Yes

Other voice: So there were no people who came out ahead of you? 

No. I mean there just were no jobs. 

JH: I mean he didn’t see it as a vocational course? 

[Inaudible] … a course at all. I think he was leading his life and Lisa was running her Studio and she could do this, but he was leading his life. He never was director of the studio or more than a visitor in his eyes. 

JH: What fascinates me is that he never had a job in his life except for the three years he was choreographer at the Berlin State Opera. Quite incredible. How could he survive totally without roots, in fact? He was a man constantly in movement himself, he never stopped. He didn’t want to spend time in any one area of ideas but to pursue movement in its broad concept.  Amazing.

But he was, for all that, a very human man. Very, very human and everyday. There was a very strong side to him which was like ... and I don’t think many people got to see it. Towards the very end of his life and he had shingles – remember, were you there? – he didn’t want anyone to see him. He was indeed … terrible, terrible, I mean his head was really frightful. And he was a pathetic figure really … it was quite touching really. 

JH: But he had illness a lot of his life, hadn’t he? He had a fair amount of problems with health. 

I didn’t know anything about his health until he got this typhoid. 

JH: He always had somebody like Lisa to look after him. I often feel that there were times when he found it very useful to withdraw. [Lull in conversation…] Can you remember any detail of other moments? You mention parties. Can you remember any occasions? Specifics? [Lull in conversation…] Are you a pictorial person? 

Well, the only things that come to mind of … just sitting in the kitchen and nattering. 

JH: About?  

The only thing I can remember is their health cure when we came back and had yoghurt. 

JH: I am sure his mind was always going, searching, thinking, metaphysically and in movement terms. Seeing and relating things. 

He was very … about his person he had very beautifully kept hands and always liked his nails to be nice. They were all very, very neat.  He took a lot of trouble as did about the whole of his clothing and his personal hygiene and hair

JH: Moustache

Very much so. Specifics are such a non-Laban thing. Trying to think of specific items and specific things. I do remember working with him and being a bit shocked … on Mastery of Movement …

JH: You did drawings for the book?

I did drawings for … He was doing Mastery of Movement and I don’t know if you remember that there’s a chapter at the beginning where he says what exercises you should do to gain mastery of movement and they are in fact a complete crib from Knust’s kinetographies. That took some swallowing, for me. 

JH: And was he aware of this?

Oh Lord yes, it was a complete take. And what I was saying myself was, Does he really think that and indeed should I think that this step, gesture, turn, i.e. the kinetographic progression, is in fact the Mastery of Movement progression also? Does he really believe this? And did I think that was so? Yes, he obviously knew what he was doing. I thought it was sheer laziness actually. 

JH: Or a proprietary acceptance that this was all his anyway?

No, that was her attitude not his. 

JH: He never felt that this was him? It was all his. 

He gave it all out. That’s why he was always broke. The rows I had about royalties were all with always with her, never with him. You know, in the kinetography books one should give one or two percent to Laban, and I wouldn’t. But the rows were with her and not him. But returning to this, I was shocked because here he was having to be utterly detailed and positively put forward a thing in fact he was useless at, which was saying what specific movements would be useful for you to produce something. His training, the whole of his training sessions, of our three-year training, which were one hour every day, which were in fact a major part of our training were a waste of time because no one ever told us what ought to happen in those and will did it ourselves. And so this specific thing of how you should gain mastery of your body in terms of strengthening it and elongating it, and … you know… he never had a viewpoint on at all. But he had to put it in Mastery of Movement so he cribbed it … I was shocked. 

JH: What was he like to work with on that? Did you find it exhilarating …

He used me on his books to do the work that didn’t interest him himself. It influenced me quite a bit in that it … in his principles of movement, the principles of notation book, he put these straight lines and that intrigued me… and started me off on [inaudible] writing which came out then perhaps, you know, ten years later or fifteen years later. So I was sort of taking things in from him but I wasn’t particularly stimulated. I was just …. someone he used, a person who was around who didn’t mind doing some work. 

JH: And you were aware of that? 

I got a letter from him. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it is a very human letter, I’ve got it stuck in the book. 

JH: Could you lend it to me?  

I’d have to look hard to find that. But in which he’s saying, more or less, I know you’re stoney broke and need some cash, and I need some work done, what about it? He was very good about that, he never used you without looking at your situation. He never did with me, anyway. And so he paid me for doing the work on both the books. 

JH: Presumably it had a usefulness to you? 

It must have had, it must have had. If only in the fact that one was in the swim and with the man. I couldn’t have done any of the work that I did or have been influential in any way if I hadn’t have had that close … and what a lot of people wanted to learn from me was what I learned from him. So obviously it was useful to me. 

JH: When you were beginning to think more for yourself, did you ever take it back to him? I suppose that was more detail …

The things that I talked to him about … the only time that I would say that he was interested in my ideas sufficiently to say, Not bad, yes, that’s a good idea, there was a glint in his eye,  was on the motive [?] writing when that was starting. When I was chewing over what this might be. Then he was interested. 

JH: Were you able to test it out against him?

Oh no, he wouldn’t do that. You would only need to say, I’m going to use that and that idea, that’s all you’d need to say, and if you were testing it out then yes one would…

JH: Would he come back and say, What about x and y? You’ve got it all wrong. 

I wouldn’t go to him unless I had a big thing to say. He wasn’t the sort of man to whom you went for a little nibble. Because you knew he wouldn’t be interested and it would be presumptuous. Also he was devilish difficult to get at. 

JH: If there are any letters that you feel I could look at it, it would be most grateful. 

Well that letter is somewhere but I can tell you exactly where. [Microphone rustling] … Quite few and far between, perhaps he wrote five or six, that’s all. They were all very personal, in the sense that even if he was writing to say would you do the designs for a book he would put it in not in terms of an author writing to a designer, but in terms of someone he knew well who had financial problems, who had likes and dislikes and one could come to a man to man arrangement, if I had anywhere to live, and I could live somewhere while I was doing it. All 

very personal, and he took trouble to see that you would be alright. 

JH: So, when you were living with him it wasn’t just a question of you finding a clean shirt but he was also concerned with your welfare. 

I think so. I’m sure he was. I’m sure he was concerned. He wouldn’t have ... I don’t know whether it was him or her, but I stayed a long weekend and it lasted about five years! He must have allowed the intrusion. I don’t think anybody else lived with them together, except for Ronnie for a short while. So he must have minded, he must have cared. 

Tape 12, 15 August 1991

[Discussion of the Second Part of Mastery of Movement which consists of exercises.] 

Now those exercises are Knust's reading material. They are not original exercises. They're actually Knust's notation reading material. 

JH: Why did he do that? 

Well I suppose the logic behind is his analysis of movement which is that you are going to learn different sorts of walking and then you're going to do walking and gesturing and then you're going to do movement of the torso and then you're going to do movements of the arm and so on. And those are going to constitute to a certain extent exercises. And that is the logic on which his notation is based. So why think up a whole new lot of exercises when Knust's already done it? 

JH: When had Knust done this? 

Well they're the ones, I think from the Tanzschreibstube in Hamburg. And they're ones which Knust published. They're the ones he had on the wall when I was in Essen in '51. So they were his reading material for students in '51. And he had them printed and published by then. Well Mastery of Movement was in 1950, wasn't it? So it was being done in 1948/49 and I was a second and third year student then and I remember being rather amazed that this should be done. 

JH: Was he writing the introductory bit then or was somebody working with him? Because I don't really think he could write that. 

I don't know how much ... Have you asked Geraldine [Stephenson] if she had anything to do with it? 

JH: She didn't have anything to do with it. 

Warren didn't, because Warren came from drama he was deeply into the Industrial stuff as indeed was I at that point. I don't know how much Esmee [Church] helped him. 

JH: I don't think she knew what understood what was going on. I have interviewed her. And like a few other people she was just mesmerised by him. . 

But I mean those Mime Plays at the end are a mixture of what he did there [At Church's Northern Theatre School in Bradford] and also ones that he'd done earlier. And certainly ones like the Tamino he worked them with us. And I'm sure when he worked on them with us they weren't original at that point. He'd done them before, I'm sure.  

JH: Yes

So I don't know. Have you asked Jean Newlove? 

JH: No, I haven't. Oh by the way, five or six weeks or go, maybe less than that, I had a phone call from Jean Newlove saying 'Oh I've got Joan Littlewood staying with me, can I bring her over?' She came. Amazing woman. Much more sane than when I tried to interview her before. Rather charming. Full of expletives and four-letter words. But interesting in the few little anecdotes which I wrote down. She brought up a few interesting little things...

Of the Manchester period?

JH: And of the period before. Tales he'd told her about ... She says that he told her that he'd actually seen Stanislavsky rehearsing in Berlin. And it's very likely. 

Could well be. Chase it up. Where was Stanislavsky rehearsing? 

JH: I will actually, because it's fascinating. It was just a delightful evening. She is a delightful woman actually. She was very much like a Laban woman. She's pretty frail but she was grieving. She tripped on the doorstep. Jean went to support and caught her by the arm and she just turned round and went [they laugh, he must have gestured something]. She had no idea what had happened. I had, thanks to getting the stuff out for the exhibition, I was looking at the programmes. Then came to me one Robert Stevens, he's been alcoholic for some time and has just come back into the scene again. He's at Stratford now. So I went to him and said that I would like to interview you about your days with Laban and he said, 'Oh a man of genius. Yes!' So obviously they thought wonderful things of him. Absolutely charming. 

Funnily enough everybody thought he was absolutely wonderful but they didn't stay with him for that long. 

JH: He can't have had many encounters with him. I think from this programme he'd obviously had some direction from Laban.  

It's a pity Ewan [MacColl] isn't alive still because Ewan was a great admirer of Laban, but also a friend. 

JH: He would have been very interesting. `

I'm thinking of Laban's 70th birthday which coincided with my graduation which happened on the same day. I was at that party and Ewan was there. And quite a few of the Theatre Workshop people were there and we had it at the Studio and the impromptu improvs that he and Laban did together were extraordinary. They were slightly described in the Guild Magazine. He was a man to start with. Laban was always starved of Male conversation. Completely. And he enjoyed enormously Ewan's company. 

JH: And being the kind of man he was, it would have been interesting to have his take on it. It's true. 

One might to a certain extent get some of that from Jean. But Jean's a bit scatty. 

JH: She is, I find her really so

And she's terrifically opinionated. 

JH: I don't think she's awfully reliable in terms of things she said. I don't think she's always grasped things all that well. She doesn't ever test them to find out what's what. Anyway, back to the book. I need to find out who helps in in the beginning of that. It certainly wasn't Geraldine because I think Geraldine said that the only conversations they had was crossing the Pennines preparing the courses, on the train. And a lot of that time he was extremely ill and that's why Geraldine was always covering for him

He was extremely ill 

JH: So I don't think ... it's not her forte either

No, I mean she was a very good assistant, practically there. But in terms of actually discussing things with her. 

JH: So you were shocked

Well I was shocked about the exercises because I recognised them, as to what they were and thought. 'Well this is a bit of a do.' Okay, they're good for learning notation but why are they good for the actor? But I didn't challenge him or anything, of course not. I just presumed that they must be good for everything. 

JH: I think it was expediency. I think he was pushed for a bit of a book. I mean I always felt that with putting those Mime Plays in, again, was ... I mean they aren't good for training the actor. But it was all movement to do with acting, it was all bunged in together. There was no real understanding of the whole thing. 

Maybe he did it years before? 

JH: As in most of these things, I think you're right there. 

Maybe actually that was something he was doing, God knows, in Ascona? Or way, way back. I mean where was he having contact with actors? Or was it during the Berlin period? I mean, where was he actually in contact with actors? 

JH: Well, you see if he's going to see Stanislavsky he's obviously interested to see actors. 

Yes and [Aurel] Milloss says that actors came to the Choreographic Institute. So did he really do all that stuff in Berlin and then just reconstructed it? But certainly that introduction is a fascinating read. 

JH: It is. I think if you can sort out its logic, there's quite a lot of [inaudible] ... I always feel it's disappointing when Lisa starts to take over and try and develop things when she does a second and a third edition. 

Well you have to go back to the original, without a doubt. 

JH: So what about Principles [of Dance and Movement Notation, 1956]? 

Well, I'm trying to think about Principles. Principles I remember him asking me to help him. I really have to stretch my mind. I recall. I have got a letter from him, but the letter is in connection with Mastery of Movement, it's not in connection with Principles. With Principles, I had nothing to do with the drawings, the examples. That was done by a male student. 

JH: Did someone ask you to do that? 

Well I think he was worried about copyright. I think it was really as simple as that. 

JH: The other books had some real purpose. Somebody said, 'We want a book on...' 

I think that the crux here was copyright because Ann [Hutchinson Guest] was writing. The name Labanotation had come up. There was battles galore already rife between Knust and Ann and that's really where I came in. The first international meeting so-called on notation took place in Essen between Ann, Sigurd [Leeder], Knust and myself. Myself, only because I happened to be in Essen as Knust's assistant/graduate student sort of thing at the point. I took the minutes and did all that and they exist. So really, if one looks historically, that was the major sort of two from the German period, the Tanzschreibstube in Hamburg, Essen School with Sigurd doing the notation there and then the student from America coming in. I'd always had Laban's much more open-ended sort of views of the notation. So if one reads in Principles he uses my name and says something about 'young notator who has taken responsibility for liaising between the different ...' So that's what my role was. 

JH: Who formulated the shape of the book? Did he ever discuss that with you? How does he do it? Because I think it's Veronica [Sherborne] who says that they used to sit down in the evening and hammer these things out. Rather a piecemeal ... 

Yes but there's a big difference there I think. Because that was forty seven when he was writing that [Modern Educational Dance] with her and his English was appalling. 

JH: It was pretty bad in the fifties

It wasn't as bad by any means. 

JH: You couldn't, have a conversation with him, I couldn't have a conversation with him in the '50s. 

I think I could. 

JH: He found it very difficult when he was directing us in this show. He found it very difficult 

To do it

JH: He always had to have Lisa

He taught us alright. His English was much better by then. I don't think he was so totally dependent as he was on Veronica. I mean I'm quite sure that she wrote masses of it [Modern Educational Dance]. Must have done. But with the other, presumably he's got in the back of his mind Choreographie [1926], hasn't he? 

JH: Yes, I'm sure. 

And he's doing the next thing on from the 1926 book. And he's also ... because he uses the sort of action-stroke thing and that goes right back to the first publication of it in 1928 when the first publication in Schriftanz using these lines and so on, not of direction signs. I would have thought that what he was doing is protecting his copyright ...

JH: And extending his thoughts 

And trying to ... there's an interesting letter from Lisa to the Elmhirsts written in forty whatever from Newton [Powys, Wales where they were living] in which it says that she has been working with Laban on the notation and has come to realise what a travesty has been made of it. I think what he's doing in his first half [of Principles] is trying to set that right. He's trying to give the breadth of his vision to combat what's coming from the United States. Which, in a sense is what he does with all of his books. I mean that's what he's done with Mastery of Movement, he's put things that really matter at the very beginning and then he fills it up with signs and symbols and exercises - stuff. 

JH: That's quite true, that's the format. 

And then he thinks, 'What do I do at the end?' The stuff at the end in Principles isn't even interesting, I think. 

JH: That's the problem, he is just filling it up. 

I'm sure it was for copyright. He had to get something published himself because nothing had been published apart from Schriftanz which was not available any more and was thought to be lost, more or less. And all the other stuff was Tanzschreibstube which wasn't his copyright. And he was very nervous about what the Americans were doing, not only in terms of what they were doing with the notation but in terms of the financial side of it; that he wasn't getting anything out of it. 

JH: Hence presumably his attempt from then on to claw some of that back. 

Yes, yes. Because I know that when I did... What did I write? ... Something... It must have been after his death. It was after 1958 so it was Lisa who was trying to claw back from me. 

JH: I know Warren writes ... tells me how poor he was from letters he got, signed by Laban, but I'm sure it was Lisa, and quite understandable. The man didn't have any money and Lisa thinking 'Well he's got to live on something.' 

Yes, and other people were living on his work. I have not proof that that is why he wrote that book but he was not interested in the notation as such by that time. 

JH: No, that's true. You know, my feeling is he was never interested in it other than as a philosophical idea that had to be established. In the nitty gritty thank God he had people like Knust to do all the hard graft, and other people. It seemed always he loved to throw out the ideas but he wanted the graft to be done ...

Well I think there's a particular point where he loses interest because I mean he was passionately interested in it for how many years? From ...

JH: But that was breaking a code wasn't it? 

Yes, and also when it came to it in 1927 at the meeting when they actually decided, he actually had to compromise to the extent that he couldn't any more write. He knew that he couldn't write motion and he was having to write positions because in the notation gestures are written in terms of position as you know. All his earlier experiments are on motion. And once he'd had to compromise to the extent that the only way to have a notation which could actually be re-read and re-constructed was positional I think he lost interest.  Because it actually didn't say was he was interested any more. And so out of that then came the next thing in which he was interested which was the dynamics and so he tried it in another way. Because I mean, why suddenly lose interest? 

JH: Except that he was always interested in the first ideas and the initial thinking. 

Well I agree but he kept that up much longer than with anything else. I mean he kept that up from nineteen ... but we don't know when he began. Even maybe he began way back in 1902 in Paris. But certainly from 1912 in Munich right through until 1927, that's a long time. Fifteen years of slog and really heavy slog. Because in 1926 when he was writing Choreographie if you look at that book seriously, he's got four, I think it's four, different notation systems. He starts with one and by the time he's finished it he's changed his mind and changed and his mind and changed his mind. 

JH: But that's what’s exciting

But in the end he had to compromise. 

JH: That does make a lot of sense ...

Well he knows that what's being written is the outer form and not the life of the movement. In his 'Flat, Steep and Flowing', the things that he was trying to put into it, the life of the movement was in there. So he does try ... in Principles he does talk about those things. 

JH: Was he sharing those ideas at the time or was he just concerned to get... I mean who was he talking with?

On Notation? 

JH: Yes, on getting that book together. Was he saying, 'I wanted to do this and do that?' Or did he just get on and do it?

It must have been us lot because the boy whose name I can't remember. He was a tall, thin lad. He wasn't with us for very long, because he was dexterous with his fingers. And he did the diagrams. His name is probably in the book, but anyway. He was a student and I was. I was teaching the notation. I was answering the letters to Ann Hutchinson. 

JH: So you were actually getting involved in all that? 

Yes. So the only ... there wasn't anybody else who was really interested in the notation. So I'm sure, we talked about it but I don't know that I was conscious that the talks were anything about a book, really.  Until the summer school ... no an Easter course it was at Buckingham Gate, I believe it was, and I was absolutely penniless, completely penniless and he said would I help him with the actual production of the book. And I did, but I can't really remember exactly what I did. I can't remember exactly what I was up to quite frankly; whether I was proof reading it, or whether I was numbering the diagrams or ... I think it was pretty menial. Without a doubt it was a book on notation and obviously he turned to me to do it because who else would he turn to? At that point I knew it was the book. But earlier on when he was discussing how the notation was... you see he was given Knust's big scores for his fiftieth birthday [1929] wasn't he? And those were the ones that I used for my graduation examination. I had to read them for my graduation examination. And those were written by Knust in the late thirties or early forties, weren't they? Or whatever. So they still had much more a feeling of motion than ever the stuff that was coming out of Ann Hutchinson. 

JH: That's one of the marvellous things about the Great Divide as I call it. There was Knust going on, taking it his own way through the War. It is wonderful he was left there, I mean ... you've got Hitler to thank for that! So that he was actually a strand that had got lost. 

Yes, but that strand is what I was taught. 

JH: O marvellous. It's important that ...

Because I got it straight from Laban 

JH: And then you went to work with Knust

And then I went worked with Knust afterwards and realised that I worked in his way and then worked with Ann and realised I didn't work in her way but nevertheless learned how it was and so on. That's how I was able to be ... and I went and worked with Sigurd in London to see what his differences were.

JH: He was kind of another little strand wasn't he? 

Yes. Because his strand contained the different attitude towards dynamics. So there is the central and peripheral instead of Direct and Flexible. And all that whole thing about guidances and the signs for that which Sigurd created. So I find it very difficult to distinguish what my role was at that point and exactly the chronological thing of who did what when. But certainly it was all [thick Laban accent] 'You do it...' Like that. 

JH: Do you remember what he was doing? Was he supervising or did he just leave you to get on with it and then you took it to him, or what? 

He would have very little to do with it at that point. I would say that there was no thinking to be done at the point after Buckingham Gate when I was involved in it, and it was a matter of doing whatever it was that I had to do. And he wasn't interested in that any more, I would say. 

JH: I'm sure you're right. He wouldn't be. The books must have seemed to him very strange in that way when he's struggling with one kind of notation and he's having to write another one. It must have been quite intriguing to use one set of notation to explain and another set of notations

You're talking about Mastery of Movement? 

JH: No, I'm talking about how he used words to explain ... 

I mean the mad thing was why ... when he published the first, Mastery of Movement on the Stage he did it all through letters and the next edition it was in notation. 

JH: Yes it was kind of diagrammatic wasn't it? 

He hadn't the courage to do it first of all in the notation system. 

JH: I wonder if that wasn't just bad advice he got? 

From Lawrence? From MacDonald? 

JH: I think it could have been MacDonald, because I think people were somewhat afraid of it and I think he was probably saying, 'Put it in layman's terms.' And that's what they thought layman's terms were. And I suppose he was thinking about actors and it must have been that I suppose the [inaudible]

John MacDonald was alive well into the '60s wasn't he? My book was published '63 and he was very much alive and kicking then. 

JH: So yes, I think that John MacDonald would have been insisting on that. 

The last book that Laban was writing is the real one that's got a question mark. The one that Marion was helping him with. Which never got published. 

JH: What happened to the manuscript? 

Well, we think it's at Surrey [National Resource Centre for Dance, University of Surrey Library]. 

JH: Have you ever found it? 

No, because Lisa was tinkering with it and at one point ... what's her name? ... Eleanor Hinks took on from where Lisa was finished, so imagine that. 

JH: I bet that's the sort of thing that Lisa would tell her to do. 

So last heard of, Eleanor was trying to find it. I suspect that it's ... 

JH: But she hasn't given everything to Surrey, she's still got some stuff hasn't she? 

I'm really not sure. 

JH: I think she has, I think she's not given it all yet to Surrey. 

Well, I haven't been over there. I'm not going over and really doing a search until it's firmly in the library. Now that it's not a dance department any more. 

JH: And they've got grants, mandatory grants? 

I think they have... I think they have

JH: So everything is changing so much there it will be really good when it's in the library because that will be great, you won't feel 

You won't feel ... well you'll be able to get at it, presumably when the library's open. I don't know how much it will simply be ... if it will still be an archive only available on Thursday afternoons or something, because that's what's so stupid at the moment. You can never get it. 

JH: You can never be there long enough to ... 

And the holidays is just the time that one would want to be doing a bit of work, it's closed. The situation is lunatic. But if you're doing on books, if its publications, you'd have to, I would have thought, home in onto that. 

JH: And then this infamous [Bill] Carpenter ... 

Now we don't know where that is, do we? 

JH: We don't, no. But you see ... 

Or was that all part of the same thing? 

JH: What does Marion say about the ... 

It's about the sort of psychological... 

JH: It sounds as if it well may be ... 

And that was that period, wasn't it? 

JH: Yes

And Marion was working on it with Laban when he died. When did Bill Carpenter go? 

JH: This I don't know. He's such an elusive ...

Well it can't have been long. We moved there [Addlestone] in '53, he wasn't there at the very beginning, was it '54? He was only with us for about a year, and he died. So maybe he died by '55, I would say. 

JH:  He could have done. 

I would say that was it. And Laban died in '58. So that was three years. 

JH: Did Marion take over from Carpenter then? 

I would think probably. 

JH: That's even more fascinating. 

I mean she would tell you what she did, because she was absolutely mad with herself that she gave the manuscript back to Lisa when Laban died. She gave the manuscript back. 

JH: And you think that Eleanor Hinks continued to work on it? 

Well Lisa was certainly working on it. And asked Eleanor to go on working on it. So whether the original is even still in one piece one doesn't know. Nearly all Laban's writing is done in pencil, Laban's. 

JH: That makes it very difficult. 

Talking about writing and him liking writing or him not liking writing. I recall the last years from when we were in Addlestone. He was doing nothing but writing, writing all day. 

JH: Really? 

He was writing, writing, writing, writing. 

JH: On scraps of paper? 

No, it was quite ordered and he had established a good way of writing. Always in pencil, quite spaced out and in such a way that he could correct without having to rub out and correct without getting into a real mess. It was very orderly. And he was permanently writing. That's what he was doing. 

JH: There's an enormous amount of stuff there then. 

I think there's an enormous lot of stuff. There's a lot of stuff that is sitting there, of his writing. 

JH: We don't know whether that was continuous writing in the sense that ... or was it just dealing with a series of separate articles? Or was he revising stuff? 

I don't know that we do. 

JH: Did he have a study there, or a bedroom? 

He had a big study, he had a big one which was his own where he had his bed and where he worked but there was also the sitting room that they had, there was Lisa's bedroom and the sitting room. And he used to write in there, a lot, on his knee. And he used to write in the summer house. I mean, if he wasn't writing what was he doing? 

JH: I never imagine him writing continuously, you see. I always see him as being ... thinking continuously and making notes, and not writing continuously. 

I think that changed

JH: Do you? That's interesting. [End of Side A of Tape 12]

JH: I mean everything that you say about him with you is so my picture of him from the beginning of time. He was looking at things. I was thinking about it on the train today. There was a wonderful kid sitting, and this little kid was sitting, kind of like this, and he'd got his comics spread out there, he was not using his knee as a bookrest, and he was sitting quite upright, beautifully and just ... Laban kind of shaping... and it just seemed to me that that's where his interest was... he was looking ... and he would write it down but it was not ... prose was never his medium and ... he used notes more productively ... 

Well he did do quite a lot of ... 

JH: Still to me all his book are notes, they are not sentences, not paragraphs...

He was doing quite a lot of occasional speaking at conferences, wasn't he? Education through the Arts kind congresses. Conferences about therapy. There are... 

JH:  He may well have been formulating lectures...

I think he was

JH: But they were always pretty short. They never spoke for long. I was trying to remember whether in 1952 his English was good enough but there were lectures given then. But he was asked to give lectures, so a lot of that might have been formulating a lecture. 

And he gave... There was the 'Laban Lecture' at the Guild always which he did. 

JH: I can see him doing that sort of thing, but not sitting down to write a book. 

Well he clearly was with Bill Carpenter, but I mean, again, that's the pattern, isn't it? He does it with somebody: Marion, or whoever is helping him write. 

JH: It's interesting he never does it with Lisa. 

No, I don't think he did. Her job wasn't that. It was to go out and earn the money to enable him to work. That's always been the case. He didn't see it as his job to go out and teach. 

JH: But he shared, from what we've seen, he shared more with Dussia [Bereska] in theory and ideas and so on. And I think she contributed. I never see Lisa contributing apart from jobs, getting him work. 

Well, no. Evidence for that is ... whenever one asked her a question, you know, a profound question, like you know, about Effort or challenge something, she would say, 'I'll answer tomorrow.' And she would never engage in a discussion and then she went back to the old man and discussed the question and came back with his answer the next day. We didn't realise that that was what she was doing but on his death when she had nobody to go to then the awful truth became evident that she was in fact the mouthpiece. 

JH: I don't even think she did much in the way of even helping him structure his thoughts, I don't think he [inaudible] her enough to share. 

No, I think on that the writing is she would do the administration, get it sussed. 

JH: [Much inaudible] She had a very good organisational office work. 

This is all opinion, though, isn't it? 

JH: No, a lot of that is from my ...

There's quite a bit of evidence in terms of the whole of the administration of Addlestone and the whole of the administration of everything in Manchester was all done by her and he wasn't even on the Board. He wasn't even an employee, actually. It wasn't his place. All the time he saw himself as being the research department and somebody else had the school and made the money and paid for the research. And that same pattern was in the Choreographische Institut, the same pattern in Hamburg, the same pattern everywhere. The same pattern way back ... He was the one that they paid sufficient for him to be able to do the research. 

JH: I have evidence in letters that he does speak disparagingly of her, he does dismiss her, as he kind of dismissed her educational work, he saw that as Lisa's and this as his work. I definitely think that he saw her as useful [inaudible]

Understandably, she would go to the fountain head. But strangely, she hasn't got enough grip herself. But that's extraordinary really when you think how long she was associated with him. And then when you think. 

JH: I don't know if it was all that long. She had her courses but they hadn't been from the fountainhead. When she got to know him it was a different kind of relationship. It was the admiring young thing who went to see him, and he was not likely to discuss his theories with this girl who was not going up for that anyway. And when in Manchester she was teaching and earning the bread. So it wasn't all that long. 

Well is was '39 ... it was twenty years.

JH: But when you think what happened in that time. You think that none of it ... he was not developing the theory as he had been in the early days. He was applying it more and I think there was a very different climate isn't there when you're applying? The more I talk to you the more I think the English years were bread years. More and more he is expedient in England. He had [inaudible] but it was always well, his mainstream work. 

I think there's a difference in the English work in that it was a mix of work that was recalling decisions he'd made before which didn't interest him at all but he had to do it of which part of Choreutics is that. Principles is that, quite a bit of the children's work is that because that's all in [Des] Kinders Gymnastik und Tanz.  The new work was the stuff with Lawrence and there's no doubt that he was fascinated by that and really intrigued and ...

JH: It was a new application. 

Yes it was a new application but it needed a lot of thinking and it really teased his mind. 

JH: And I think that the [Irene] Champernowne [of the Withymead Therapeutic Community] stuff would have teased his mind. 

That's right and that's what he was writing at the end. So I think his books and his writing is very different when is doing a bread and butter one because he's got to do it such as Modern Educational Dance, Principles and even Mastery of Movement on the Stage. And Effort I think is another ballgame. 

JH: inaudible comment about Effort being 'early on'? 

It is very early on but it's his first one in England. But that work was really fascinating work. He hadn't done that application before. Application for children had been done. That was old hat. The notation was old hat. But the application to industry on that level, really useful industrial work was new for him. And the way in which he adapted the notation, if you look at the charts he did for the Manchester Ship Canal and these sort of things, they are amazing. Really the adaptation of Effort and the manner in which he saw how what he was doing could be represented in different ways, that was real rapid creative thing. The silly thing is in the book itself, he only gives the half of it. 

JH: I think that's because, again, the circumstances and the expediency, and also I find I think probably working with Lawrence wasn't all that ... I don't think Lawrence really understood what he was about. 

Well, they wanted a system, didn't they? The Laban-Lawrence System. The same thing went through with ... all these things there were ... other people turned his work into systems and sold them. The Notation, Lamb, Lawrence. That's it. Made them into Systems, Methods, gave them a name and Bartenieff.

JH: Absolutely, and this is what I find such a shame really. That's what people seem to want are Systems. 

Well I think when you come to teach the damn thing and you're in shortage of time and you've got to write it down and you've got to market it, then faute de mieux you've got to have some kind of a trade name for it, or some kind of way of identifying which will make it marketable. 

JH: You're right but I've always said and still say the problem with Laban is he needs you to have imagination and initiative. He doesn't give it to you on a plate. I am so [inaudible] by Alexander, if anybody tells you about Alexander, ask him. But they do and will and go on doing it. And so many compared to Laban. 

It's get-at-able, its graspable. 

JH: Saleable. I mean that's the problem with Laban. It's too big and all-embracing. 

And in order to be trained in it you've got to be absolutely rooted in it from ... many years. 

JH: And you've got to know how to apply it yourself, haven't you? 

That is the gross weakness of it. Both the strength and the enormous weakness. 

JH: The other thing that happily he wouldn't have minded about the system is you've actually tied it down when you've got a system. And that's the one thing you should never do. He never said it. When you have a system that is it. I suppose you could stop certain things ... But it's true, people are taking things out of it and not acknowledging ... 

I mean the three things that he did make systems of - one was the Choreutics, another was Effort and another was Notation and that was his systems that he actually published, have in a sense come to naught. The Choreutics has come to naught. The Effort has come to naught. It has been superseded because it was written down, given a simple system and tied down, institutionalised in fact. And the notation, well we'll see whether it survives or not. 

JH: Again, it probably is the fact that Benesh could be the one that people adopted more because it's simpler, less all-embracing 

Yes, I think there's a different reason though. I think the reason why Benesh is so successful was that it works quite differently. I don't think the system itself, I mean the use of it, because it has never been divorced from an active company. There's also really never been divorced from Ballet. So that in talking to Monica Parker, no I mean Monica ... 

JH: That's what I was saying. I think Benesh is good when it can be tied to Ballet, it is just for that and nobody has attempted to wrap Mars Bars with it. 

It can be used for other things, it can be. But it isn't. And the function of the notator is quite different because the notator knows perfectly well how to write a cabriole or a pas de chat ... in shorthand they know very quickly. And so they can spot immediately what is the unique thing that Ashton is doing, making that pas de chat slightly different. So you've got a kind of template of ordinariness which is the Ballet vocabulary, which you know how to write like the back of your hand and then you're just watching for the different inflections which that notation can write very quickly. Whereas with Laban the same thing could be true. The system is just as easy to use if it was in that situation but it isn't used in that situation, it's used where motion is being creation. So there's no template to work from and so you've got a very hefty analysis job and the Benesh just don't have that. They can just spot if you've changed this Port de Bras into this, and that's very easy to see, whereas if you are starting to have to write this from scratch you're into a very heavy analysis which is what you're doing in a contemporary dance situation. 

JH: Again, why hasn't it got into contemporary dance? Is that because there are no notators? 

No I think it's because the notation is actually dated, because people are no longer thinking in terms of space. They're thinking in terms of NVC [non-verbal communication], gesture, communication, they're not thinking in terms of forward and backward. The spatial concepts which dominated are time-bound, they are context-bound. In my belief. So, certain types of work, work very well. I mean Humphrey's work is still in that in mode of being Spatial, it's about space and time. But if you've got something like Bausch, she's not on about space and time. She's on about gesture. And so what she mines is 'I am doing this aggressive gesture to you!' and she couldn't care less whether ... exactly how it is in terms of space. So the notation is inappropriate. That's the work. 

JH: Once you get out of a picture-dominated dance form, visually, she is so much more dramatically-orientated. It's harder to pull out the dramatic impact. Those presumably it could very easily be adapted if you got people [inaudible]

Well, it's one of the things that we're doing in choreological studies is doing analytic methods which have nothing to do with space and time and so we do do ones based on what we see, and ones that are based on all sorts of things - 14 or 15 methodologies that we use to look at dancers and analyse dancers and write them down. Not for reconstruction purposes - that's a different thing. Bausch doesn't want her stuff ... Nor could it be. The thing is that Laban borrowed ... although he wanted to be free from music, he borrowed musical concepts. Because what else do you go from? You've got to start somewhere. 

JH: That was the dominating thing in the world that he was in, too. 

Musicology had just begun so he's going for choreology and is seeing choreology as being ... he got to borrow some kind of methodology until he's developed his own. But he's still got the idea and all the writing in Schriftanz is all about how the notation will do for dance what musical notation ... and of course it never will and never can.

JH: Literature is on the same par as well. Anything can be written down. 

I think the idea that people thought, and certainly I thought as a youngster, that Laban had cracked it. But it's context bound. There's all sorts of dance for which it is completely inappropriate. Contemporary stuff now ... you look at what Lea Anderson does or Yolanda Snaith does or Lloyd Newson does or the Kosh does or any one these people. You try and write that down. For one thing, why bother? 

JH: I think that's the most important thing. 

And then there's the whole thing of video. So notation and video. The spatial thing with Video. Why would you want to write down a video dance? That is the area of new growth. It's video dance for which notation is completely inappropriate. The whole concept of improvisation. You see, Laban knew that perfectly well, actually. The only thing he used his notation for was for the movement choirs. 

JH: He was also prepared to do other things - diagrams might do just as well on occasion. 

Absolutely. The only thing there with the movement choirs the notation was clearly essential. Because he was using his movement choirs in exactly the same way as musical choirs, wasn't he? He was saying, 'Go and practice this thing over there and come and see me in three months' time and dance it.' 

JH: Wonderful if you could have the old big meetings of the choirs and they could all come from their different worlds and put it together. 

Even so, he could only then write certain things that were done. If we look at what was done in Mannheim, where there was this... It wasn't known as movement, it was working on a group and everyone was doing different movements and I don't know, flailing and falling, heaving and God knows what. That wasn't written. 

JH: To me, he's a master of improvisation. 

And he's not going to write any of that, or see it as ... 

JH: Not wanting to write it down and see it as fixed. No, I think this is it. I think this is perhaps where it gets taken off and people ... because it was a big thing [inaudible] But like all languages it's got to go on growing. 

Yes and it's got to go on growing in a particular way. The problem with something like Hutchinson is that she says, 'Yes it's got to go on growing' and then she does what Sigurd Leeder did ... bips and bops, and whiskers here and whiskers there that are attached to the signs in a way that is impossible. It is going to make the whole thing impossible. 

JH: If we do want to study it, we study it for a purpose, but we don't want to fossilise it. That's quite interesting what you said. Classical dance and ballet [inaudible]. The whole concept in his head of reconstructing dances.

That's why Benesh is so successful. Because they are doing that, that's exactly what they are doing. 

JH: But because of the nature of classical dance, the ballet, that was yesterday's work. 

The question does revolve around, the very interesting question as to what is the identity of the dance? What is the identity? Now is the identity of the dance, the movement? Which it is in classical ballet, it is in classical works. It is not in contemporary works. In contemporary works it is far more complex because you've got the kind of dancer that is total essential, so the actual performer, the uniqueness of the performer, so you've got the dancer and the dance being far more closely linked than ever it is in classical work. Because there's a whole range of interest in classical work on who was doing it and the difference that they all made in performance, which is a musical idea. Whereas in contemporary work it just isn't like that. In Bausch's work it's done by Bausch's company and can't be done by anybody else. 

JH: If there are changes in the company the dance changes. 

The same thing with Lloyd Newson and same thing with a host of them. It's actually the essential ... Well Graham's company is the same... Graham's  dances can't be done by anybody else. So you've got to start with that particular relationship is completely different to classical ballet so the identity of the dancer is no longer only in the movement. It's in something else. It's in the movement and the manner in which it is idiosyncratically performed at that time. And then there's a completely other different relationship to the music or the sound or whatever than it was before. So the identity of the dance is in the relationship of the dancers with the manner in which they are using the sound. It is completely different. You don't have a score which you do in classical ballet. A fixed score which is done before... In contemporary there's the likelihood that the music or soundtrack comes afterwards anyway and it may not even be fixed, like a kind of [John] Cage thing. 

JH: That's where I think his other work contributes so much.  That is why his other work for the contemporary choreographer or deviser or whatever it be, he is ready to give a lot more because of the concept including space. A lot of these people are... a bit more space awareness... would be doing more interesting, more durable work and I think that is whether you want to go and see it again, or you go and see it once and that's it, there's an element of that. There's a certain amount of contemporary work where if they were doing it tomorrow night I wouldn't want to see it anyway, even if it might be different. See it once is enough. Those are the areas ... there's a tremendous sense of time not being limited and not quite so tightly context... 

The question is how much of ... it's very much in my mind at the moment is other people's ideas which are not so all-embracing as his, but nevertheless are developments of particular aspects of his. There are other people who have thought about dynamics and have come up with different concepts of dynamics, maybe ideosyncratic ideas but they are developments that have gone on and Laban's idea was used as a basis, as a starting point but that's all. 

JH: I think that's it all it was intended to do. 

I agree with you but then I was saying to myself, 'Well okay so why do I need to go on getting excited about this guy?' 

JH:  Because I still think that at the [inaudible] he had, is the invocation of the whole thing, and the whole sense of it. And that's why I say, you know, 'Okay this chap taking his ideas, but the marvellous thing I find about all these is that they can be all related' and I think if you have an underpinning Laban you can look at any of these other things and see them in relation to them. I think that's what he's done. He's never been superseded in that, as far as I see. There's always something there, basic. With Laban one needs to get to the basics and then you can take it off. Again, he always used to say, take what you want to. The thing is, if you have the basics, you don't get the misunderstanding of feeling, well life is about posture ... it's all to do with your sitting position. It isn't, you know. It's something to do with it. That's why I keep going on because it is exhilarating, because it's there, including all these other things which I think does make it more fascinating anyway because I don't think that ... the fact that people would say about dance and improvisation ... he was the father of dance improvisation. And those are the areas ... There's nothing really... Okay he was a man who had certain elements within him ... a time, his time... but there's a hell of a lot that isn't, and that transcended the time. And I think it's why it's difficult and why I am wanting to get rid of [inaudible] because I there is this tremendous fullness, richness which ... I have attitudes towards the man but I just think now I'm sorry I've never seen it challenged in a big way. 

 No, I agree 

JH: And its those things that I think are ...[tape ends]