Modern movements: women’s contributions to the success of Rudolf Laban’s ideas and practice in England 1930–1941

Abstract

This article reconsiders the significant contributions made by women who worked in England during the 1930s and developed modern dance and movement as performers and teachers. Laban’s arrival in 1938 built on a series of ideas, practices, events, and relationships that were to have far reaching consequences and which left a legacy where it is Laban’s name that is canonical. These dancers and teachers included Anny Boalth, Leslie Burrowes, Anny Fligg, Joan Goodrich, Diana Jordan, Lisa Ullmann, Louise Soelberg and others. It gives an overview of the ways in which these women interacted with Laban and his ideas and how they variously developed networks that enabled Laban’s practices to flourish. The histories of these women working in Britain during the 1930s are uncovered. As a genealogy, this chapter is a re-appropriation of those archival and published records out of which the canonical history of dance and theatre performances have been created in order to find something altogether different. Previously unpublished interviews and archival documents are drawn on to help uncover the hidden histories of the contributions that these women made to the field of theatre, dance, performance and movement training, bringing their pedagogy out of the shadows.