Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

CHAPTER 33
Rudolph von Laban
ADRIENNE SANSOM
Many of us have marveled at the way very young children begin to find their footing as they totter
to take their first steps, but have you ever given thought to the intricacies involved in that process?
Have you ever given thought about the way we move and perform our daily tasks? Have you
ever given thought about the way we describe human movement? If you have been involved in
dance education, human development, or in some other aspects of physical education or physical
therapy, there would, no doubt, be times when you have used certain terminology to instruct,
or used specific vocabulary to describe the concept of movement you are observing or wish to
explore. But have you ever wondered where that language or terminology came from and why
certain descriptors are used to describe movement?
For the purpose of this chapter I am concerned, in particular, with the terminology used
to describe human movement especially as it is applied in dance education. This concern or
interest arises because, from the perspective of dance education within a Western or Eurocentric
paradigm, one man developed much of the discourse we use in dance education today. This man
was Rudolph von Laban.
WHO IS RUDOLPH VON LABAN?
Rudolph von Laban (1879–1958), an Austrian, was born in Czechoslovakia. He was an artist,
dancer, choreographer, and movement theorist. He has also been described as a visionary, and
there is no question that he was certainly a great and creative thinker. To this day, he is well known
for his contributions to the field of dance, especially dance education and for the development of
movement/dance notation (Labanotation), which is a system of notating movement that can be
used for the purpose of recording and, thus, replicating historical and choreographed dances. In a
sense, it could be said that Laban brought a form of literacy to the art of dance and, consequently,
helped elevate the status of dance as an art form during his time.
Laban (1988) developed his interest in the study of human movement in Paris when there was
the emergence of a new form of dance, which was called modern dance in most English-speaking
countries but was referred to as “free dance” or “la danse libre” in France for reasons that will
become apparent. At a time when there was a rising interest in machines and technology during