Jean Newlove (Tape 17-18)

 

Biography 

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(1923 – 2017)

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Jean Newlove was Laban’s first assistant in England and worked on movement observation in industry. She then worked with Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop where she met and married writer and actor Ewan MacColl. With Theatre Workshop she led Laban-based movement training and undertook small roles. She taught Laban-based movement throughout her life and published two books on the subject: Laban for Actors and Dancers (1993) and Laban for All (2004).

 

Summary of Tape 17 – Some time in 1974

 

(Conversation about her first job for Laban at Lyons, the bakery company, possibly their large factory in Hammersmith, which she undertook when on leave from being a Land Girl. She recounts getting to work by the underground which was being used as a massive bomb shelter. )

 

JN: It was rather different to Mars Bars. Laban now told them how lucky there were to have me, whereas before those hadn't exactly been his words. I had come down all the way from Pontefract. I think he was rather impressed that I had split my first leave, and that I had been spending every other weekend helping Lisa. [No detail of work in the factory. Laban took her out to the cinema and then for a meal and accompanied her to the railway station.] I was really very touched at this. I remember saying to him at the time, I know it sounds so corny. [...] It was a very sad moment because I didn't know when I'd be seeing him again, and he'd been teaching me a bit of German and [...] I got to speak German with an Austro-Czech accent. I said 'avec tout mon coeur' and tears were running down his face and it was very, very sad at that moment. 

 

JH: What did you talk about on occasions like that, when he took you to the pictures?

 

JN: We talked about everything. 

 

JH: It wasn't just movement? Just icosahedrons? 

 

JN: Oh no. A lot of it was. It was very light-hearted. Not at all the time. We would get into the most terribly complex ... quite a lot of it was beyond me but at the same time I felt I had a sort of ... it was very necessary for me to have these conversations ... some of it was quite metaphysical and all this of thing and I would think that I knew what he was getting at but I couldn't really explain it. Then I would go back and think about it. Then I would perhaps write to him and say, 'What did you mean by this or that?' And he would go on again and he would talk to me and he would explain, 'Well you know, we need people to carry on this sort of work over here', and he says 'You are somebody I've put my hope in and trust in'. I felt it was very important for me to learn as much as I could in this respect. 

 

JH: When you went to see the Orson Welles film [at the cinema] would he talk about the film or the war? 

 

JN: He would talk about the film. It was the Amber ... [The Magnificent Ambersons] He would say whether someone was good in the part and then discuss the movement and what did I think. We would often discuss personalities, perhaps. [She imitates Laban talking about different people identified by movements and twitches.] 

 

JH: Did he ever talk to you about Lisa? I always feel that he had a strange ambivalence towards Lisa. He recognised what she was doing but on the other hand he felt restricted by her. 

 

JN: Oh I think this is true. Absolutely true. What can I say? Lisa trained me. She was a marvellous teacher, she trained me very well. Laban and Lisa are the god parents of Hamish and Lisa is a god parent to Kirsty. Hamish has developed the most marvellous sense of rhythm and dance ... there are pictures of me doing dance and whatever and little Hamish as a little boy is utterly bored and fed up and suddenly he blossomed at fifteen and the fact that he's had this accident ... and Lisa said what a pity Laban isn't alive because he could have been an influence and help him... He's also got Ewan's capacity for singing, he sings and has done his first concert at Lake Como. [More about her family.] I do feel that Laban was restricted in not working with artists and I only realised that when I went to work with artists. We did bring him and we brought Lisa over once to Theatre Workshop with Lynn Condon [?] in Manchester and we had Constant Lambert with us. And he was telling rather risqué jokes. Old Constant and Laban was sitting there saying, 'Who is this man?' We were in such poverty we were sleeping on the set. Then somebody said, you can't have that as a bed anymore we need for the show next week. 

 

JH: Did you find yourself in a different kind of relationship with Lisa from Laban? Or did you feel much more distant to Lisa? 

 

JN: Lisa was very kind because I was always asking questions, always. About everything. I must have been a pain in the neck sometimes. I felt that I had so little time and a lot of ground to make up because I was so old and I had missed all this. I had been marking time in Lincoln because I had been ready for this at twelve. And Lisa was so patient. She would be very tired on the train when we were coming back from somewhere and she had worked hard. But I was, 'Don't go to sleep now, I want to know this or I want to know that!' Poor old Lisa never said, 'For God's sake shut up!' Which was marvellous of her. I think I went beyond the pale a bit because when I moved to Theatre Workshop, not that I was indispensable but ... the thing was that I had met Ewan and we'd fallen in love and that was it. And I wanted to work. I did do the odd job for them but it was obvious that ... and anyway I was gravitating very much towards theatre at the time. 

 

JH: Did you take it into Theatre Workshop?

 

JN: I became part of Theatre Workshop then. Not then.

 

JH: And then did Laban, through you become part of Theatre Workshop? 

 

JN: Joan was very much conscious of Laban before I ever went. She heard about Laban in Germany and all this sort of thing. She was very much aware of him and this is why she wrote to the Studio and could somebody come and take classes in movement? Well, I went and the movement went very and in fact Leeder came to see us and said ‘what beautiful dancers your actors are.’ They moved like doves which was very nice. I did the choreography for two pieces and Laban didn’t like one of them. He quite blunt about it which I thought was a bit remiss on his part. He didn’t realise what talent there was there! But it got better. He could talk quite openly to me. Then of course I was put in parts … I never wanted to be an actor, I wanted to be a dancer. But they were always one person short in Theatre Workshop. I just thought it was hard luck that they were always one person short. It seemed to be rather strange that they were always one person short. It dawn upon me until years later. This was Joan. Not that I had any gift as an actor, except in some parts. More experience of life that I had. Even when Hamish was about five or six I played Bianca with Harry Corbett in The Dutch Courtesan [John Marston, ca 1604]. I was being rather tight, you know, and Joan says, ‘Look at her, you wouldn’t think she was the mother of a seven year old!’ Laban loaned me out and I was doing the choreography and it was very good for me to do the acting, very good indeed. 

 

JH: Did Joan always ask you to do the choreography? 

 

JN: Yes, I trained them every day and we had the Art of Movement Studio when we were in Manchester playing at the Central Library. One day, because I was very keen, I was working like mad as I did every day. We were so dedicated in those days. [laughter]. George Cooper was not at all ambitious, he said he played young men with a paper bag over his face, and one day he was going down Charing Cross Road and he saw me coming and he started doing the Diagonal Scale! It was lovely.  We a little bit of extra money so we sent George and Harry Corbett to the Studio for a week. Harry wrote a postcard saying, ‘Christ, I’m okay but my feet are killing me! I’ve no money for cigarettes.’ I sent him a packet of 20. We were really so hard up. We all went without so that they could have this fabulous training for a week. 

 

JH: Did you usually have an hour every morning? 

 

JN: What was interesting in this, wherever we went… we had a theatre… we were living in a big old house in Glasgow too and we used to have to take movement in the cellar. We were very disciplined as a group. They’d get their meal and then Hamish would say to a little boy in the house, ‘We’ve got cockroaches in our house. We’ve got cockroaches in our kitchen.’ As if it was something to be proud of. I was so particular I used to boil all his things in a bucket in the pantry, I wouldn’t let him touch anything like that. We lived in absolute squalor. [Unintelligible story about the actor John Berry.]

 

JH: So you did the movement training. Did you actually do voice as well? 

 

JN: Ewan did voice. 

 

JH: What was Ewan’s role in the company then?

 

JN: Ewan founded the company originally, Joan joined him. Ewan was a playwright and at that time, principal actor really in most things. He wrote Uranium, he wrote The Travellers. He played Billy in The Travellers which I think is was one of the nicest things we’ve ever done. And he wrote a number of other things. The Travellers was a great success abroad and in fact in Poland they couldn’t afford to pay him his royalties, they said it would break the bank because the rate of exchange was so odd. So we had to go to Poland and have smashing holidays over there. Ewan and Laban used to get together quite a lot. Laban did say to me once, [imitates his accent] ‘If I had been twenty years younger there would be no MacColl.’ It was a male thing. He never looked me in the eye. I giggled. 

 

JH: I have a marvellous cartoon which Laban drew of himself on top of a very phallic pedestal with all these naked women on the ground gazing up at this rather … [laughter drowns out the voices]

 

JN: … a few of his stories [sic] which I shouldn’t have seen, I’ll admit. They fell out of his file and the faces were very recognisable. Thank God mine wasn’t among them. 

 

JH: He often saw women as animals. Did you ever see you cartoon style? 

 

JN: Well if he did, he never let on. It would surprise me if he did. 

 

JH: He probably had too much affectionate regard for you at that stage. 

 

JN: He was very affectionate in a really nice … I think the thing was I was very young. 

 

JH: The other thing is you had the sense of humour which he didn’t get from Lisa or from any of the other people around him. He must have actually cherished that. I believe that’s the big thing he missed in England was any kind of kindred spirit who could see things with a kind of [inaudible]. He had this always. 

 

[The following conversation is almost inaudible and thus unintelligible.]

 

JN: I think he was very happy that I was not, if I may say this, part and parcel of the [inaudible] I had been educated. … Very much on the dignity. 

 

JH: I think he hated that side of it ,,, 

 

JN: I hated it. I hated it very much. Even now, I was put on … I don’t know what it all means. I walk down a corridor I came in and I said, ‘Well what do I do? Do I kick them out?’ I’m too old. If they can’t be bothered I go back to the theatre. They all know it’s me, so they don’t worry. But the girls come to me and say, Oh you can’t, and I say we can because we do this in our movement classes. You can but I can’t. You won’t. I will. [The conversation continues at speed with gales of laughter, JN and JH talking over each other and continues to be unintelligible.]

 

JN: He had to warn me, ‘This our bread and butter, you know.’ 

 

JH: That seems to be the Lisa side of him coming out. 

 

JN: This was the bread and butter. Lisa had really done all this as indeed he had, otherwise Laban would have been without. We can knock it all we like but the fact is without Lisa it wouldn’t have got off the ground. 

 

JH: It’s absolutely true. Laban wouldn’t be here, Laban would have died before he ever got to England. 

 

JN: Nevertheless, having said that, one must say we would have had a whale of a time going down the drain. We would. If Laban and I got together we would have had a real marvellous time and if we’d met up with Theatre Workshop it would have been a riot. 

 

JH: Was Theatre Workshop [inaudible] in that sense? I mean presumably …

 

JN: Fun. I used to go back and regale Laban with all the things. He loved it you see because then he’d say things that he’d done. We were crackpots. Ewan was a deserter, I don’t know if you know this. … me and my background, my brother was no good in the army, but my Father was a Major and all this sort of thing. So he was very respectable: ‘So God at least we’ve got someone who can help the war!’ … Marriage to a middle-class family, this sort of thing, I thought ‘Well I don’t know. Ewan told me … [laughter] … Virgin Mary … [laughter] … and I went back to Laban. So funny. I was very aware that my upbringing was still rather strong. [inaudible sentence]. Then we thought we would write a book on voice which never came up. 

 

JH: Great shame. I’ve always felt there was a big need.

 

JN: Well Ewan was doing a lot on voice and has done a lot in the past and quite honestly it breaks my … we look upon voice …

 

JH: He’s never written about it, has he? 

 

JN: He looks upon voice as an extension of movement. The thing is that the same rules apply. The same Efforts apply, and so on. Although I’m no great actress the thing is that I can a little bit in voice because of this. So we talked about things like this and then … I think Lisa thought we were a bit worried [sic] … she thought she was in loco parentis. [shrieks of laughter and inaudible words]. Oh, poor Lisa. 

 

JH: Not only out of her depth but not even aware what the [inaudible] scene was. 

 

JN: Oh no, oh no, I don’t think so. Ewan and I had a few idyllic weekends when we were all … dry as a cupboard … and there was Ewan going off … I came back and went to see him when he was incarcerated and of course the army couldn’t understand because Christopher Grieve had written and Bob what’s his name? McKay? The polisher, kept ringing up and spending hundreds of pounds on phone calls. He was very wealthy then. Now he’s on Social Security. All these big people kept ringing Ewan up, you see. I borrowed Lisa’s fur coat. It was a white fur coat she had… to go out with to see him. They were awfully nice to him, the army… they sort of locked us in a Nissan Hut together. [shrieks of laughter] I got on well with the rest of them. ‘Come to see the Prof have you?’ They all used to call him ‘the Professor’, you see. ‘Don’t forget the hacksaw.’ [shrieks of laughter]. I thought well… I said to my parents I was thinking of getting married. I went to my brother’s wedding and no-one could understand why Ewan wasn’t around. Then he was put into a hospital in Birmingham, a mental hospital, you know to… partly because he asked to be because he was writing The Other Animals and there was a scene where there was a mental ward. I remember going to see him, they unlocked one ward, then unlocked another. It was most interesting. It all came out in his play. There was one person locked in a cell, terribly intelligent, the warders all crept about, when he wanted to go the loo he would say Open Sesame and the doors would open. There was a person suffering from euphoria. If you would kick him he would smile. Very sad really. Anyway he got out eventually. I got a telegram, ‘Christ is risen’ so I knew he was out! We had a lot of fun. I remember we used to go for great fantasies and I go would back to Laban and regale him with the things we would do and I think he loved it. I was eighteen and I used to work people to death and that’s why I got the name [inaudible]. I worked them very hard, I think I would probably be a little easier today. When I was in the army I took 150 on the street [inaudible story amongst gales of laughter] Well 150 … 

 

JN: We used to do things where there was a fellow … a captain… he’d been badly wounded … he was not really very safe, he was a bit schizoid … he came to visit us. We were doing Operation Olive Branch, do you know it? Lysistrata. Ewan had written some marvellous songs. Ben Elliot, I think his name was. He was there. He was quite a good actor. He’d been invalided out and we were in this big refectory and great trees in the fireplace and Colonel Pennyman who lived there, his wife was very much younger but very keen on the Arts which is why we were there as a company and they were there when I first arrived at the first weekend. We used to get into the roof and do crazy things with the lights hanging on bits of chains. Up and down. You could see the lights going up and down. Then he’d say, ‘My God look, the light’s moved’ and we’d say, ‘No it’s not.’ He was really round the twist because of his war experiences. Eventually he did go over the wall a bit. And was taken away for psychiatric treatment. But we couldn’t do without him because he was playing the deserter in Operation Olive Branch. […] Nobody would believe the weekends up in the North, they wouldn’t. There was poor old Ben playing the part and he had a fetish… well, like an electric bulbs, he wanted to crunch them and crush them, break them like this …And of course he was surrounded by bulbs everywhere. And he’d been brought by this mental place, you see, and there were all these white-coated attendants and the doctors all around the wings and Ben would be playing his part and then he stopped and took out a bulb. And Joan said, ‘Oh my God’ and Tom said, ‘Oh Joan do something.’ Ben played his part very well. He was taken away afterwards. 

Christine who was saving the scene, would go around and was always saving the company. With funds and she did come up with lots of money. Every time she told you her background it was always something different. Either people were so poor, or so wealthy – this sort of thing. But she always had such marvellous clothes and she would go off to Sweden and she would come back. One day she came back on a chartered plane with a lot of footballers and she got free passage if she would become their mascot. Anyway, it was the time when everyone wanted duffel coats. You know you got them at military stores. […] And they would go around the grounds. 

 

It was all very spontaneous. It was improvised. I think it was absolutely marvellous, I just went for it. Because I had been like an only child back then. Here were crackpots, my age. Whereas I was teaching people so much older than myself, here I was mixing with people my own age, but still in my teacher’s capacity in many ways so it was nice for me to unwind. We would walk through the grounds. It was Sunday. [She wails]. All the people would go to church through the Colonel’s private grounds and you’d get Christine at the front leading this [she wails again, then bursts into laughter]… and they’d all walk down the road. Nobody knew what was coming it was pure improvisation. The whole lot. And they’d join and split and then go again and bring their cows … and everything was going on like this and we had a great thing where there was an admiral, who really didn’t exist, who was a stuffed admiral, wearing an admiral’s uniform and a girl, Ruth somebody, was very good at design, started this. And the group that was around, I came at weekends, Ewan was writing a play, Joan went to and from the company, the company was travelling. [inaudible comment about Ormesby Hall]. 

 

And we told them about this admiral, you see, he was there poor chap and he’d sound out from a home and didn’t know where to go and all this sort of thing and he’s lost his parrot. Ian Mackellen, Ewan’s publisher in Glasgow, fell in step with this thing and he had notepaper printed with the home where the Admiral lived and Ruth wrote a letter on this notepaper to London Zoo saying that he was very sorry that he had lost his parrot and he was an old age pensioner now and could he have another parrot, you see? So they say, if he’d like to come down in person, he could get a parrot. We went on like this and it was getting … Ruth Pennyman was in on this but the Colonel became interested in all this fantasy about the parrot. And the company finally came back and I had a friend who I’d been in the army with, who was quite normal and she came to stay. The minute she got there I dressed up as a nurse. And I said, ‘Now don’t be critical, she’s only got one eye, the other was glass’. But I’d forgotten I’d said that and all weekend the poor girl was there, they were all trying to not look at her and find out which one was the glass eye. They were laying bets which I didn’t know about. I’d forgotten to say it was a joke and she didn’t have a glass eye. And for years they thought that Gerry had got a glass eye. And she came and she was dressed as a nurse and she was told how she was to behave and the admiral was in this room and we had somebody under the bed moving you see and these terrible groans. There were bottles lying all over and there was just a light in the corner and [she screams]. ‘If he sees you he’ll be absolutely mad, he’ll go berserk.’ The bed was heaving and then this arm would be flying, And they were really worried. The poor girl, she’d only come for the weekend. And dashing back again. They didn’t know her, so they thought she was a nurse. Then the Colonel said, he’d been for the ambulance, you see and I don’t know how we got an ambulance, but we got an ambulance you see, and the Colonel was saying ‘Bring him out then, here’s the ambulance, here’s the ambulance! Who’s going to carry him out?’ The ambulance drives round to the stable and the Colonel by this time is enjoying himself, he’d never fancied himself as an actor until now, and he goes to put the light on in the stables and all the others are watching from the wings. And it’s not wired up securely and he gets a shock. It was absolutely atrocious for the Colonel which rather sort of spoiled the whole event. He loses his part immediately. If it had been anybody else he would have carried on regardless. Terribly funny. 

 

We used to have people visiting I think, people from the local authorities to see what we were doing. Because we ran courses. And one day it went very well. We had all these marvellous improvisations with people playing Cowboys and Indians in fights pretending that they were real. There were guns blazing and these people weren’t at all comfortable and they used to get so involved that when they were shot … Dennis, Dennis Ford dropped dead and it started to rain and for two hours it poured and he wouldn’t come out of his part. It was really quite fun. Laban knew.  

 

JH: Did you travel around the Manchester area then? 

 

JN: Well I became part and parcel of them because I played Carry Nielson in The Travellers and Lola, was it, who broke the atom. All small parts. The biggest part I played was Carry Nielson, I think. I did the Moliere and things like that. I had no voice at all [inaudible] … when I look back. Eventually I got some sort of a voice and then I began to enjoy it. Johnny Noble I liked being in. That was very nice. 

 

JH: And did Joan direct all these things? Or was it a kind of company thing that emerged …

 

JN: Joan was the producer, yes. 

 

JH: Was he [Ewan MacColl] changing it in the light of what he saw.

 

JN: Well Ewan was writing most of the stuff that we were playing at the time. He wrote Johnny Noble 

 

JH: Was he giving you a finished script or was he changing …

 

JN: He was a craftsman, absolutely. It was polished and polished and polished [repeats a few more times]. When I think of Brendan Behan who just turned up or even Frank Norman … we wrote the script for him. But Ewan was a craftsman. Every word was …

 

JH: I always think … There was a quiz in Encore which read ‘Name 20 people who wrote The Hostage’. [Laughter]

 

JN: We went to Paris with it and he didn’t half mess it up. Poor old Brendan. Having Kirsty sometime about that period and when she was born… We had all our shows on in the West End: Taste of Honey, Fings Ain’t What They Used to Be, and something else … I’ve forgotten. It could be the Quair Fellow. And I was also going along the line to some absolutely romantic nonsense to see Alan Pollock. I was having a great time going to five theatres and spend time in the theatre all day and I spent a lot of the time in the South of France with Joan. That was funny because I went with Hamish and I suddenly decided to go and she said, ‘Well look, just turn up, I’ll see you at Marseilles.’ I thought ‘I’ll go’. So I got back to Croydon and I went to Cooks [travel agency] on Saturday and said ‘Can you change five pounds?’ Because Joan was going to treat me. ‘Sorry, we have to have three days’ clearance.’ And I thought, ‘Well I’ll go.’ [Story of her and Ewan MacColl’s journey to the South of France to stay with Joan Littlewood.]

 

Long gap [42.57 – 46.52]

 

JN: [Reading from a letter from Laban to her]: ‘Your letter shows me that you are emerged into extremely simply problems (I was telling him the sort of things we got up to). As far as your other life is concerned. And though I regret for you the boredom connected with this, and not only boredom but also a strain of patience and lack of freedom, I think it all has a sense so far as you will see in your later life against what and for what you are fighting. Because I think the profession you are doing will inevitably be a fight, people are only partly ready to see the beauty and the usefulness of movement. And even those who have a glimmering that don’t know exactly what is behind all that. Yourself will also need a good deal of inner and outer fight in order to make yourself ready for understanding and action. An example how little people realise what is needed can be seen in writing as for instance in Maeterlinck of which we send you a copy. He is, or has been, a wonderful person. I was highly enthusiastic for his writings when I was still younger. I have even played once a role in one of his dramas, Pelléas and Mélisande. I played the Pelleas replacing an ill French actor on a fortnight. I had studied the role of Mélisande with a famous French actrice. The play is full of the most exquisite shadow moves and knew all the part of Pélleas thus by heart in all its most intimate details from the [inaudible]. Maeterlinck now saw me and was highly pleased but when I explained to him what I did in movement he has not really understood that this was the cause of the evident success. He believed in the might of thought and ideas and their expression in words and took gestures as an interchangeable addition. In this book Magic of the Stars, you will find many hints about the basic importance of motion in the world, but not a word that this importance could find expression and liberation in dance. Something to understand and explain these magic two words which was of course his business and he succeeded so far leaving hereby an aftertaste of melancholy and a resignation. The resignation concerns especially our never knowing the whole truth with which I don’t agree at all. Man is just bound and built out dancing in order to know more about life and the world or rather to become aware of things which cannot be said by words. If you read the book attentively you will find a few spots where he speaks about space and the ether and again he was not able to see the role dance is playing in the investigation experienced of this wonderful realm of the dancer. There will be, I hope, many more things which might give you stimulation. Maeterlinck was a funny man, he liked movement and especially sports. And in sports, boxing. He imagined that movement is mainly a fighting business and was nothing to do with the more finer sensations and tendencies which he tried to capture into words. It is thus that he looked at science partly in awe because they use words so cleverly to convince the brain and partly with disdain because scientific descriptions give only images of tiny shadows of reality. It is really a tragedy and most of contemporary people suffer under the charm and the disillusionment of thinking and pondering and so do you partly. Beside your experience with ATS girls and captains it might be that your experience with brain-mongering might also trouble you. It is however not so bad for you because you have the prospect before you to find one day a way into space. This is, of course, not the icosahedron which is only a compartment of the train running into space and ether. I see your capacity to get there and should to tell you this at the occasion when I am sending you my good wishes for the darkest days of the year, Christmas, which we must lit [sic] candles in order to believe in light and for the change into the increase of light, New Year, when hope is lit in us for the firing of Spring. You see there are things which people of old times have expressed in dances. Our contemporaries might also go to a dance at the crisis days of darkness and light but I once if their one step will liberate them. In a certain degree, in a certain fashion yes, but what we are calling dance is still another thing, don’t you think so? It is not that we should be proud or conceited with that. On the contrary, we must be very humble if we shall become able to extend our inner security into our own whole being. And then out of us at the service of other people. Services would be a much nicer word if understood in this way. Our proposed services. We have talked several times and so also a few weeks ago with highly important people. Labour Ministry, big noises, generals, etc. about releases and recreations of movement. People in general and you personally in particular I am afraid that I must tell you that I don’t see any hope. The causes why I don’t see any are quite manifold. First, iron regulations are only lifted for priority jobs as presently: building. If one should succeed to get exemption on the basis of moving or rehabilitation, which is not priority but somehow a fashionable problem, that would mean years and years, almost a lifetime sticking to such a job. The second thing is that everybody expects some near solution in the end of the European war. Nobody thinks that steps done now would find consideration in decision earlier than the war is any way ended. These impressions which are not the result of one or two enquiries but of a whole series of continuously repeated trials have not been encouraging, I know that, my dear Jean. But I think that you should be informed about them. You are sometimes asking how we are feeling. Thank you, very well indeed. Lisa is, or has been, a little tired after the hectic term. I helped her as much as I could but my own duties are rather overwhelming in number as well as in intensity. Things go on and we are doing our best to spread our ideals. It is however up to coming generations to do a good deal of that and we are reckoning you to the number of people we will count in this endeavour. Sending you all my love and good wishes, I will end this long Christmas letter with a cheerful [inaudible] hurrah, 

Yours

Old Laban’

 

JH: It’s a marvellous letter, that. Can I borrow some of those, Jean? 

 

JN: Yes, surely, if I can have them back again. There were a lot more, you know, funny things. 

 

JH: Were you there during the time Valerie Preston was there? 

 

JN: Yes, Valerie …

 

JH: How did you get on with Valerie? 

 

JN: Not very well. I felt she was very bumptious. She was sixteen and she was really bloody-minded. She was so rude! 

 

JH: As I expected! But also she saw herself as a daughter. A very different kind of thing from you, as you talked about. I think she had a very successful relation with Laban but again I don’t think saw the kind of humour that was essentially Laban. And I think this is what Laban missed. I think it’s fair to say he was a very sad man in his English days because he didn’t have enough people who could share with him … 

 

JN: Yes, he had not enough people who knew his worth and who … 

 

JH: Lisa, for all the closeness she was to him didn’t share his comedy with him, his sense of humour, his sense of fun. 

 

JN: I think it’s fair to say that no one person could possibly have shared everything that he had to offer. 

 

JH: I mean that was a very important side of him…

 

JN: It was an essential part and… 

 

JH: Stifled in England…

 

JN: It did

 

JH: I felt I couldn’t write an ordinary biography, I have to write something with a thesis and my thesis is developing on ‘Why is this man who is so important, so unknown?’ In the years in England, you can say ‘Laban’ and people have never heard of him. And yet a lot of people are building their dance on the things that has discovered, the analysis he made of movement, and they don’t know where it comes from. 

 

JN: You know The Green Table? I remember him saying that he did most of the choreography for The Green Table. 

 

JH: Jooss is very… I had a very long talk with Jooss and he is very clear to recognise … The trouble with Jooss is, again, like Lisa but on a completely different level, he was too emotionally bound to Laban and couldn’t … Jooss has no sense of humour, so he can’t ever be objective to Laban. 

JN: Have you meet [Sigurd] Leeder? 

 

JH:  Yes 

 

JN: Because he had more of a sense of humour. 

 

JH: But he is very cagey. I think when I saw him unfortunately when I interviewed in some length it was at the same time as Knust was there and there was a kind of heavy, Germanic … 

 

JN: [Laughter drowns out the words]

 

JH: Yes it was. It was a kind of … I always feel that Knust was a very kind of bitten, frightened, rabbit of a German and 

 

JN: Anybody who can write that sort of book on notation…

 

JH: Yes, and spend a whole life on it. And the awful thing about it is that I am coming to the feeling, and this is another of the problems of writing such a book, I’ve got the feeling that Laban missed the boat on notation, that he’s been overtaken. And somebody like Knust who’s spent a life and is still working on it, is running up a very deep and important backwater. But it is a backwater. 

 

JN: He’s like a lot of brilliant men. He’s dependent on people to do the sort of chores, if you like and of course Lisa has done this, and done this very ably in this respect. But then this was her line of education, very much so, I think. 

 

JH: I think Lisa, particularly since his death, has had the anchor out. She stabilises but the thing is unable to move really, it’s got so grounded. 

 

JN: Of course, it’s been built round her you see. It’s the same thing that happened in a very much minor way with East 15 Acting School. People are afraid to let the reins go. Hamish went and he upset Lisa a little bit, didn’t you at first? Because he never turned up for the lessons. He was there for a year and …

 

Hamish: I turned up at first and found it very exciting, very stimulating, for the first few lessons. But then I began to realise that what appeared to me was the kind of … there was almost a style which was 1950s Laban which the instructors were teaching at the Studio and it didn’t … there were no new ideas. Nothing had changed since … There was nothing new. 

 

JH: That’s why I think people have totally misunderstood Laban, because Laban would have hated that. That’s when I kept thinking, ‘Now should I say this?’ Okay, it’s detrimental to Laban but Laban would say, ‘Go on, do it.’ And I’m sure this is the problem with so much that has happened since then. Laban would not like it because it has narrowed Laban.

 

JN: Yes, I think you’re right. You see I went to Lisa’s farewell last year [1973] because I owe Lisa a lot too but I’m very much there with my eyes open and for years I couldn’t really go back to the Studio, I’d had enough. I really had. Because I couldn’t say anything nice about it. 

 

JH: You not the only one. You see Gerry [Stephenson]… You see Lisa asked me to write the Biography. This has been the problem. And I think Lisa, when she first asked me to do it thought I was going to write the ‘Lisa Ullmann’ Biography. And I think the frightening thing for Lisa… I felt, Okay Lisa, you’ve got a lot to tell me and think you’re a great woman, I do. But nevertheless, I can’t write your story Lisa, I must meet other people. Now Lisa was very upset when she found out I was going on to the continent meeting people myself who hadn’t even heard of Lisa Ullmann. People were going to say all sorts of thing against Laban because she wanted to be the glowing Laban story which would be a kind of God-like view of him. I think he’s too big a man for that. 

 

Hamish: I think that’s what’s gone wrong with the Studio. 

 

JH: And Lisa has narrowed it down. She knows about Laban and Laban’s work but she’s not got that creative thinking mind that Laban had nor could Laban ever share his comedy of life or his objectivity towards it with Lisa. I forget who it was that told me [Valerie Preston Dunlop] that they used to ask questions at the Studio and Lisa would say ‘I’ll answer that tomorrow’ when she would go home and ask Laban and then say ‘Now about that thing…’ 

 

JN: I remember we were having a very involved discussion once and he said, ‘That’s the difference between Jean and you. She is subjective and you are objective…’ But it was something more than that, and Lisa was quite annoyed at the time, quite put out, d’you know. I don’t know what it was. I remember her saying … At that time she was quite cross about this comparison. 

 

JH: Were you there at the time Joan Plowright was there? 

 

JN: No, but I was with Mark [inaudible] on this course and this sixteen year old was on the course with her mum and that was Joan Plowright. I was four years older than Gerry who was teaching. Yes, I remember because I looked much younger and I’d done my hair in a special way and I came and sat down and Major Northcote was there, a nice old man, anyway, I walked in ever so dignified down the corridor and then there was piercing shriek from … ‘Oh it’s little Jean!’ And I looked round and it was an old lady. She had a little Greek tunic on and a band round her hair. And it was Miss Harrison. Miss Harrison was the partner of another lady who taught me the piano when I was seven and Miss Harrison taught me Eurythmy. I never knew what it meant but we would go and sit in the box room and she would say Ta Ta Tiki Tiki Ta Ta. That was my lesson. And she had come on this course at her age. Good for her. And I was trying to make this great impression and then this piercing shriek from the other end. 

 

JH: Do you remember Joan Plowright from then? 

 

JN: Oh yes, Joan Plowright and her mum. Well Mark Bowt suggested that she was stiff and needed movement and she went to the Studio for a year and just at that period Gerry [Stephenson] had taken over my job and I had gone to Theatre Workshop. 

 

JH: Did you ever go to the Northern School [of Theatre]? 

 

JN: I taught there. I started off the teaching there. I was the first one to go to the Northern School. 

 

JH: Tell me about those years. Fortunately I did meet Esmé before she died. I suspect that Laban had this incredible capacity for fantasy and saw Esmé Church as being a dear old lady even then who wanted some kind of fantasy. So Laban supplied it. 

 

JN: That area really wasn’t very romantic was it? 

 

JH: She told me about Laban in Germany … completely apocryphal. 

 

JN: He told me tales where Lisa had to get books through - and I don’t know whether this is true or not - Lisa had to get books through across the frontier and all this sort of thing and how the Germans were searching for them both on the train and he was hanging on outside or she was hanging on outside and the train was going over the border and how difficult it was. He also told me that his books had been banned in Germany which was perfectly true and that he hadn’t been given a ration book. They thought he was too dangerous. And he was not allowed to be recognised in any way and all his schools were closed and he was not allowed to take lessons and therefore he couldn’t eat because he had no ration book or anything and he was saved by his pupils. They would arrange for him to meet, to lecture them at a certain place and he would go there and all the pupils would be there and once they got inside they would cheer him and all that sort of thing. They would pay, give a little money, and then they were taken on somewhere else. On one occasion he said that he was taken to a theatre and when he got inside all his pupils were there and they all stood up and cheered and applauded and he said it was a very moving occasion. And he gave his lecture and halfway through he was warned that the Gestapo were at the exit and he was taken under the stage through a back passage and he escaped that way. He got away. When I asked why, he said because he was too influential. [This is actually the story of how Jooss and his company escaped Germany in 1933]. 

 

JH: Goebbels certainly was very anti-Laban movement: too free and too self-expressionist. He is supposed to have said, there’s only one form of movement in Germany and that is the National Socialist movement. Did you hear how he got out of Germany? I don’t know the whole story. Esmé Church told me one story, which I don’t think is in fact true, but she had this view of Laban, Uncle Rudie, she used to call him. The only person who ever did. He was ‘Laban’ to everybody, including his own son. He was always ‘Laban’. He signed his letter to you, ‘Laban’, didn’t he? But to Esmé Church he was Uncle Rudie. 

 

JN: If he knew that it must have been tongue in cheek, because she was quite old then, wasn’t she? To my view she was as old as Laban [her dates were 1893 – 1972, 24 his junior], I don’t know whether she was. She was just an old lady. He used to say to me (I used to so cross on these courses)... People would come on these Modern Dance courses and then say they were going to teach it. They would probably be Ballet dancers or whatever. I used to get so angry. And he would say, ‘They are just like mushrooms – they grow up in the night, you know - don’t worry.’ Which was really perfectly true. 

 

JH: Did you work with him at the Northern School, or instead of him? 

 

JN: I was always sent out, like his sort of deputy. I wasn’t obviously his collaborator, Lisa was the collaborator…

 

JH: Not in stage movement terms. Lisa wouldn’t know the first thing about it. 

 

JN: I was always sent everywhere to do everything. Sometimes I went with Lisa, sometimes I went did education, sometimes I did industry, sometimes I did theatre. You name it, I went! I think they were quite successful really. Laban had the utmost confidence in me, probably because I had confidence in myself. 

 

JH: He never sent Lisa to the Northern School, which is interesting. It was you and then Gerry (Stephenson). Did you travel with him to the Northern School, because Gerry travelled with him on the train. 

 

JN: I travelled with him. I watched him …

 

JH: What kind of things did he talk about? 

 

JN: Sometimes we’d talk about what we were going to do. 

 

JH: Again, Gerry had a completely different relationship to you. To Gerry he always talked movement. I don’t think he ever showed the comic side of himself…

 

JN: Now you see Gerry was quite a different kettle of fish, and she was a sweet person. 

 

JH: Interesting, she was not sweet … 

 

JN: Again, I left because I went to Theatre Workshop. Gerry was put in my place. Gerry, to me, at that time, Gerry was very much a product of an ex-PE college. And to me, Gerry is not an artist, she is not a creative artist. 

 

[Tape seems to be interrupted at 1.11.15]

 

JH:… she’s done some translation for me and it’s pretty … 

 

JN: Ropey? 

 

JH: Solid, I would say. 

 

JN: No, she was a bit intense too. She said I reminded her of a colt, wild and free. 

 

JH: She said, with envy, I imagine. Was Lottie also a bit of a housekeeper? 

 

JN: No, Lottie came up to visit us and do some work with Laban. 

 

JH: The housekeeper’s name was what? 

 

JN: Mimi Eckherts[?]. 

 

JH: And did she leave then? 

 

JN: She left eventually, I think she went on to somewhere else. I don’t know whether she left Jooss to come to us or left us to go for Jooss, I’m not too sure about that. 

 

JH: Mimi did the housekeeping and Lisa burned the toast and did some cooking … 

 

JN: And I was sent out for the ‘yaourt’, the Yoghurt! Laban had to have it for his health. It was very hard to get.  Very hard. It was rationed. And it was always the natural yoghurt, you know. I was sent to the dairy every day and I would plead and look winningly at whoever was serving and made her get five yoghurts. They always sent me because I always did better than Mimi or Lisa or anybody else. Laban lived on this stuff. It was a sad day if I came back with only one or two because I always managed to get more than anybody else. 

 

JH: I have a theory about Laban. He did have bad health most of his life, but I think it was also a bit psychosomatic with him. 

JN: Well it might have been but I wasn’t aware of that at the time, of course. He definitely had duodenal trouble and he was treated by Dr Bodmer. There was one point when he was very seriously ill for weeks and I think I must have a photograph of him standing by a sundial and he looks a very sick man. 

 

JH: He was a sick man when he arrived in England. 

 

JN: When I saw him in Dartington [inaudible] then he seemed to get a lot better. He was always troubled by his illness. He had to be very careful with the food he ate. When Lisa’s mother came over we did certainly eat a lot better for a while. She was very sweet – very like Lisa. We took great pleasure in getting the house ready to give her a welcome. It was very sad, she went back to Germany. 

 

JH: When Laban was very ill and you were with him, did you have to look after him at all? Was he a good patient? 

 

JN: I didn’t do any looking after. The only time I did a little bit was when Lisa went away working, and would leave a meal for him. I would just tidy things up and make it look nice so that when he came back it was… He didn’t have to prepare meals because he couldn’t. He wouldn’t have bothered. I worked with him from time to time when he was in bed because he wasn’t well or hadn’t been well. When he was ill I wouldn’t see him and when he was convalescent and tucked in bed I would be sitting opposite with my papers. I think he wanted to feel that he wasn’t just an old man in bed, that he was Laban. And then when that was over we …

 

JH: Particularly towards the end of his life he wanted to be the eminence grise, a man of the world. I think he saw this as his role. … Part of his whole aristocratic background at the end of the last century.  But he still retained this. Was that your experience? 

 

JN: Yeah. Yes he did. There was a period of time when I was in Theatre Workshop abroad and I didn’t see much of him and then I came back and then because he’d had such high hopes of me … because he’d said so to me and because I’d heard him say to other people, I felt that I must try and be worthy of whatever, you know … and I’d gone to Moscow with my own group and also with some actors and Theatre Workshop went … we were doing a Ballad play and I was acting in that and I had my own dance group in Moscow … and I got a medal for choreography. It was an international prize. He was very pleased with this. And we had lots of photographs. We had a group of about 30 dancers over there. We came back and I went to the Studio and I took them along to perform with and that was very nice because … I wasn’t feeling well but we’d booked this coach and we all went there and all my little lot, they were all amateurs, and the girls came up to me and said, ‘Jean, the families that haven’t happened, the babies that haven’t happened because we’re all in your dance group and we can’t because we’re doing three nights and week and then we’re doing it there’ … it was a very good group and they worked very hard … [end of this part of the interview. Cassette was speeding up and sound quality gets progressively worse]

 

JH: Based in Manchester? 

 

JN: No this was down here. I was working in the [inaudible] school. Anyway, we went over in a big coach to Laban. We were doing the same Efforts in the dances and in the voice, and Ewan coached us in the voice, songs … and showing the link. It was very nice because Laban sort of welcomed me and hugged me and hugged me and was so pleased to see me and so pleased that this group was here and it was such a sort of spontaneous thing which was so nice. It wasn’t just ‘Oh how do you do, here’s Jean’. And he saw these medals … I think he was just pleased that this thing had happened. There was a little bit of recognition of the medal. 

 

JH: [Inaudible]

 

JN: He said to me, ‘I am working very much now, is there such a thing as lyrical dance? I am working on that, I am not sure.’ 

 

JH: … He never actually gave up dance. He always regretted that he didn’t have a dancer’s [inaudible] and that too much of his time was spent on education and particularly PE education. Which was bread and butter for him but was not the thing he wanted. I think that was why he was delighted with your dance

 

JN: He always used to say to me when I was living there, what was it? …. Transcendental ideas and he said ‘But this is our bread and butter. We need to earn this, we need to do this, this is our bread and butter. I felt that this was something he was trying to impress me with, but also trying remember himself.

 

[Interruption in cassette, the resumption being at normal speed.]