1985] saw possibilities, and probably also it was better to stay here, there was more chances.

JH: But to not even pay a visit to it?

Well, I don’t know. this I really can’t answer.

[audio cuts]

… in Hamburg.

JH: How old was she then?

Oh she was very young, twenty or something like that, less maybe. 

JH: But she was eighteen anyway?

Oh yes she was at least eighteen. A very beautiful girl she was. And the father, there was kind of a story about her, but I don’t know enough… I could not say much about this. You know someone went, left them in the ditch and went with the Box Office. And that had something to do with [??] father. But really there I don’t know. I only heard rumours and half-rumours and really I was so far away and so on. Aino would know, if Aino was still alive you could ask her, she would know, she knew the whole story which was a tremendous adventure story. Incredible! Also, what Laban did there was incredible! Nearly criminal.

JH: That was the era of Laban, the naughty boy, trickster, yes?

Yes and how! Well Bereska and a group were sent off to Italy to perform or something like that. Bereska was happy, she had a group of dancers - she could go off. And the younger members, who were not so versatile, they were left in a pension, you know a sort of family… and in the back room of that, they had I don’t know two rooms, three rooms – so anyway in the back room of this arrangement there were three suitcases with costumes and so on. And the keeper of the pension, she knew they were costumes and-

[audio cuts]

… early morning and Laban came to the window and took it out!

[audio cuts]

They needed costumes. Because then they went on that tour, Laban and Lisa and the aim was to earn some money, to pay these debts. So it was not full of bad purpose, but it was just a piece of rascal-ness.

JH: Was the tour successful enough to pay off those debts? Presumably not?

I don’t know, if they didn’t make enough or they needed it for themselves or–

[audio cuts]

… he was a great man. But that I mean, you’re influenced by God when you read the Bible.

JH: But did he read Nietzsche much? I never get the impression that Laban was a reader anyway.

No, but I think in his younger days he must have read these kinds of things and never forget, he was very high up in the freemasonry. And there, Nietzsche was very important, very important for freemasons.

JH: Ah, I didn’t realise Nietzsche was. That makes a lot of sense.

I think Laban, at times read a lot.

JH: That makes a lot of sense though, I didn’t realise Nietzsche was with the freemasons.

No! Nietzsche wasn’t with the freemasons, but the freemasons were interested in a character like Nietzsche you see. Because also Nietzsche I think is very much misunderstood – Nietzsche has nothing to do with the Nazis, just as Meister Eckhart (1260 – 1328, the old twelfth century or thirteenth century mystic had nothing to do with Nazis but they took him as their religious figurehead.

JH: Would that have anything to do with why Laban chose Nietzsche as the base for the Olympiad movement?

What?

JH: Well the fact that the Nazis espoused Nietzsche.

Oh no, I don’t think so because as long as I knew Laban, he was very fond of Nietzsche. Well, it’s kind of this “rigid will” philosophy, which is very much like…

JH: How long did he stay with the freemasons? Because he left after a while didn’t he?

I couldn’t tell you. He was very high up during the war.

[audio cuts]

Soon after the war I met him in Stuttgart, that was in 1920. I never noticed any connection with anything freemason, but that is one of the characteristics of freemasonry; that you don’t know who it is. They are very mysterious usually.

[audio cuts]

… a sort of magician - anyway, with magic effects on other people.

JH: I think he had that anyway. I think the freemasons only just–

He went to higher grades of freemasonry because he had that faculty. I could really–

[audio cuts]

JH: A lion tamer, yes!

[end of tape]

Tape 89 (Part One)

You see it was I and my, then, contemporaries and so on. Of course we only felt an urge to dance, we didn’t know how and where and there was also no prospect at the moment that there would be a job or so, so therefore we all wanted to become gymnastic teachers because Tanz und Gymnastik (1926) we were hoping to sell and to teach and then Laban said to me “well I assure you and I’m perfectly aware of circumstances that this century, this our twentieth century will be the biggest century of dance. Man will begin to dance again, not only a few ballerinas or mode Orientals but man all over the world will begin to dance and appreciate dance and movement and society will recover through dancing. Society will become healthy again through dance. Dance will be the hallmark of our culture, our current culture” and he nearly was right.

JH: Perhaps you could say that this was what he was still working for when he was in Germany before the war, still hoping that having been given for the first time state recognition…

Well that him made him so blind from the miseries of Nazism, he had that hope of course. It was a terrible tragedy then to be thrown into the abyss and everything. You know they forbid notation. Everything that went together with Laban’s name, Laban and my name were not decent anymore. We were not to be cited and the terms I had used in the [??] had to be omitted, my successors were not allowed to use my terms anymore. There was no central, no peripheral - all these kinds of things that were completely un-political or so. It was us and we were to disappear. That’s Nazi logic. And what did I want to say?

JH: When did Laban get his post under Hitler?

He didn’t get it under Hitler, he continued under Hitler. He had the post, again that was my doings partly, [Max] Terpis who was then ballet master in Berlin, Berlin director, he quitted, he didn’t want to stay. And the Intendant asked me to take his place. I was in Essen at the Opera and we were rather connected. So I took to office in May 1930, just before we went to Bayreuth. And I had several meetings with Tiechin who was the Intendant and his administration chief, I forgot his name, anyway Tiechin was the important man. I made certain conditions on certain terms: one of these conditions was that after two years I would be given an independent company, which was always what I was after – to get a company that could perform locally an travel and perform. And that I was promised in these oral meetings. And then we were all d’accord and everything was fine, and I got a letter, a thick one with a contract inside with not one of these conditions in the contract. Some kind of vague thing which couldn’t do any good to me. So I complained and I said “I can’t do that” and so bum-bum-bum I hither and dither and in the end I said “no” and they said “no” so I stayed in Essen. So then they had nobody and I said, “why don’t you take Laban?” “Ah, who is Laban, is he in the theatre?” Then they offered it to Laban, and at that time we were on very friendly terms, he discussed it with me, and I said, “do it, because it would make all the difference to the dance” and then he did it.

JH: Didn’t he get an additional post in terms of the national thing under Hitler?

No, well I couldn’t tell you exactly the thing. I think he did not give up the Opera post but, well as I did when I came to Essen: first I got the Opera and then I got the school and in the end I left the Opera and concentrated on the school, that’s how these things happen. I think with him also, he was first Ballet Director, well his first choreographers pulled of some dances for Prince Igor for the Opera, not like the Russian dancers who pulled of some dances as part of a number in the programme but it was done as a kind of show in the Opera. And then he did other things and then he could do his own… and then came the possibility of this masterwork, someone proposed it; I don’t know whom. That was a big thing that should be done and it was done. They were already in the Nazi time. Not the director of ballet, but it was one continuous line of development.

JH: It put him in a tremendous position for the ’36 games, not only to do that great Ballet with a thousand people but also he had to collect dancers from all over the world and they used his name to try and draw people didn’t they?

That I can’t answer I think.

[audio cuts out]

The thing in itself, but it gives always some sort of intimidation, some sort of intimidation. Secondly it goes quickly and before you have understood something there’s always something else! On movement’s development and so on, I can’t follow. And then also you have two people moving and the one is in front of the other and you don’t see what the other does. So that, again no good. So film or video with annotation is just… It’s like, I usually say “think of it only a quartet – of not needing a symphony but it’s a piece of four instruments, make a record of it, a gramophone record of it, and then let four musicians come and play it, and learn it from that record”. Impossible! It’s quite impossible! I guarantee that after eight bars the whole thing is over! You can’t do it because you need the quiet possibility of the script on paper, so you can study it and you can make it clear what it is and you can try it and so on. As pitch, as rhythm, as everything.

JH: How long had this occupied Laban’s mind before you came to see him?

Many years. I heard the first thing off him the first summer before we came to Hamburg, in Gleschendorf. There he taught us a certain amount but we had then very primitive movements, as I told you we had the six swings: one, two, three, four, five, six and in the dimensions, that was the first order. Then on this strength we made crosses and there was here the left arm, the right arm, the left leg, the right leg and when we put on five or four, we composed with them and couldn’t do anything. And that made me very angry because from the beginning I was mainly, not mainly but madly in a way, interested in notation. Was it possible? Laban always said it was possible and I believed it but I wanted to see how but I didn’t. Then I got my knee trouble and I was in [??] in Czechoslovakia, a sort of mud bath thing, radioactive mud. And I was there for five weeks, quite alone, bored and had time to think about things and I found that solution that we should no more do these crosses, the one was in the way of the other, but have right from bottom upwards and right right and left in lines. One line was the transport of the weight, one line was the legs movement, the next was the arm movement and so on and so on. And so I developed that and wrote a dance of one of my pieces, it was actually a dance of Sigurd, who was a Prince in that thing, it’s “The Dance of the Prince”. That I succeeded to write in that way, but then the most extraordinary and the most complicated way was a mixture of notes and direction signs and all kinds of things But that was what we later worked out, we were a month or six weeks with my mother at home in Southern Germany, and there we worked it out, and Sigurd in this system of lines, put a dance of his own, a musical dance, which later on won a prize in Moscow. Then in August of that year, there was an exhibition in Moscow about dance techniques and dance notation and Sigurd sent in his dance, he still has that acknowledgement of the prize he got there. And then we took the whole thing to [??] and Laban got quite excited about it and so did Bereska also. Then they said, “we must develop that” and so on and so on. That was in August and then we went and opened the school in Essen, the beginning of the Folkwangschule and just before Christmas I got a big envelope and a letter from Laban, and it said: “look here are the new signs, Frau Bereska has developed a new system of signs which are like telescope, you can lengthen them and shorten them, and she has had the idea that the length of such a sign should be a time length. If you make a long sign it’s a long time, and if it’s a short sign it is short” and so on. That was the second very important thing. But the funny thing was that Laban neither the writing in the lines or the new signs came from him, because he was not sufficiently interested in it. And then after that science had been born then he became very interested. Then in early spring we got another thing and he said, “now please look it over. I think this is now right for publication. Shall we publicise in the next summer’s Dancer’s Congress?” That was the congress in Essen [1928] with about six hundred Germany and from abroad too and Laban offered this to the dance world. There was still then forward and backward and right and left was written in black and white, but upwards and downwards was written in red to discriminate that. If it was forwards-up it was red, but if it was forwards-down it was black. Later on this was given up, as it was too complicated and too expensive with two colours and so on. And then it was done with shading. And shaded was then up and down and un-shaded was… so on. Exciting times it was.

JH: He’d been thinking about that earlier even before having a dance company and getting involved with dancers? In Paris had he been thinking about it? 

Oh yes, evidently. Because when I started with him - that was before any company - he had already quite an experience of it, tried out all sorts of things. And the cross was already there, he had already started writing with the cross.

[audio cuts out]

Classical ballet, what they could teach. They couldn’t teach anything else. And then he also said he had some sort of connection or had studied with Delsarte’s son or whatever it was. No doubt that he must have worked on the Delsarte during that time because that was the time when he was interested in those things. But what else, he did as his occupation I don’t know.

JH: Because he doesn’t emerge as a person who is teaching until he gets to Hamburg.

Well in Ascona I think he was teaching. In Hamburg? No in Munich. In Munich at that time they had the carnival feasts where it was all gorgeous costumes and they did the dances and so on and that was a circle of painters and sculptors and there was [??] and well a whole school of German expressionist painters and the Bauhaus, maybe Bauhaus a bit later. But there was a circle of either of literary people or painters and sculptors or musicians and dance was in the air.

JH: In a sense I guess it was the painters and sculptors who were interested in moving sculpture.

I expect so. yes because there was [??], he was essentially a painter, later on there was Oskar Schlemmer [1888 - 1943], he was essentially a painter, there was the husband of [??] – Belkian was a painter but her husband was also a painter and they were both fervently interested in movement, in dance. But this movement in Munich was not led by dancers; it was led by painters.

JH: And in a sense that was where Laban had started, as a painter.

I think he went as a painter to Munich, or to learn painting or to practice painting and so on. And then he got involved with dance. When he gave up Munich to go to Paris, that I don’t know.

JH: He was in Paris before he went to Munich. Because he lived with his first wife for seven years in Paris.

Not in Munich?

JH: No he went to Munich after Paris. That was when he was with Mia.

Ah that I didn’t know. That’s very interesting.

JH: And I wonder what happened in Paris because he painted a bit and did one or two things, but it seemed to me that he was there, someone that was a bit of a détente himself, he was continuing to be a student as much as anything. 

[audio cuts out]

She was an American, a rich American girl. And, well there was a great excitement; they were going to get married and so on with lots of money. And then we went to Bayreuth, and she came to Bayreuth and Bereska was in Bayreuth and [??] was in Bayreuth, he was a dancer. And I always thought, Anna and I were convinced that Bereska had arranged all that, that [??] should be friendly with Grace, that Grace was occupied with someone else and Laban had more time to look at Bereska again. I don ‘t know – we were also dead people, you know? And sort of sniffing at other people’s bedrooms.

[audio cuts out]

…the music was scales, and so Laban followed the same word as it’s also a scale and the essence of a scale is that it’s certain movements follow with a kind of, well follow each other with a kind of natural, not law but that that they are arranged by nature like if we have a certain twig from a bush and there are leaves coming out there are certain places in a certain order and that’s a scale. Scale is a measurement. It means that from one step to another it’s kind of organic and the steps are of equal size as long as there are equal points.  Sometimes it’s a half step, not equal –

JH:  What led him to formulate scales and when did he form them?

Well, as I told you this morning there was a five-movement scale, in a Wigman style, as [??] was a student. Later on it turned into a six-movement scale, and that was the scale that was given the three-dimensional thing I showed you this afternoon. And then came the twelve-step scales which were on the diagonals, on the icosahedron. See the first scale, the conventional scale starts one, two, three, four, five, six – see that this is organic.

 

JH: Explain to me the logic behind it.

Well, one and two are in this plane, three and four are in this plane, five and six are in this plane, that’s just the way they follow. Yes, there are two vertical planes, this one and this one and the horizontal and they follow in that organic way, the curves are from there, the movement goes into this vertical plane, and from there into this one and up here is the main accent. Then it goes, in that plane, then it goes there then comes into that plane and that back. So you do, and you do it better than I can do now!

JH: Why did it the scales go from a five-movement to a six to a twelve?

Because, if you want you can start here, one, two and so on, you could say five, six or so. That’s not in the nature of the movement, the numbers are only given to help, to have them intellectually and help to remember the way. But the main thing is, because they are swings, they are meant to swing, and that they must start with a relaxed limb. The arm is a relaxed limb. And then it falls down and falls down into this plane – that’s natural, it comes by nature. It falls down and then it’s taken up and comes there and then it falls again and it leads into it’s place again. But then for co-ordination, you learn now the same scale on the other side, only with two inwards, with four. So if the right does one, then the left arm does three, and it’s up and then this arm does two and this arm does four, down. And then this does five and then this does six and four. So these are two scales which go in economic form, but have a great harmonising-

JH: Are these Laban’s answer to the classical positions? Is Laban trying to suggest that?

No, they are something different. No, it wasn’t five scales, this moment is this five was bound to get called now six. It was just immature done now. And the twelve - that was the diagonals of the icosahedron. The icosahedron is that relationship here and you stand like this: one, two, three, four, and the side plane, then you have this and this: two and another two, four. Then you have this and this, also four going in this plane. Now you have one, this is the scale now: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Well they just follow each other with a certain regularity. See it’s first what we call one - it comes from this way. It’s actually this diagonal but it is influenced by this dimension and it’s a little bit flatter. Those diagonals in the icosahedron are not clear diagonals. If you have a cube, then those diagonals are absolute. In the icosahedron they are slightly influenced by this and this gives them a very interesting flare, we call them deviations actually and we call them flat, steep and floating. So for instance this diagonal I make flat that way, steep I make that way and floating I make that way. So flat has the influence of this plane, steep has the influence of this plane and floating has the influence of this plane. And so with these twelve directions of that scale you can describe the movement well enough.

JH: Why do you have an ‘A’ and ‘B’ scheme?

The ‘A’ scale is what I just showed you and the ‘B’ scale is almost a mirror picture of the ‘A’ scale. Not quite, well the relationship is that one movement in the one scale becomes the opposite of the other, if you can imagine. But anyway in character, the movements of the ‘A’ scale are softer are more softer and more lyrical and the movements of the ‘B’ scale are more heroic. Now you see one thing, can you – this point here. If I go to this point from here, like this, it’s different in expression than if I go from there to this point. If I go this way it’s more heroic and if I go this way it’s softer and that gives the character of the spatial relationship. That’s just a rough example, and then you polish and all these things. It’s a very good exercise in co-ordination. 

JH: Would you maintain that that gives the dancer a richer vocabulary?

It gives a richer vocabulary and a vocabulary of a different style. And at the same time it’s a brilliant exercise for co-ordination – the whole body works and there is nothing incidental about any of it. Yesterday when I was at The Place watching these girls I nearly went through this ceiling! Because when you see this plan people have such hands and such arms and then jumping about and there is nothing, this whole part doesn’t dance, it just… it’s unbearable. We try to avoid that by these exercises, not that they should be done in the next dance, but they harmonise the body and they give a certain style to the body and enable the dancer to, then to improvise anything which will be to the point. Then these scales will have been well judged.

JH: Had anybody before Laban got as far as codifying space with time-flow?

No. 

JH: That’s a rich contribution.

Well, it’s only another term for eukinetics. 

JH: Yes, but it’s like discovering the wheel, it’s so basic. 

Maybe, yes.

JH: Why do you say maybe?

Well, we don’t know what goes on in a Balinese dance so… I mean-

JH: Wouldn’t it be using those factors?

I don’t know, just that we don’t know. In these countries and under these races the dances were secret. 

JH: But they couldn’t not use those factors could they?

Yes, but they might know, they might use these qualities consciously, in their own way. That we don’t know. But anyway, let’s say in Europe for instance, European dance we find interesting, we don’t really care what they dance in Bali or what they dance in China, we must dance as our bodies are made and our tendencies are different. So there, I mean the rhythmical qualities have never been examined and analysed and synthesised in such a clear way.

JH: But nobody actually got down to saying  “look if you understand movement, if you understand better, if you understand these basic elements”. As I say they’re fundamental, it’s as fundamental as the wheel – if you have a wheel you can have a motorcar, but if you don’t have a wheel you can’t have a motorcar. This is how I see it. A man can sit down and say, “look” - first of all I think he echoed somebody when he said: “movement is the common denominator to life”. That’d pretty profound. Was that Laban on his own?

I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you. 

JH: But that’s the first thing. Then he says: “movement will have these four qualities”. That’s pretty amazing too. Then you could look at the martial arts. That’s why I think it’s silly when people say “oh Laban movement” as if there was a separate thing called “Laban movement”. What Laban is doing is describing classical ballet, any kind of thing – the fundamentals, which he unfolded are applicable to anything. You can apply Laban’s attitudes to space-time-flow – it can all be seen in those terms. Look at the [??] look at the space movement, look at the flow pattern.

Now I will give you some small correction. There is still, instead of weight you can work with tension. Strength is then-

JH: Weight is a bad word actually.

It’s a simplification, but it’s not a good one.

JH: It’s an inadequate word isn’t it?

Yes and I think Laban started it and, my friend, these are not objectives. Because now the effort-shape people, I’m against all that, they mix up strength with force. You see, weight must always go vertical and weight gives a good accent because it’s the whole body that wants to go down and gets held up by the floor.

JH: When I use weight in Laban’s terms I don’t understand that – I do think in terms of strength or weakness.

But weight is very important too. Weight as weight is exactly that which is used in classical ballet. They have no weight. When the classical dancer goes down, it’s like this; there is no weight, without weight. If we go down, if we want to, classical dancers never want to and-

JH: That’s why they’re limited. Nobody could have done ‘The Green Table’ in classical ballet because in it’s you can’t express things of moment or importance, a political piece.

But you can do strength. In modern and that’s nothing to do with weight. There’s no weight, the tensions are this way and that way but with weight it is that way.

JH: I think all those factors should belong: weight, tension and strength.

Yes. Ah well tension and strength, I don’t know I couldn’t… Force is the same like strength - a strong tension - you can also use tension-

JH: Well no, they have to have those three things though. I mean that - there’s tension; there must be tension.

Yes, a soft tension.

JH: So I think that you have to have all three things; weight, tension and strength. To understand that concept which we give our strength-

Weight is a very important thing though.

JH: Yes but we’re talking about establishing movement. Any movement will have degrees of strength, degrees of tension and degrees of weight. 

You see, instead of tension in that sense, we take of guidance; you guide your arm, you don’t swing it. Here I guide.

JH: Isn’t that flow?

In a way, but I think Laban’s first intervention talks of this movement of being central-peripheral, which means outgoing or radiating and until the movement is better and you’ve had more practice at it, when you’re bound to it with free flow and so on-

JH: Central or peripheral? 

Yes, well the terms central or peripheral they are completely dropped, only referred to anymore in effort. And there I find that it is in these methods that find a finer discrimination. I mean there are so many of these terms. I mean you can do it that way or that way 

JH: Yes and it’s not necessarily the words that describe it but the context.

Yes, yes and there in effort there is – I forget the word-

JH: Why do they want to limit it to effort and shape?

You remember [??] to the estate? She said she learned it from Laban directly and she made a good business out of it, she was very successful. I can’t understand it.

JH: they loved effort-shapes, they talked about it all the time. 

They do, yes I know. I think it’s rubbish.

JH: They tell me I do effort-shapes!

I was in a class in New York-

[audio blurs]

…not my way to do it but-

JH: I think in terms of Laban, it’s not about the good things to do with a Laban pattern, but it’s not about doing it right or wrong but just thinking it. It is the understanding and the context, the understanding of what’s happening, that I get from Laban.

[audio blurs and cuts]

Tape 89 (Part Two)

JH: His was in a sense, too much a general training or the personality, which factories are not very interested in. They don’t want real people on their factory floors. I mean they want an automata and if they can’t improve the automation then they are not interested in him. I think this accounts for a lot of success. Because so much of what he did was, in my mind, very exciting because he said, “look, I want to train this person’s total rhythm, not just the rhythm for this movement’s dance. And then of course – and I think this is what Warren Lamb has taken a stage further – but Laban was kind of outdone, because instead of having a person doing the rhythm they got a machine to do it anyway, you see so his only contribution can only be in management study, and this is where Warren has taken it a step further. But I’m sure this whole thing could be of marvellous value in vocational guidance, where I think if Laban had the students this could have occurred, not when you’re in the factories pretending to do it but he could say “look your movement potential indicates to me that you are a person who should be dancing rather than wrapping chocolate bars” or “you will be better employed in a teaching situation rather than a learning situation” or whatever. Or “you should be a performer”…

All such things of course are also very dangerous. the other day there was talk about what they call, I’m not sure the English, [??], which means “character writing”-

JH: Yes ‘calligraphy’

It’s evidently used by many firms before they employ someone; they ask for handwritten statements and things like that, then they call the expert and he says “oh yes” but if he goes wrong somebody else might get the job who perhaps wouldn’t be very good at it.

JH: Ok but that is only taking away a narrow part of Laban isn’t it?

Yes, of course.

JH: And that’s just what that is – it’s not the writing and the ability to understand it but it’s also the exact movement pattern on the page, but that’s where I think Laban is on a better ground because he’s not just looking at-

It’s much broader.

JH: It’s much broader. And after he can give me it several times and what they don’t say is “would you write out all these letters”- that might have been a more useful way, but Laban would say “could you walk over to that shelf, take a book down, open that door, run around the room, sit in a chair” and so on. And then with these tasks, so many varied tasks you’ve got something to analyse-

But you must have a very capable man to do that and this man has a terrific responsibility, I wouldn’t like to-

JH: I think, on the other hand if it’s just on career advice-

Yes but why is that different?

JH: That was what I was thinking: you send your child who is at a loss, doesn’t know what the hell to do with life, you see well honestly-

That’s different.

JH: Well my point of view, is what do you think about being an X or a Y or a Z?

Yeah. Well you see that’s a very ancient Laban point of view. The etiquette which he preached in the early ‘20s. And there were [??] as they were called, “evening classes”, evening classes for people with not higher school, in all kinds of subjects. Well in Stuttgart he was called to give classes in grown-up education. There he did  - once I had for a lecture of his, where he said “the point of it, the aim of education, the real point of it is to harmonise a human being, to harmonise one it means to help certain side of the character which are underdeveloped  - to help develop those sides so that the whole then becomes balanced again. And of course then it was liking, well you must add, you mustn’t subtract, because at home or at school it was: “no, don’t do that, don’t do that don’t do that don’t do that” – so that it was all negative, all “don’ts” and he said, “this is not the way to harmonise your being by taking away – you must add, you must add at the weaknesses. Look do it this way, do that, try that” and so on. So he did also the exercises, bodily exercises and he tried to emphasis certain finesse and judgement and so on. One of the first things I saw in that way was, we were about thirty people in the room so he divided us into two groups, and one group was there and the other was there and then he said, “now you go there and you go there. And don’t touch each other”. So they went and then they met and they were very careful not to touch each other and so on – that was a tremendous thing! Because it developed in such a way that a little later I saw the class again and they did it and he told me that they had gradually accelerated the thing and finally they were running from that side to that side and in running they didn’t touch each other and that made this piece. Then later on very often in the street or on the trotoire [pavement] I got enormous pleasure by sailing through and navigating and such things are very good for the people.  They have them and they develop a sense of relationship or a sense of being courteous – he developed a certain behaviour that which was possible but not done. And that was then developed – he said “of course you are interested here in getting through as quickly as possible because your bus is late on the other side but try it as a dance without touching anyone else”. So I thought it was incredible.

JH: I think that’s another area of course that you began developing in England; it was not just the educational, but the therapeutic value of movement.

Yes, but don’t you think that’s therapeutic too? What would you otherwise call therapeutic-

JH: I would call education the normal and therapeutic is for the people who really disturbed.

Oh I see when they are not normal-

JH: When they’re abnormal he has a real conscience to make it again, stressing this kind of movement-

It’s again a type of balance you see.

JH: But really working hard to address the balance.

[audio cuts]

…I always thought there were insufficient men in that business. There was too much-

[audio blurs]

… He has fallen ill”. Well we didn’t believe any of those things, and that horrid woman who had been sitting in, at the walls while we were sitting – that was Frau Bereska. We had thought she had appeared and spoilt it all, which I still think was true. Later on we were very friendly but it took a long time. Well then he never wanted to teach this group anymore, and then he sent us all away because he was really ill, and I just didn’t give in, and then I’d still plan as I thought, I’d seen I had to become his pupil. He absolutely disliked me and didn’t want a pupil but I came and I visited him and I said, “I still have no other teachers, you will have to teach me”. In the end he gave in. And his health was getting better and for a couple of months I was the only pupil. It was marvellous.

M: What about the earliest dances, do you remember dancing with him or being choreographed by him? Once you had begun dancing for him properly, not just as a pupil, trained-

Oh that was much later. That started, already we were about twenty-two, twenty-four and that was 1921, winter, November. I had just came back from the land work then.

F: Is that when you went to Mannheim?

Yes. He was engaged by the National Theater in Mannheim who did the Tannhäuser. And he was engaged with his group of troupers and that group contained anything and everything, some gifted people and some who had already had some training and some who had not had a thing, who were quite fresh but not even gifted. But the Bacchanale needed so many people, they had to be secretly participating. My story is also a very characteristic one. I was then at home, on our farming estate, and I can only leave on the 11th November because the 11th November at home is the day of the farmers to- it’s a kind of marked day. There was always the market, the big market and so on and you changed your cattle and things like that. It’s St Martin’s day. Well then they gave our estate away, taken over by someone who paid this kind of yearly letting-

[audio cuts]

… wild sex movement. Then this grows more and more and more. And then comes up from the dead, he comes up the figure of Schrimcow. Schrimcow is a kind of gnich. You know what a gnich is? It’s a kind of Nordic warden who lives in a grove, it’s all these cascades, and there he sings. And he’s a very heathen figure. Well I was given that!

M: Despite the fact he didn’t want you?

Because of it! There was a pillar of say, one metre square and four metres high and I was to stand on there and I had a double bass kind of – yes, of course not a real one, a paper one, and that had a long so on, down four metres from where I came from. I was up there, on that thing. The great balance I got from being with the left hand on that double bass, and then I had a bow in my other hand and I to, sort of, excite them and bring them to a boil with my music. That was my part. Well up there, I could be in anybody’s way, it was not necessary at all to teach me anything as I was just sitting on a few wires! Oh that was wonderful, that was my debut in theatre! But it was really astonishing – I had just seen Wigman, it must have been about March or April of that year. And then my father died and I went home and worked with my mother on the land that summer and all the time I remembered Wigman, she was torturing me really and we had a big guest room and no guests at that time so I cleared the furniture away and every day when I came home I tried to dance in the way I had seen it. By that time, when I left, I had danced once with Laban, which was quite a lot really as I had been alone most of the time. But then I composed the dance without music in the Wigman style. And then when we had, this Tannhauser business was over we had classes everyday in Mannheim – almost everyday we had a task of improvisation, or… to improvise something and to clear it a bit and bring it and show it and… with this task. And Laban asked me to show this dance, and he was evidently very impressed by that. And when we then did our own stuff, which Laban turned into that composition called “The Blind”, he excerpted this dance as a climax in a scene he had built. With that I was very successful, I don’t know how and why, I was such a beginner. I had certain quantability for movement, but why I was allowed to do it after all that fight I had had to do before for my existence, that I never understood. Then later on I was allowed nearer the inner circle.

M: How did you live in those early days? I mean payment and earnings?

Some of us had money, and especially some of us had foreign money and then you were King as that was the time of the inflation. And well I had some money, inherited from my father, but that went all down the drain; it disappeared in the inflation. That you can’t possibly imagine at the time, this money point of view. You went out in the morning and you passed a shop window or so and let’s say there was a hat, and that had a price on it: three million, three million marks. Then when you saw such a thing we would you run into the shop and if you had three million you would quickly buy that hat because you thought tomorrow it might be five billion, and you didn’t have five billion. It was millions, billions, all that, and it changed from hour to hour. I used to get my monthly allowance by telegram for fear it wouldn’t… And once my brother-in-law looked after my money and he sends me the monthly money and once, by mistake he sent it by mail instead of telegram and then I had it, it was one pound of carrots for the whole month, that was my month’s allowance. And so on, and so this… Laban tried to give it some money and some had from home. Sylvia Bodmer and there was another Stuttgart fellow, we were friends together – and she had Swiss money. She had an English passport but her father had been an engineer and they had Swiss money anyway. And once I remember she changed one franc, one Swiss franc, she halved it so… nowadays that would be 50p or something, really nothing, she lived for three weeks on that. We were in Hamburg.

​

M: In ’22, what were you doing then?

​

In Stuttgart? ’22, wait a minute, oh we were in Hamburg then. That was the year I think when Laban did The Swinging Temple and Faustreigen.

F: Did you go back to Stuttgart from Mannheim?

​

No from Mannheim we went to back Stuttgart. We were in Mannheim until Christmas. And then we went for a Christmas holiday and left Mannheim and did not come back to Mannheim. They arranged their timetable so that the Tannhauser had had its performances by Christmas, and then it was abandoned.

 

[audio cuts]