Biography 

​

Lawrence was a pioneering management consultant who co-authored Effort (1947) with Laban. He also published his own book Marginal Costing (1955). 

​

Summary of Interview

​

His work as a Director at Dartington Hall in 1941/2. His intuition that Time and Motion study was limited, hence an interest in Laban (in Wales at that time). Early work on movement assessment, work at Tyresoles and the Mars Bar factory (some interesting detail of the work in the latter). His estimation of Laban. The relation between the Elmhirsts and the AMS (Bill Elmhirst paid for the premises at Addlestone). Laban working with cherry pickers at Dartington Hall. Working with Warren Lamb at Pilkington Tiles and other places. Difficulties getting the work accepted. Further Examples of movement assessments that they conducted at Dunlops and Trebor. The Writing of Effort (1947) and the help of A. Proctor Burman [mentioned in the Foreword on p.vii]. The search for precise terminology. Final example of movement observation from Glaxo (very interesting).

​

Tape 55

​

His work at Dartington Hall. A critique of time and motion. 

​

FL: I was Director of Dartington Hall Ltd., that is the agricultural and industrial part of Dartington Hall, not the [inaudible] parts of it. And I was there because I went there with someone else and met Bill Slater who was the managing director and chemist, Doctor of Science. Later he got a Knighthood and was agricultural research council boss. And I said to Bill Slater one day, ‘I practice this work study, not personally, but my firm does. I don’t care for it, it doesn’t get to the thing. But people go round with a stop watch and look at the stop watch with a bit of paper writing stuff down instead of looking at the person.’ We went on like this. Why don’t you go and see Laban? I said I’d never heard of him. That was in 1941 or 2, somewhere back there. 

JH: Was Laban still there at that time? 

FL: No, Laban and Lisa by that time had moved up to Newtown where they were sort of camped out for a time. I don’t know because I didn’t go to Newton. There had a sort of caravan there. I heard that from Lisa. But I was extremely busy on War work and days off to Newtown on spec was rather an undertaking. Now I had a cousin. I had a niece working for me and she was a mathematician and honours at Glasgow University and that sort of thing. She adapted herself very well to my kind of work. So I sent her to Newtown by train, which took hours. But she nobly went and came back and told me all about the notation. 

JH: What commission did you give her to go with? What was she looking for? 

FL: To find out what connection this could possibly have that Laban was doing, could possibly have with work study? The treatment of incentives and other things with people in industry. She came back and had got this notation, scraps of it down, and showed it to me and then told me what Lisa and Laban had told her. The joke about all this is, she is probably the clumsiest person I have ever met! As Laban said to me a year or so later, he said, you know … I have never danced in my life, let’s put it that way, and Laban said to me, ‘You don’t dance with your body, you dance with your mind.’ And so did this niece, you see. I am not as clumsy as she was. But anyway, this started the connection with Laban. And then [tape jumps]… because Bill Slater had prepared me. He thought there would be something that Laban could contribute. I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Well go and see Laban, never mind asking me, I don’t know enough about it.’ Excellent chap, of course, he was, dead now. And then, that was in ’41, I think it was in ’41. I am not sure of dates because I always failed in history at school. 

Work at Tyresoles 

And there I got in touch then with Simon Engineering Company who had a large company called Tyresoles whose job was to retread tyres when the tread had worn off. Then the chairman of that was Sir Patrick Hamilton who was related to the Simons, he was a Jew. It was a Jew family altogether. Patrick Hamilton cottoned on to what Laban wanted to do, straight away. I gave him a brief resume. By this time I knew a bit, you see. And he said, Come along we’ll bring Laban here, let him see. So of course there follows the examples that are given in Effort. You’ve seen them? Now, what you perhaps haven’t read… You’ve read about the tyres, lifting tyres? Swinging. What you haven’t read is an incident that occurred there. Because Lisa used to get the girls, about twenty of them, I should think. About twenty, yes. And give them lessons in movement. And they responded very well indeed, as they did at Mars bars and other places where we went at that time tyres? Swinging. What you haven’t read is an incident that occurred there. Because Lisa used to get the girls, about twenty of them, I should think. About twenty, yes. And give them lessons in movement. And they responded very well indeed, as they did at Mars bars and other places where we went at that time. She got these girls one day and of course she was observing them when they were doing, this was their choosing what they might do, this part of the job or that part of the job, which is the essential thing that Laban has brought into work study through this means. She saw one girl who was, let’s say, awkward. So, during the whole of the lesson. She called her back after they broke up, she said, ‘What’s the matter with you, what are you suffering from?’ And this girl said, ‘I don’t know what I am suffering from but I don’t want to go and see the doctor’. And Lisa said, ‘But you must go and see the doctor if there is something wrong with you.’ ‘Yes, but all these girls tell me I am pregnant and I’m not.’ So Lisa said, ‘Look, that doesn’t matter to the doctor whether you are pregnant or not. He’ll tell you exactly what’s wrong with you and you must go because you’ve probably got something that will get worse.’ So she went and there was some adjustment that was needed inside. I don’t know what it was. Which was done and cured the girl. And this of course appealed tremendously to me, because, being able to see that. And we had similar sort of things with the Mars bars girls. I mention these because they were all girls and I think works study applied to girls is often worse than for men because they’ve got no resistance to it. 

JH: Can you expand on that? 

FL: Well work study is only partial. They don’t see what’s happening. They can’t see through to the actions and the mind and body connection, for instance. Or the actions themselves that take place. They don’t see the significance of them. All they see is how long a … that’s five operations or units of operations and the time they take in average is that and that. That’s the sort of thing. They build on that. And that ought to take ten minutes to do because of that. Now that was highly successful, although I’ll tell you a little bit of it, but the whole thing was successful. Patrick Hamilton was delighted with it. And I think we went on from there to Mars bars by some reason or other and found, like Patrick Hamilton, a very open-minded man who immediately was sympathetic to what we were doing and there what they were doing. I don’t think this is described enough in the paper for you. The girls were at the end of a conveyor about that wide, stretching right back to the kitchen, the confectionary kitchen where they made the insides of the Mars bars, and they came with little rectangular bits and marching down, they were about twelve abreast, it was a horrible sight seeing these things coming at you! The girls were each side, half a dozen each side of this conveyor who picked up each one of those, they picked their own, and wrapped them in the wrapping that you get. They were chocolate covered. I said to the managing director, But why don’t you do this by machinery? Because, he said, they are irregular. A machine will only work on something that is absolutely regular and can work with its feelers in between very small limits. He said that such and such a firm spent £20,000 trying to find the solution to that. A few years later they found the solution. But meanwhile these girls were wrapping them in three seconds, all day long, with breaks of course. But at a stretch, they work, or are supposed to work an hour and a half at a time doing that. Now three seconds into an hour and a half is quite a lot of bars, you see and what happened? What do you think happened to them? Like that you see.

JH: Do you mean their fingers, their hands or their minds? 

FL: You kind of crashed and the mind reacted to that. They couldn’t see the damn things of course in time. So they gave them exercises of relaxation, of course. Something to do with their bodies and their hands in particular and that allowed them to get some satisfaction out of the work which they hadn’t had before. It didn’t make it faster or anything of that sort. That wasn’t the objective. 

JH: But presumably it made it slightly more efficient because you got over the cramp? 

His estimation of Laban

FL: Oh yes, you didn’t have the lost time. It’s true. [jump in tape] … and learn what they were doing for my own benefit which proved very useful afterwards. And really to be a liaison between the management and the work people with Laban and Lisa. Laban at that time was not very fluent, because he was shy. He had the greatest grace that is needed by management – humility. A man of that learning and ability, he’d got this touch of humility which made it also enjoyable and satisfying and that is to be noted, I think, It is one of his characteristics. 

JH; He was rather shy, I know what you mean. I met him in 1950 first. At Dartington, in fact. But I was struck by his shyness which is, now that I know more about his early life, a total contradiction in terms. Any idea why? Have you any idea why he was so shy in this country? Was it the war years that had battered him? Was it age? Was it new areas? 

FL: I think it wasn’t shyness. It was, if you like, call it concentration. The effect of observation. You observe first before you say or come to a conclusion. 

JH: Withdraw as it were. 

FL: He came gradually out to me, rather than making a dash at it or jump to conclusions. He never jumped to conclusions, you see. 

JH: Can you describe the first time you actually met Laban? Where was this? And you told me your niece… 

FL: It was in Manchester. We were taking him to Tyresoles. I took him straight there from the train. He came from Newtown to spy out the land. I put him up in a hotel, kept him here about three days and first of all he told me what he wanted to do and I described to him what we were … what the conditions were, which I’d made a review of it myself, you see, in my way. And he said. ‘Well, we can do quite a bit for that.’ Alright, come and see yourself. So we spent about three days together, then. Then he said, of course with these girls, Lisa must come. So Lisa was transported and they stayed in hotels at first and then eventually they came and lived here. So I brought them to Manchester and helped them to set up the Studio and so on. 

JH: Is the Studio still there? I mean is the space, the place, still there? 

FL: Oh, it was in an ordinary building, adapted for the purpose and not very good for purpose. 

JH: Has it gone now? 

FL: Well, it may or may not have. You see the university’s grown all over the place. I think it must have gone and there’s now a university building there. But it was a bit nearer Manchester, and it may still be standing but it’s not of any consequence. They just put up with that. And in fact they were spying out land to move from there when Bill Elmhirst’s offer came to buy a place for them in the South and so they went off. 

JH: Bill Elmhirst was the one who was interested in industry? Leonard is the one who ran Dartington. 

FL: Leonard was the Dartington one who married Mrs Whitney and brought her to Dartington and set up Dartington Hall. They had three children, I think. And Bill is the boy of that. And he was Leonard and Dorothy’s son, you see. He came on a course to the studio in Manchester and then said, Oh you’ve got to move from here. You’ve got to do something better than this. And he went and bought the present place, which they’ve just given up for Goldsmiths. 

JH: Great shame. 

FL: I hate the thought of leaving it now. You see I’m the Trustee who has been there from the beginning. The others like Leonard went out and Goodrich. Have you met her? 

JH: No I am going to meet Joan Goodrich. 

FL: And Diana Jordan? 

JH: Yes, I met Diana Jordan. 

FL: Good, because they, to me, are wonderful women. Because they are the first English people to cotton on to Laban. [Inaudible] They’re fine women. Still are, so I hope you’ll take notice of them. That’s not for me to say. But I’ve got such great respect for them. So, jumping to that stage, you see they… I think this is written somewhere. Leonard and they discussed whether to make a limited company and so on. It’s written down somewhere, which you’ll come across no doubt. So I needn’t go back on to that story. But going on where I left off. Mars bars. 

Laban working with cherry pickers at Dartington Hall

We went from there to Dartington Hall where of course they’d both feet [???] because Laban and Lisa had been at Dartington Hall. She having been there for some years before him with Jooss. And then we went down there and looked at all sorts of things there. There’s the cherry tree? Do you know about the cherry tree? It’s written somewhere, I think. I don’t know that that’s in Effort. Well what happened there was, the cherry man who ever he was, a farmer or market gardener or whatever you call it, he said to us, ‘You know I can’t understand why these girls have to stop picking cherries so soon. They pick leaves instead. Do you know what that is Laban?’ And so we went and observed and he knew that after looking at cherries for long enough they turn green. Red cherries turn green because of the influence of the leaves, the powerful influence of the green leaves. Whatever it is. I don’t know, it’s some mental movement. 

Warren Lamb

JH: Perception, yes. 

FL: So of course we taught them to blink. And that’s the simple way out of that one. Now it’s all so simple. That’s the delightful part of it. Even the work that Warren Lamb does in assessing people’s capabilities or matching them to a job – it’s all very simple indeed, because… What I did with that, which developed between Laban and me, and then we took on Warren as the first trainee. And he took it up so well that he became the leading one. And now the only one, sad to say. But less sad at this point, but Goldsmiths have promised to do the research work and set up courses and do the proper gander in industry to get this going on a bigger scale. 

JH: Are they? Amazing. 

FL: Now Warren chose to the assessment for the staff in companies, fitting in staff, changing their jobs and so on. We did a lot of this together. And Warren can tell you better than I can about this. But it was using Laban’s method of observation. Now I used to attend these and the person who was being assessed would come and we would explain it to him what we were going to do and tell him that if he tried to make us draw wrong conclusions he couldn’t possibly do it, which is true. And that filled me with joy when I heard that from Laban, you see. Because, he said, first of all you’re moving all the time. The only time you stop moving is when you’re dead. And secondly, the mind and body are one and indivisible. And therefore if we observe what is doing we know what the mind will do to the body and will reflect from the body and so he made up a code for this which he taught to Warren. I was too old to learn it. I was fifty at the time, you see. We started off to do this in with the clerical staff and the management staff of the companies and for the work people. Now, we went to a firm called Pilkington Tiles here, which was a client of mine at the time. And we studied what the girls were doing, especially after the tiles were made, of sorting them out and throwing out the rejects and piling up and counting the tiles and putting them into hundreds and so on. We made some excellent observations. Now in doing that we took girls from the Studio as well as Warren, you see. Warren was on my permanent staff then, and another lad who has defaulted since. He’s gone to be a teacher in Yorkshire and gave it up. 

JH: Who was that? 

FL: John Armitstead who now lives in a cabin in Wharfdale and teaches in Keighley or Ilkley or somewhere around there. I’ve lost touch with him, but he was quite good at it. Pity. 

JH: Why did he give it up? 

FL: Because he wanted a permanent job and I couldn’t offer one. I could only offer him sporadic work if he cared to take it on his own. So, went into Pilkington Tiles and did this, but the managing director used to call us Trick Cyclists [i.e. Psychologists]. The silly damn fool, you see. He thought this was clever. And what it did was to ruin our reputation. But we did some excellent work as [inaudible] which we have preserved to this day and which can be used by them. I have given them to Goldsmiths for the new course. Then we got ambitious after that. Warren and I went to ICI and we met them in London, met the chief work study bloke and some of his assistants. Very kind to us. And we went then to Birmingham to the Kynoch Factory as it was called which made explosives and things like that. And there Warren observed three workers doing the same job and made a marvellous comparison which the work study people couldn’t have done and pointed out what was necessary in order to improve the effectiveness of – I won’t use ‘efficiency’ – effectiveness of these three people. And ICI said, Thank you very much. Didn’t even pay us to do it. 

JH: Why was that? They didn’t want to develop the work? 

FL: It would undermine work study, that’s why. We found that out there. 

JH: If you didn’t call it ‘work study’ what did you call it? 

Further Examples of Studies 

FL: We called it the Laban Lawrence working rhythm, something of that sort. LLIR, Industrial Rhythm. That’s right. And previous to that we sent to Dunlops, unfortunately during the war and they wouldn’t let Laban in, or Lisa, because they were aliens. They were quite right in that. I said alright, then I’ll take one of Laban’s pupils, an English girl whose name was Gerda Rink and I don’t know what happened to her since. She came in with me, into Dunlops in Birmingham. Laban and Lisa sat in the Grand Hotel in Birmingham meanwhile and waited for us. And we spent, I think, an hour and a half observing the making of bicycling tools, chiefly by girls and they had them in sequence passing the things along, or they were moving on a conveyor probably. A conveyor being one of the worst things, it was for carrying goods to be processed. They can only thing about time, you see. So there was a conveyor carrying the goods and as they passed they had to be processed. So Gerda and I spent the time there, I looked at it I saw exactly what was happening with my senses. 

JH: Did you used Laban notation at this stage? 

FL: Well, she did. She was adept at it you see. So I took her back then to the Grand Hotel in Birmingham and we sat round a table and Gerda said to Lisa, ‘There’s the notation of what we’ve seen.’ So Lisa immediately did all the movements that the girls had done, it was a revelation to me, of course! Lovely! And that was in, well, it was before ’45 at any rate. I learned a lot from that. And I think it was coming back from that in the train, that Laban expounded to me how to apply this to clerical and management stuff and to get their capability and adaptability from that. And then the next phase to that, I think, was that I had a job at the firm of Trebor that make sweets. They make them very well indeed. And I said to Warren, I’ve got a little job: you go and see Mr SO and SO and tell him about assessment and get him to introduce you to Sydney Marks, the boss of Trebor who, incidentally, although being Marks was not a Jew. But comparing him with Patrick Hamilton, they are both delightful people. And so in his flat in London we had a confab about this. He said, Well you take so and so and so, and assist them. I’ll pay you for doing it. That’s very good. That’s the right reaction, as compared with the Pilkington Tiles man who was, by the way, one of several that we had that same damn silly reaction from. And then we 120 assessments in Trebor alone. The whole of their staff. And we reorganised the staff on the basis of that. And Warren has been doing it ever since. And that was in … well, it was around about 1950, we did that with Trebor. And Warren has gone on to other clients where he has been as successful as we were there. I don’t know the clients, I refuse to know the names of Warren’s clients. This is professional modesty. But he’s made a big success of it, both here and in America. I went out to America ten years ago, I’ve got a son there, and he introduced me to some people, to a client of his. I tried to sell the LLIR to them, the assessment not LLIR, to them and they said ‘Yes, fine, splendid’ but like a lot of American things it died an early death. You know they get enthusiastic about things and then it falls off rapidly. Warren then went to America and found the same thing, but he persisted with it, which I couldn’t do at the time. And he’s got quite a practice in America and goes quite frequently. And that has extended into South Africa, I don’t know about the continent. He’s never told me about the continent. But he assuredly will be delighted to give you all these details which I can’t. Now, that’s about the end of my story. 

The Writing of Effort

JH: What led to writing the book [Effort]? What led to you putting it down? How did that evolve in the sense of … did somebody suggest the book to you? 

FL: I’ll tell you how it evolved. I wrote a book in 1947 on quite another subject. It’s called Marginal Costing, which I was a pioneer in this country. And Macdonald and Evans, the MacDonald end of that, were very pleasant people. And I said to them one day, now if you persuade Laban to write a book on what he’s doing, so hence Effort, to cut it short on the trimmings. 

JH: And how did you work on it together? Had he got notes on it already? 

FL: Oh yes, he was full of notes. Laban used to write an immense amount of stuff. He’d write everything down, which was very useful indeed. And then I said, Well collect something together and we’ll write a book about it. When you’ve studied it, tell me what you want to write about and what the title will be and so on. So then we discussed all the terms and a friend who had spent a lot of time of it, especially on the terminology. 

JH: Who was that? 

FL: He’s called Burman. He is mentioned in the preface. A great pal of mine. He’s now eighty and has always been a friend of mine for more than sixty years. We were at university together. It is delightful to think of it. And so old Burman came in and picking out, What do you call that? Do you call it a ‘slap’ or a ‘flick’ or a ‘bang’ or a ‘punch’, or what? And sorting all those terms out was quite an ordeal for Laban because he didn’t know the … he could look up the dictionary, he was a tremendous dictionary reader. He spent an amazing time on the dictionary to try and get the right phrase, the right word to begin with, the right phrase afterwards. Old Burman devoted himself to this for a couple of years. Still, we produced the book. 

JH: And then did you take Laban’s notes and re-work them? Did you discuss it together and agree on a phrase? 

FL: Laban wrote down what he wanted and I edited it with Burman. Burman for phraseology and me for an English point of view. So we produced the book which I have just revised. I don’t know if you know that. A Second Edition is now in the press [Published 1974]. The galley proofs come on the 26th June. It’s got to that stage. 

JH: Have you had to make much revision?

FL: No, no I wouldn’t do that because this is a primary textbook in my view and if you enlarge on that … there’s no bringing it up to date. It is true 

JH: It is fundamental, you see. 

FL: All I’ve done is to alter the incidents of it a little bit. And alter some of the words. Laban, of course, like all these foreigners, are terrific. I had a Dutchman in tow who Laban knew quite well, and man called Eymans. And he would come to this country and give a lecture on a technical subject without one fault in it. And much better than any of us could do. Laban was a perfectionist. And he’d go to any length to get the right word, to get the right phrase, and so on. He had a tremendous capacity for doing that. 

JH: A man in his youth with tremendous sense of humour, constant …

FL: Let me tell you a story about him that he told me. This is not for publication! He said, I was travelling from let us say from Vienna to Bratislava and I got in the train at Vienna and there was a very pleasant young woman, and I thought to myself, Well I will go all the way to Bratislava with her in this carriage without reserving it. Do you know what he did? At every station, he put his face against the window and contorted it. He showed me how he contorted it, you know, Laban could move every single muscle in his body at his command. And you can imagine all the muscle round here, or whatever they are, he could put his face … quite unrecognisable, and quite repulsive. He went to the window in the station. This is his story. 

JH: He was also, I think, quite, in his earlier days, liked shocking people. He liked to do the naughty thing. Did he have any humour about the present time? Did he, for instance, find the funny side of movement observation in a factory? 

FL: Oh, he was appreciated for his humour all the time. 

JH: Do you remember anything that happened in a factory or … his observations?

FL: I don’t know. [Jump in tape] I had a client whom I liked very much because he was adaptable and fitted in with everybody. I did quite a lot of work for him. Then I brought Laban and he saw this fellow in action. I took him also to the ship canal [Manchester Ship Canal] and he watched the people there and took him to a packing warehouse in Manchester and there he said, ‘Well look, don’t touch these people, they know exactly what to do and their tempo is exactly right’. [inaudible] to mind today, thirty years later, isn’t it? Beautiful work. And of course, some of the dock workers were like that, others were not. But every one of them in the packing warehouse – huge presses, you see? You’ve got to use those to pack…

JH: Did he explain why this was so? Was it that they had more sense of rhythm in their body?

FL: yes, they had a 

JH: How did they get it, where did they get it from?

FL: I never went into the source of this with him, but they were all fairly old chaps. They’d been at it all their lives and that had settled down to the right rhythm which is quite uncommon, because people don’t naturally do that. That reminds me, we went to Glaxo to study the work with Warren Lamb and others and they were filling phials will penicillin. They had to put these little pills in, screw it up and put it down. And there was one girl who could do it three times as fast as anybody else, and with perfect movement almost. She was so elegant or graceful or whatever you call it, she was a joy to watch. And we discovered, at least Warren discovered, that she went into a sort of trance to do this. And as for calling it repetitive work, that it is boring to people, that’s nonsense of course, fundamentally. There’s no such thing. If you pick the right people who are repetitive people and can do a thing a hundred times a minute if you like, they will keep on doing that and enjoy it. 

JH: What is happening to their minds during that process? 

FK: Well this is a puzzle to me. Warren said this girl went into a trance and I suspect the others dream while they’re doing it. Once they’ve got the rhythm of it. And they quite enjoy it, you see. They’ve not nothing else to do, they don’t want to do [end of tape]

Sigurd Leeder (Tapes 52)

Biography 

​

(1902 – 1981)

​

He studied dance in Ascona with Sarah Norden, a pupil of Rudolf Laban and Mary Wigman. He met Rudolf Laban in 1923 and Kurt Jooss in in 1924. A close collaboration between Leeder and Jooss followed, lasting twenty-three years. In 1928 he participated in the second Dancers Congress in Essen, with Kurt Jooss, Dussia Bereska, Fritz Klingenbeck and Rudolf Laban, where kinetography - subsequently known as Labanotation - was introduced by Laban himself. In 1933 he met Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst, who invited him, Jooss and their dancers to England in early 1934, following Hitler’s rise to power. This was the foundation of the Jooss-Leeder School of Dance at Dartington Hall in Devon. His approach to teaching was based on Laban’s concepts of eukinetics and choreutics. 

​

Summary of the Interview

​

Leeder made costumes for Laban [1924]. Laban’s solo recitals with Loeszer. A detailed account of Laban at work on a piece and on Loeszer as a dancer. On the male dancer. The Status of Dance in Germany. Laban’s and Wigman’s Teaching, the development of the Joss-Leeder approach. Laban’s Visit to see a performance by Leeder’s students. Eukinetics as practised by Laban, and Jooss and Leeder. Leeder’s attachment to and development of Laban’s ideas in an artistic context. Laban Principles, the basic ideas. Ascona and Monté Verità. Events Leading up to the 1936 Berlin Olympics débacle. His detainment in Schloss Banz. Dartington Hall. Laban Notation. Laban on Leeder’s Performances. Laban the story teller, and teller of tall tales. Laban’s reading and writing, his problems with writing.  Laban in Berlin. Laban’s aesthetic of simple movement. The Bacchanal in Tannhäuser. The Development of Modern Dance in the context of Opera.

​

Tape 52

​

A Description of Laban’s Solo Recitals with Gertud Loeszer 

​

SL: It may have been that actually the costume I think came in the first recital, because I can’t imagine that they were hanging about. But anyhow, one of these recitals, I think it must have been the first one, that he [Laban] just came and he had no costume and then, ‘Yes Leeder must make a costume for me, he has to design something for me.’ And I knew that I was faced with the problem of the tummy that I now personally know. And then I designed the costume, made the costume, or cut it, and had it sewn in the theatre, and he danced. There are actually photos of him in that costume which has a slight memory of a uniform. [inaudible] It was in nice colours and I know I’ve mentioned the cloth, but that was the costume at that time. 

the feeling when I saw this, Oh it’s wonderful, it’s nice how he built that up, it looks like a wood somehow, but it ain’t, it’s all other things. But then … and coloured lights, he had also, that helped of course. It seemed to me that he hadn’t got special entrances where Loeszer should come out. She just came out. And he would disappear behind that curtain or that curtain. I had the feeling that that was not choreographed. There was a lot, to my feeling, a lot of ‘take the chance’, see what the stage is like and let’s go on. And they went on and nobody could say it was wrong, you see? That was the one thing. Only they knew, and perhaps they didn’t know, so there was nothing wrong! I think this was very typical for his work. Because, again, it was inspiring to the audience, at least to those who had a little bit of idea. And he toured with this, so I think my costume must have been for the first recital. We also had several after. Several sort of matinees, from 11 to before 1 and had it on Sundays. 

JH: Did he do a lot of performing then? At this point? 

SL: No, not much. He had never danced before as far as I know, never in his ballets, you see. And then he started certainly because he hadn’t got a company and probably had no artistic outlet and had felt the need for it and then his name was a draw and I think this was so and especially Loeszer was a student, he had her sent away three times because she was so fat and she was so ungainly and impossible, but then she was so taken by the idea of becoming a dancer she always said, Well, I’m back again. And the third time she said, ‘Now you can say what you want, I’m not going!’ And she didn’t go and she became slimmer and slimmer and she worked very hard and also that means getting her legs up and so later she was the most perfect performer of all this kind of pure choreographic stuff and with a very precise Jewish mind she had a fantastic way of put herself completely into the structure of the icosahedron and her body was doing everything. Though she was apparently ungifted, you see. But she was on the way, not. I have many, many students who are ungainly when they are young and later they… you can’t see because they’re just bones. That happens. But she was a wonderful, wonderful person and I think most probably wonderful to work with for him. Because there he had an instrument that could… on which he could play all these choreographic things, because most of them had not the technique because he did not really teach them the technique. That was not his real interest, he would give them ideas and say, ‘Work on them’. And they would work. And perhaps he would not come to a class. He wouldn’t be there. But they had to work and that is jolly good, I think, because the people that came out were people, and so many that pamper they are nothing at the end. 

On Male Dancers

JH: There are two dancers here, were they equal in dancing importance? Or was the male dancer, had he a role separate, different from the female? 

SL: The thing is, he said to me once, ‘You know I like the male dancer better because I think the body of a male dancer is more suited for dance than the body of a woman. A man is trimmer in movement and there is not so much interest in the person, in the charm, in the… so it’s not a … not in sex.’ And he liked that much better. Another thing, he was never afraid. He drew his inspiration… I was asked by a Turk here about modern dance and the beginning of modern dancer and whether there was an influence of the East. Of course there was of the East, yes. You know, like Indian dance. There was all that mysterious thing, Rabindrath Tagore [1861 – 1941, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913] was roaming round Europe and so on. We were all taken by it somehow. That was there. But he also had a girl, a Hamburg girl by the way, doing a belly dance on the stage. And everybody very quietly saw the belly revolve. This of course was something in a way, it was sexy, it was daring. He let the woman be a woman. That was not [inaudible]. But the real thing was that he definitely was I think the only one at that time who created men, male dancers because male dance didn’t exist, you know. 

JH: But they were more than just supporters, females, they were really dancing

SL: They were not supporters, never. I cannot imagine there was lifting. No, they were all dancing on their own and real dancers. They had great vitality. And I personally was very taken by Jooss as a dancer at that time and then they had the dancers of great beauty and vitality and virility like [Jens] Keith and [Edgar] Frank. They were good dancers, excellent. [Werner] Stammer. But Stammer was a little boy at that time. He was a great jumper, so it was nice. But then I think that really brought the male dancer onto the feet. Before it wasn’t. 

The Status of Dance in Germany

Because it was a decorative thing and actually ballet as such didn’t exist in Germany. It was lower. When we came to Munster the ballet was two little fat girls, the daughters of the prompter, you know, and these two little fat girls with curls and short hair, but all curls, blond curls, round double chins, they were holding hands and were doing the ballet. They came on and that was it. And besides being in the ballet, they were of course singers in the chorus. And in Germany, I don’t know how it is today, the actual equity contract is that there is the Chor Singer und Ballet Verbanden, The Choir singer and Ballet Association and the dancer comes under the choir singer. That was the same contract. We felt that very much beneath ourselves. We had to do lots to get a better status in the theatre. 

Laban’s and Wigman’s Teaching 

That was the one thing I think was because the people of Laban group, Laban’s group and Laban’s education, Laban’s thought, they were actually, I think, more suited to the theatre than the students of Wigman. Wigman was trained by him and she taught actually only what she learned and she did not really do much more, but she firmly established it and therefore many people thought she had a better … thought her school was better because they could do what they had to do. But they were all little Wigmans, they were absolute copies. Absolute. But Laban had a wider range in ideas, less perfect obviously, but then, when it came to theatre one had to adapt oneself to the requirements of the theatre wherever one had to be able to dance and men as well. With the training of Wigman it was hardly possible to think of that and they would have felt it was beneath themselves.  And so we really started then and that’s where the blend to use the Jooss-Leeder technique, we really started then to see the also for the traditional dancing, not that we did the point work, but we sort of incorporated and saw it in our approach of eukinetics which was then a different eukinetics than Laban had. Much later when I had my studio in Essen. When he came to Dartington Hall, you know all that there? He did then only do choreutic things. All the crystals he built and was completely absorbed by that. But in the meantime he had then already started with Lisa there in Manchester, first and so on, and Bodmer [Sylvia] danced in this Geblendeten. She could be another source for you, Sylvia. She danced with Jooss actually. 

Laban’s Visit to See a performance by Leeder’s students (another telling story)

Then he came to my studio once to see a studio performance. 

JH: Where was this, where was your studio? 

SL: That was in Regent’s Square in London. Lisa and he came and then the stage was taken down after two hours and the people were streaming out and the streamers came down, you know, very quickly and so he just looked and said: ‘Ah, you know, this is where I belong’. But that came so from here that I had the feeling, ‘Yes that’s true.’ And I suddenly saw what he meant. Because you see all the time I had the feeling his being there among the entire girl group there, the artist could not come to anything. It was only education and trimmed education for the ordinary educational usage as a greater… I mean by sheer paperwork, trimmed. We have to conform so much that the real free Laban could not develop in that atmosphere. 

JH: You mean in the theatre, that’s where he belonged? 

Eukinetics as practised by Laban, and Jooss and Leeder 

SL: There where just art was. And afterwards he wrote a most wonderful letter to me with great appreciation of how he felt the work was and he sent me presents. I felt a bit embarrassed, but I really felt he would have, even his eukinetics he would have developed his Effort, he would have developed differently had it been for artistic purposes because Jooss and I, Jooss wrote once a letter  to me, rather stern, on the whole problem of the eukinetics and how angry he was about the use. It’s all beautiful this, not call it eukinetics and effort you see, beautiful on paper, beautiful to see in a class, but when it comes to the art, to the pure expression of that, useless. Hindrance. And that I felt too, but I didn’t feel so strongly about it because I let them do. I must do it my way and let them do the other way. Of course I see, perhaps if I had, would be forced to use it in my school, I would most probably say, ‘No.’ You see because it would hinder me. Because the ideas are different. I think a little bit that Laban because of not having an artistic outlet, that he was in way, through circumstances directed to developing that way. 

JH: But in a way it was better that he developed that and left you to work in the other way. 

SL: I would have loved to have more of him, of course. But I mean on the other hand it was probably good. I would never have minded having more contact, you see. In the end we had more contact and he asked me to call him Rudi, and I couldn’t. This was not my … I mean after … 

JH: He changed because now you were an equal with him? 

SL: No, well of course I had developed but at that time he saw that I had achieved. I have it in the letter. I haven’t got it here of course. I don’t carry my memories about. He saw that I had on my own developed and had represented in reality his ideas and I have always felt that I was at that time, perhaps the most complete Laban school from the artistic point of view. And I maintain that there aren’t many. I mean the Laban school which had developed what was the core at that time in Hamburg where I had so little contact, but I was by blood of the same family. So he felt that this was it, and I think … of course at that time I would have been far too young but I would have made [inaudible], had it been possible, you see. I couldn’t have influenced anything at that time. Later you felt that I had build it up all by myself. Because Jooss with all he had done, his school was very much forced to do classical ballet because the students had to do classical ballet exam in Germany and to them, they smell it very quickly that the two [inaudible] were more worth than the whole scales and all the rest of it, to get the exam, the permission to go to the theatre. So the modern side of Folkwangschule is still a very, very secondary part. It is not a school like a Laban school. And I don’t know of any school that could compete, not that I want to blow my trumpet because I just do my work quietly in a Swiss village, you see. But there is nothing that I know of that is completely devoted with the same ideas, and I am not devoted to the Laban ideas, but I know Laban ideas and mine as well, and that has blended, it has just made…

JH: But isn’t that because Laban’s ideas were pretty basic anyway? 

SL: That’s it, that’s it. 

JH: So they’re not really that which were particular to Laban. They weren’t Laban’s speciality. 

Laban Principles, the basic ideas

SL: No, but I mean he has seen the thing. So many have not seen it. I mean this… He had seen the right things. And I don’t know. Although … I say, perhaps I’m wrong, but I say he has never really trained them to be good technicians, they have been good by themselves. But anyhow, I think that he had opened their eyes to the fact that there are the different qualities in movement. He had, like all modern dance, went back to research, back to the very core of movement, and started to investigate. And this investigation he had really done and so we were just making use of what he already had opened. The book was there, all we had to do was go on, to write more about it, read more about it. It is tremendous what he had done. Of course the same when Duncan started to dance, it was not only one Duncan but there were many little Duncans, several people have put their shoes off. So that is quite obvious, it is a wave always. The same thing. I, a little boy at the arts school, of course there was a whiff of art around me already, I couldn’t help but doing which I saw later Laban had done. I had used the gong, already, you know, and all this, and drum. I couldn’t help it, it was in the air. And then later I thought, I was happy to see that I have had something done right, let’s say. 

JH: Was Laban drawing the influence from the general feeling abroad or was he, did he, meet people…

Ascona and Monté Verità

SL: Well, you see I don’t know enough of the very early history of Laban. Very little. I only know that he was at Ascona. Ascona was a place where one had to be slightly crazy to live there and one had to have no money to live there, more or less, because the people were very kind. The shopkeepers would give them bread and didn’t mind that they didn’t pay. They were very, very nice to people. And the strangers that lived there, partly they were nudists, partly they were theosophists, there were anthroposophists – whatever you wanted, whatever there was, you know. Long hair already then. Or short hair. Whatever you could think of. Everything what is was there. In waves. And then there was Monté Verità which later the bank of the Kaiser, he bought it, he bought the around about and I met him in a hair shirt, with short trousers, pink head and pink body and a lady-like cut. And they ran about. He looked also a little like a naturalist. And the whole atmosphere there I think when they were there it was during the War [First World War] it must have been fantastic. First of all everybody frightened, everybody huddled together, because of what will come, then an ideal spot, beautiful but at the same time it was the time when the Dadaists were about in Zurich. Switzerland always during wartime gains from getting the intelligentsia of the other countries taking the refuge there. The theatre was excellent in Zurich of course, the same like later. I read a book about the devils [??] and the Laban girls were especially mentioned in this book as having the connection with this group, because the girls have easier connection with the artists than Laban himself. But he also was mentioned in the book as being there, but I don’t know how often he was in Zurich because on the whole one cannot so easily work in one place in Switzerland and in the other. You have the permit to be in canton then you are there. I can do whatever I want at the moment, but it’s not so easy. You have be a time there, also. You have to get the permission, if you get the permission at all to work there. Students can always work. That’s very funny. In England not. But that’s nice, that’s a very good feeling you have not to keep quiet. That is actually, more or less, what I have to say. You have to fire questions. 

JH: You mentioned also his interest in Wagner and Wagner’s music. Was this very evident all the way through? 

SL: I only know then at that particular time how interested he was. I stayed also with Jooss in [inaudible].  Once he came to Essen, it was his fiftieth birthday [1929] and he was in Essen and we gave a performance for him of Prosser Bird, the ballet. I was king Prosser and I remember Laban, and we talked about it the other day and I said I had a pupil for the song there. I was supposed to be dark and having a beard and the [inaudible] was too big, I have a big head as you might notice. And so they said, We’ll paint your hair black. And I had to wash it each time. Not so good for the hair, but good for the appearance. And people had met at this performance and later said, ‘Oh, you have dyed your hair.’ I felt embarrassed. Then it turned out that it was at Laban’s Fiftieth Birthday. I couldn’t fancy first. How could it be? I have dyed my hair, never! They met me with the makeup and black hair, or perhaps without make-up because my hair could only be washed at home. It must have suited me, I think. 

JH: Do you know of any other influences, of other people? 

SL: No. I only know of people who were good friends and have helped him very much. Dr Lieschke, you have heard that name? They have both been very helpful to him. They are devoted.

[break in tape]

Events Leading up to the 1936 Berlin Olympics Débacle

SL: Ah, ja! Laban, I can now say the story from Laban’s angle. When he came, he arrived, he said that he had, first of all, he had done… been made somehow Minister for Dance or something like this and then he had arranged via dance notation that in different parts of Germany, where there were Laban schools, before it was to be in Essen at the Central Laban School and every teacher, every student had to come for half a year to me to make the final Laban exam. This is how life goes. [Laughs] Anyhow, they came and Laban came also, you see? And then it turned out that we sometimes had different ideas, that he had no clue what I was teaching. [Laughs] Though I taught only what he had said. It was not anything else. I did not make up my own story, then. And then [inaudible] the Berlin Olympiade [1936] and he had a big sort of group, all the people, many people came by train and had all their various teachers, amateur people, and had their movements read. Probably quite simple. Kurt wasn’t all that wonderful at that time, I must say, but perhaps enough to communicate that. Simple movements for big groups are better. And then he said that the Nazis didn’t like that he had the power to organise by letter this, all this script, that it was for them a thorn in the eye. He didn’t like it. The fact is that Goebbels came in the evening to see a rehearsal and just stamped off and blew the whole thing off. And Laban was out of his job. They put him somewhere to an old castle [Schloss Banz] you know, there he was and all his there could be [sic], and all his letters were… he was free to speak but he had to be there. I don’t know how they fixed him there. But his letters were all censored and then he got away out of Germany by getting permission to go to Paris for the Conference of Beauty. When we heard it, I think he had written to Jooss, or we heard it somehow, then by Jooss and Elmhirst he was invited to come to Dartington Hall. 

Dartington Hall

I remember before that, Christopher Martin was there. He was the arts administrator. He said, ‘But listen Sigurd, if you don’t want him to come, if you feel that he is any way in your way, that you can’t unfold and do your work properly, we won’t have it. You need just say.’ I said, ‘No I’d like him to be, and anyhow, that is more important.’ The way that he said was nice, I thought it was very nice. But anyhow I said by no means. And Laban came and he lived in Jooss’ house. He always had a bit of trouble with his stomach with the food and something special, you know, and he had a nice little garden house in the lawn, lovely, and there he had all his models, where he had his studio where he could work, you know. Not a studio to move much, but to make models. And that was what he really did and then

JH: Did he come and see much of your dance work? 

SL: No he didn’t. I think you see, I think the same has happened most probably that Mister Martin had told him, ‘You can be here, but… [Laughs] …don’t touch him.’ I think, because I thought it was a little bit so, that we didn’t harm each other. We were friendly and I liked to talk with him and so, but I mean there was nothing, nothing… Perhaps he was a bit too careful. I had the feeling that it must have been the same. I would have liked not that. But he could have perhaps got it out being direct. Because you can feel which way the wind blows. I know that I did performances and he liked them. And then I tried to do the same thing. I danced myself in one of the ballets and then I said I wanted to do it again with the students but I don’t want to dance myself but I want the students to do this. I remember he had said to Jooss, ‘But it’s quite impossible because the only person who held it together to make it really a performance was his performance and then everything fell into slot.’ But you couldn’t make it with a student, he thought. So he thought highly in a way, because otherwise he wouldn’t do that. But actually the performance didn’t come off because the student was too daft who I had tried to put onto its feet. Well, that was this and then…

Laban Notation

On the whole, now we had, now and then, talks about notation because I was always innovating new things. I felt there was more need to put this down, that down. And just thought I would put them down, and I showed them and Laban always said, ‘Yes.’ Unfortunately he said to everybody else, also ‘Yes.’ He was not guarding his script. In the way like he was, inspiring, he just threw it out, ‘Now do what you can with it.’ I would have liked rather somebody to say, No you have respect. You do, and I would have done and my trouble would have been far less because I spent lots of time on it, on and on and on, I had every so often Hutchinson in my house. She wasn’t at the school, it was just to do work with her. Later in London she came also for a year every Tuesday night. Every Tuesday night she was just there. But I mean the time I spent on the script was incredible. And then at the time he also said, he put it to me, he wanted me really to take over the whole script business, you know, to be the central station, for me to be the last say, yes or no, and take all the correspondence. I knew I couldn’t do it. I have a little bit of an idea of myself. I couldn’t do it. 

JH: Also you had your other work. 

SL: I had my other work and I had my work as a teacher and I had to do the sort of students’ performances. I had my artistic sort of outlet there. And also it would have cost a lot of money. Perhaps Dartington would have done something if they’d seen the amount of money I had spent. In reality I would have had to have had a secretary, you see. And the time for it, I haven’t. The school would have suffered and I thought, ‘That I can’t.’ Besides, even if I would have had the time. I am not the man for it, I don’t like to put the thumb down and write letters about things like that. Of love, yes, but not of that… That is quite a different matter. You can have more subtlety. The working of it, yes, all that, but not the 

JH: Legislation

SL: Yes, it’s not my thing. 

Laban on Leeder’s Performances

JH: When he came to watch performances did he offer critical comments or was he very guarded? 

SL: No, he had nothing to say in a bad way. Not. The only thing he once… the first time, he once said something that I should make pee pee on the stage. [Laughs] This was a dance which was a dance designed by Jooss that … and I know that the German actor Lingen, today he is still a famous actor, but a comic, but he was at the theatre and he laughed at me and said, You know every time you dance, it’s the only dance that interests me, you see. Sorry … it was the dance of love of two people who meet, everything happens and they part and that was the only thing that happened. There was no other need of communication. And there were masks and somehow there was a moment which was intended to be a man who came out of the loo and had a little movement. And he thought that wasn’t necessary. But I did it again and it was a big success in London, later and I did it with gong and drum and of course it was quite different compared to … but this was the only thing I remember. But he liked the dance at that time. This is the only thing he told me. It wasn’t necessary. Today it wouldn’t have been enough, really. It’s a funny thing that sometimes things start very, very early and later they are a success. 

JH: [Talking about Laban.] By this time there was less of the Prussian officer and more of the [inaudible]. 

Laban the story teller, and teller of tall tales

SL: That was less and less. And when he was already in Essen, you know he stayed often with us and he talked and talked and talked, sometimes he talked very long and the stories were very funny and we laughed. But sometimes it got later and later, and the stories became more and more improbable, you know. But without alcohol, you know? Just like this because he was imaginative. You know there are some good story tellers and it’s not important whether they are true. And that was, that he could do that. He could go quite often telling impossible stories. 

JH: But telling them as if they were true? 

SL: Ja! Definitely. You could [inaudible] that they weren’t true. Definitely. I think that they weren’t true but the grain was alright but only with the trimmings came out of different times. You couldn’t talk about my television in 1860. It wouldn’t go. 

Laban’s Reading and Writing

JH: What about his reading? Were you ever aware of his breadth of reading? 

SL: No, but I think he must have read a lot, especially in the time before Hamburg. Because I think The World of the Dancer, I think that is just, what you call it, Liederflaute. It sort of comes down and leaves the imprint of what has been. What he had is somehow condensed and comes down in the memory of things he had read. I don’t think it’s awfully good. 

JH: It is the work of a young person [It was published when Laban was 41]

SL: I don’t think he was ever a writer. 

JH: I certainly know he found it difficult when he was in this country writing. 

SL: In German was

[break in tape]

I had the feeling he had just jotted down all sorts of ideas and then he just put them together and gave them the nice name of Reigen [rounds] and just put them down. Well you can say that he as a dancer has thoughts, and had thought about it, but it never gives you any feel of anything. I have often the feeling that the pictures which are in there, quite a number of them are very personal, for our time, you needn’t [inaudible] I felt they were a little chichi, the same which I felt in hand things in Hamburg? I think it is the same thing. But it may be Hungarian, it may that it was Frau Bereska who was rather chichi. That that was this which came in there. 

JH: also, possibly was there anything of this in the times? Was the period a bit chichi? It was the 1920s.

Laban in Berlin

SL: It may be. If the time was so, then what they did was more so. They were ahead of their time. That is what I personally found not good and not correct. But his real work started in a different way. But perhaps the success and the [inaudible] at the theatre which was superficial. Perhaps he was not long enough in the theatre, not in the real theatre. In Berlin it was not a success when he was in the theatre. He was in theatre. And there…

JH: What was the matter with it? Why wasn’t he success…

SL: He had one little girl from my school, she was a rather misshapen ballet girl, came from Dusseldorf and she was a nobody but she was very servile, she was ready to kiss his feet, anybody’s feet as long as they paid. So he took her there. She was nobody, a complete nobody and he said, she knew a bit of script, she learned at school at that time, but he used her as a model. He had to have a stool and she was a model and before the rehearsals he tried out on her certain things. Do this, do this, and most probably inquired about, ‘What do you call that in ballet. Or do this, do this, and what it looks like?’ And because she had this ballet background, I think that was important because the people at the StatsOper were ballet-keen and generally ballet-trained, or they even had that or their training first with Laban, by that time that they were in the StatsOper they were more classical than classical, you see. And now, that didn’t go together. He demanded far too simple movements from them. They wanted an entrance and an exit and they wanted to have pirouettes and wanted to have this and this and nothing of this happened. Laban was in his idea, far more interested in the gross movement and that this where he did good things because also they were simple, simple movements and his choreographic ideas were of shifting people about the same way he shifted curtains about in that the group movement you can be pretty decorative. And he did that. And then he did also in Bayreuth before the things. I saw a rehearsal there for Tannhäuser. But then he sacked all his principals and they became the five of the StatsOper and I saw them in London dance at that time. When visiting London they danced there in the Coliseum, but it was nothing special. They were just an ordinary not but not very good ballet group, but entertaining. Fired from the StatsOper, but they tried to make their name and their earnings. But just after that I think he said there was no chance keeping them because first of all they have in their old-fashioned contract that the dancer – I can’t say that this is true but he said so – that the dancer, the soloist, has to have a separate entrance, has to be no longer than so and so on the stage, and has to have a separate exit. That was the main thing. So that they have a separate entrance, separate exit. Now in an Opera, you think they mingle with the chorus and the people, there are people and then out of this the ballet starts, the dance starts. But no, they could start there, but now comes a prima ballerina and does something, and then could not go back through the table and go on drinking and singing, no, they had to off with applause. Now, this was not at all good. But I know that they thought it was pretty awful but he asked from them, because there was nothing to do for them. Just for lifting their arms and running in one corner, lifting their arms and running to the other corner. There was no soloist work. And I think this girl Berthi, that was her name, that she was the one person with whom he tried to get somehow nearer to the idea of these classically-minded girls and boys. But it was not a success because he couldn’t really keep it

JH: He was working in a different sort of thought process

SL: His idea was quite different. Good things I saw in Magdeburg and in the Dance Congress by the huge groups. Titan, I think the ballet was called. Big groups and he shifted them about with far too decorated costumes so you didn’t know where one body started and the other one … you know. They blended too much and you couldn’t see very much. But the movements themselves were very simple and of course always of the kind which in the theatre is sometimes very effective. I know we did a Handel Oratorio, the … In Vienna we did it also. There I had to train to do, to do it I had to train athletes. Not the police, athletes. To train them just before [end of side A]

Side B 

The Bacchanal in Tannhäuser

SL: Big concert hall there and big steps and the steps full of slimy clouds. I mean this is something theatrically, terrifically effective. 

JH: Tell me about the rehearsal itself. Was it Tannhäuser you said? 

SL: Yes, that was where a little bit of symbolism in Tannhäuser, with the sticks coming up like this. 

JH: I mean, what was Laban’s contribution to that? 

SL: He did the dance in Tannhäuser. It starts off with a dance scene, you see. And I just saw the rehearsal, but it was effective, it was, again, like generally as things are on the stage, they are just big movement with the whole stage, as the stage is a very big one, it was the only way of doing it. I felt it was very good, actually. Mrs Jooss was dancing one of the beauties, the three girls or so, but I don’t know how that was anyhow. In opera you can’t judge the dance by itself, or the merit of the dancing. It’s always it blends into the whole production. It should not call for too much attention, or it must not look too specialised. 

JH: You said Laban’s best work was in the dance group? 

The Development of Modern Dance in the context of Opera

SL: definitely, definitely. That I would say. Also I would even say that Jooss’ better work is in the group than in the solo. And that has a little bit to do if you think of dance in way of, like in music you had, in opera you had the recitativo, it was spoken and then there was one point when they were terribly sad or terribly happy they would go on singing and they had the air. This air would not lead onto anything else. Then it stops and then comes the action again and they talk. And then later they found that this recitativo could be or should be included in the music and the set it to music, but not as an air, always as sung speech. And that in a way is one side of modern dance, that the modern dance when it’s started did not cultivate the air, like the ballet, but cultivated the recitativo style of dancing where the action was really carried on and was meaningful for what was done and like a spoken word you could understand it, you could see it happening and it would not have, it would not necessitate refrain sort of movement, when something happens again and then you do it again because it’s ever so lovely. Like in a ballet they often – as in Roland Petit or a boy of mine, and this boy said, ‘Yes, what they do … he likes me very much because I must do movements and then he says, “Now do it again, and then he copies my movements,” and then he puts a pirouette in, and then they do my movement again, and then again a pirouette and then it’s ballet.’ This is the idea of, in a way, of [inaudible] formalistically and in a way of composing as an air, rather than as dramatic sort of content. I mean this is the great thing, I think, in Green Table. You couldn’t say that what they do is of special movement interest, I mean the movements are comparatively simple but they convey an idea and that is where the recitativo ballet and Jooss is based on recitativo. Then you had the air really, then I always found that the movement was rather poor and he had more intention, they had to use their histrionic power than their dancing power for these other things, you see? 

JH: That’s interesting. Did you ever discuss with Laban your feeling about technique and the fact that he, that you’re actually towards technique, the fact that he tended to…

SL: No. Well, he had seen what I built, you know. He came. When he came, he himself came to Essen and then he had got lots of money for this exam and then he got more money because we wanted him to get it. He gave a class, a Masterclass, you know and all the students were sort of laying on their tummies for decoration, you see? Well what I had seen was absolute bluff, you know. You can expect any student to do something he had never taught. So he made them just stand still then launch that way, and back again and then, I thought, fantastic. And then time went by and the other side, you know, but higher up and the other down, deep there. And it was all that happened. There was no leading idea, you see. What you had was a powerful command, you know? 

[jump in tape]

LS: There were so many people hungry for him, you know? Because it’s also. I mean you can be a wonderful teacher teach, wonderful, then nobody wants you. 

JH: But presumably he did have something. This thing you’ve talked about. His contribution was that he saw the basic qualities …

SL: Oh yes, I mean, definitely, definitely. And I think it would not, well, many things would not have been there, especially not the whole space conception, which I am always so sad because they really derive more and more out of the notation, you see. I am very sad about it because I don’t like to see Laban’s child crippled, you know? 

JH: Was there a…

[Jump in tape]

SL: Yea, you see I had, I was in Hamburg, I was aged 18, 19, everybody knew me. [Inaudible few words]. I was always were invited to come here to work together. I got all sorts of ideas, so I got my, there was not a school in reality at that time, you see, so one, I worked together with the anthroposophs, you see and then with people who had trained in lower land [??], that was a school, all of them were more or less finishing schools, instead of going to Switzerland. They did movement and making baskets, that was the thing; they sat on the floor, instead of on chairs and made baskets and did weaving. And then there was the time of arty crafty sort of thing, there was the revival of [inaudible], you know? And the Weiner Werkstaten they had materials printed, silk printed, which one could have for dresses now. It was quite extraordinary and expensive, too. It was very nice. And wooden beads and other beads made by hand. 

JH: 1970s? 

SL: Maybe not so wild!  But the thing is these girls they learn in the Lower Land School, they had a sort of body culture on balancing, very much balancing. Nice balancing, difficult balancing, but not very effective. But they had developed a calm for balancing. A little bit Eastern ideas came in. There was a gymnastics school like [Elsa] Gindler, quite Eastern influence but very good in its place. So one had an idea, a conception of movement. Then, on the other hand for women there was [Bess] Mensendieck and American doctor who made a system where the girls have to undress and do everything in the nude and had several movements then at the end made up the Indian dance and then it was finished. And actually, then I came in because our girls in school had a student there who did that with them and they came to the Indian dance and it didn’t go further. And they said, ‘You must do it now!’ [Laughs] And so we developed that then, not the Indian dance, but we were art students mainly and we wanted to move and wanted to get ideas. What else was there? Lower Land had very much movement and their idea was to mainly Bach, Telemann and old music and then to read the score, to hear the different voices and you have to dance the voice. When the voice isn’t there, you don’t do anything. But when it comes in again you do oop! That’s quite in a way, nice to learn to listen to the music, but from the eye point of view, from the dance continuation, it’s quite impossible. But this idea lingered in many dancers for composition because there was no school for composition. No-one could deal with it. 

Jump in tape. 

SL: Others I don’t know. I remember. I was in… I met Stravinsky for instance in Paris when Jooss did the Persephone. Well, then we met there and Kurt. 

[Jump in tape. Quality deteriorates badly.]

JH: What you describe in the ‘20s is very much of today. Only, as you say, perhaps pushed a little bit further, perhaps a little bit more application of it. 

SL: Yes, and perhaps the other arts. You know very often [impossible to hear anything further]