Rudolf Laban’s visual thinking: Modern dance theory and practice in dialogue with art and architecture

Abstract

Rudolf Laban, a pioneer of modern dance, intertwined visual arts and crafts with his choreographic practice. He mobilized abstract geometric shapes in his dance education. His use of the icosahedron form, for example, derived from geometric and stereometric architectural models, has yet to be mined. It allowed him to renegotiate the relationship between body and space. The paper also compares Laban’s adaptation of the icosahedron to that of architects like Richard Buckminster Fuller, who used its implications of motion to create lightweight architecture. Laban, too, was interested in building domes made of lightweight material based on the platonic solids to perform his huge movement choirs. Based on a dialogue between visual art, modern dance and architecture, the article sheds light for the first time on Rudolf Laban’s visual thinking and the role of the pictorial in his work.