Harmony in Motion: The Genesis of Rudolf Laban’s Free Dance and the Music and Art Rheories of His Time

Abstract

This essay analyses the thought of Rudolf Laban (1879-1950), one of the most important theoreticians of free (modern) dance in the first half of the 20th century, and particularly the concept of harmony, which he explored in close connection with contemporary theories in music and painting. Although he never arrived at an overall and definitive formulation of the concept of harmony, it became the conceptual framework within which Laban developed his analysis of body movement exploring its dynamic, expressive, emotional and psychological nuances. These theories, scattered in fragmentary thoughts and in unpublished texts or published at different times and in different languages, marked a turning point in the conceptualization of the relationship between body, movement and space, and indicated the direction along which modern dance developed.