Rudolf Laban's Dance Film Projects

The essay deal with Rudolf Laban’s mostly unrealized film scripts, dating to the 1920s and 1930s. One of the leaders of Ausdruckstanz, Laban has been studied as a thoughtful writer and theoretician, a talented choreographer, an inspired teacher and a tireless organizer of schools, networks, and festivals. Less known are his film scripts which can open up new perspectives in the analysis of his activity and reveal many important aspects of his vision of a new dance. Together with the related correspondence they are kept in different archives. Laban’s scripts show his mastery of the new media as well as the purposes underlying his conception of films of different genres, like documentaries, reportages, cultural and educational films on dance (Tanz-Lehrfilme). In his vision these works had to play a crucial role in spreading his ideas more widely than through the Labanschulen and his own writings. Laban’s collaboration with Wilhelm Prager, one of most famous director of the time, also confirm his ability to create strategic relationships in different fields, in order to heighten the level of the dance culture. Though consisting in incomplete manuscripts, these sources uncover the extent to which Laban’s ideological view of the dancing body nourished his practice and his theory. The essay analyzes these documents and the practices of seeing and showing as well as their contribution to the representation of the dancing body. It also investigates Laban’s film projects in the context of German modernism through a number of theoretical tools that include visual studies. Il saggio analizza i progetti di film e documentari scritti da Rudolf Laban, il capofila della danza di espressione (Ausdruckstanz) tedesca, negli anni dieci e venti del ventesimo secolo. Intellettuale raffinato e artista prolifico, Laban è stato studiato come coreografo, teorico della danza, inventore di un sistema di notazione della danza, organizzatore culturale, trascurando un aspetto sostanziale della sua produzione, ovvero le numerose sceneggiature e i progetti per film e documentari sulla danza che ha firmato da solo o in collaborazione con affermati registi dell’epoca come Wilhelm Prager. Nessuno di questi progetti cinematografici è stato mai realizzato, ma i documenti che ne custodiscono le tracce rivelano la grande abilità di Laban a pensare in termini cinematografici e a dominare gli aspetti tecnici offerti dal nuovo medium per diffondere a un ampio pubblico le sue teorie sulla danza moderna. L’analisi di questi progetti di film e documentari interseca in più punti la storia del cinema di Weimar illuminandone alcuni aspetti finora poco noti. Il saggio si basa su un lungo lavoro di ricerca di materiali d’archivio reperiti principalmente in Germania e Gran Bretagna.