He was one of the 20th century’s foremost pioneers of modern dance, bringing together communities with large-scale public performances. Now his previously unpublished writings reveal that Rudolf Laban’s ambitious vision for the art form extended to wanting to construct a theatre specifically designed for dance.
In an essay that has been unearthed some 65 years after his death, Laban wrote of his “dream” to stage dance in a “kilometre house” – a gigantic dome in the middle of the countryside, “a sort of oasis of movement for spectators and cast members alike” because existing theatres did not do justice to dance. He felt that audiences at the back of conventional theatres missed so much: “Even in a theatre in the shape of an amphitheatre, the spectators in the furthermost rows will be so far away from the stage that, although they will be able to get a good overview of the whole picture of the stage, [they] will hardly be able to differentiate the details of the movement, the limbs and the lines in space.”
