Rudolf Laban - Man of Theatre
2013
Dr Valerie Preston-Dunlop, with collaborating artists and dancers, has researched and recreated for today’s audiences four groundbreaking works: The visionary Swinging Temple of 1922, his diverse Suite of Solos and Duos 1924, his critique of Weimar Republic’s decadence Nacht 1927 and his tragic-comic satire Green Clowns 1928. The book follows the making of these works starting with his dynamic revitalisation of dance, freeing dance from music and from ballet, introducing improvisation to find movements never danced before.
Point of Departure
The Dancer's Space
2008
This book for dancers and choreographers is based on Rudolf Laban’s inspired work on the spatial organisation of dance, known as Choreutics and Space Harmony.
The text offers a comprehensive survey of the spatial scales and rings in Space Harmony expressed as diagrams, plus examples of how they might be used to find new movement for creative dance practice.
Dance and the Performative
A Choreological Perspective
2002
An articulation of the dynamic with which a practitioner-based research has grown, is growing, and is applied, integrating the concepts in its title: the figure-of-eight interaction of spectator and performer, discussed through a dance specific or choreological perspective. Included are essays by Frank Werner, Paula Salosaari,
Ana Sanchez-Colberg, and Sarah Rubidge.
Looking at Dances
A Choreological Perspective on Choreography
1998, 2008
Written for practical people in dance, the text is organised in 32 short chapters each addressing a question on the way in which choreographers might or might not engage with their audiences in dance theatre works.
The topics include an introduction to communication theory and the way in which the interlocking network between performers, movement material, sound, and performance can carry meaning. The book is written from choreographers' and performers' perspectives, with 46 dance works cited from a wide range of genres. The text is unusually presented - as closely as possible to how we speak to each other in the studio - with key words in bold type for ease of reference.
Rudolf Laban, An Extraordinary Life
1998
A visionary, a mystic, a lover, a leader, dancer, an artist, a teacher, a theorist. Rudolf Laban (1879-1958) was all these things and more. This is the story of his extraordinary life, a life intimately bound up with the political, social and cultural upheavals that formed the turbulent backdrop of modern Europe. In 1999 the book received the de la Torre Bueno Prize.
