In the Company of Visionaries: Dalcroze, Laban, and Perrottet

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1 8 In the Company of Visionaries: Dalcroze, Laban, and Perrottet By Paul Murphy, State University of New York at Fredonia 1 That the musical theories of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze ( ) would intersect with the movement theories of Rudolf von Laban ( ) is a notion that, in retrospect, seems inevitable given the creative paths pursued by these two visionary artists. As contemporaries, Dalcroze and Laban were linked through direct interactions, indirect collaborators, and even geopolitics. Fundamentally though, the two artists shared a common revolutionary motivation that encompassed a fascination with true, objective analysis, a progressive response to empirical evidence, and a rejection of inherited assumptions about art and learning. Perhaps most relevant to an understanding of their connection, they both collaborated with the visionary artist Suzanne Perrottet ( ), a remarkable musician, dancer, and educator who literally embodied much of Dalcroze s and Laban s work. Yet, today we are only beginning to encounter scholarship on this captivating and rich topic, and still only rarely engage in the fruitful discourse that regularly follows from an investigation into the connections between these artists work. Such discourse proves invaluable to musicians, dancers and, really, to all performing artists. The present effort is a modest response to this situation, an attempt to help fill this void by laying out the background of Dalcroze s and Laban s direct and (via Perrottet) indirect exchange and by citing distinct differences in their view of music and dance. Paul Murphy Background Rather than trace the complete biographies of Dalcroze, Laban, and Perrottet, I focus on those aspects that either are not commonly known or that provide a particular perspective for comparison. Clearly, the most obvious feature common to both their lives was the experimental milieu in which they developed, specifically, that of the energized urban cultural centers of Western Europe in the early years of the twentieth century. Their lives essentially parallel the chronology of the great Modernist period in music, dance, the visual arts, literature, and film, a time that the literary critic Daniel Albright places convincingly between roughly 1885 and 1950 and which he unifies as being motivated broadly by a desire to test the limits of aesthetic construction (Albright, 2004). This was an era that bore the famous Paris World Exposition of 1889, the symbolist poets and impressionist composers, the expressionist painters, Dada, the surrealists, and more than a dozen artistic movements and counter movements described as one or another ism. Importantly, this era included the premiere of Stravinsky s Le sacre du printemps (1913) in collaboration with Vaslav Nijinsky, and Nicholas Roerich, along with Dalcroze s student Marie Rambert who served as both performer and dance mistress as well as the choreography of Witch Dance by Mary Wigman (1914), who, in addition to having earned the Dalcroze Certificat, was a student of Laban s and remains one of the most important figures in expressionist dance. Exchanges But what was the nature of exchange between Dalcroze and Laban? In any meaningful investigation of this exchange be it artistic, philosophical, theoretical, or social we cannot overlook the role as conduit, muse, colleague, collaborator, and lover played by Suzanne Perrottet (Odom, 2008). 2 It was the twenty-one-year-old Perrottet whom Dalcroze relied upon so heavily in the early years at the Utopian garden city of Hellerau, near Dresden, offering her a three-year contract to assist him and colleague Nina Gorter in teaching rhythmic gymnastics and improvisation lessons. And it was she who left Hellerau in 1913 to join Laban at the vegetarian artist commune-sanatorium Monte Verità in Ascona at the shore of Lake Maggiore in the Italian region of Switzerland. (Laban had been offered the position of Director of the new School of All the Arts of Life at Monte Verità (Bergsohn, 2003). 1 For more detailed references or other inquiries regarding this article, Paul Murphy at Paul.Murphy@fredonia.edu.

2 9 Suzanne Perrottet s affiliation with Dalcroze actually began as early as 1903 at the Geneva Conservatoire: she was instrumental in presenting his early work at his first demonstration group shown to Swiss music educators in 1905 and later, as Dalcroze became more widely known, to educators across Europe. Throughout her teens she worked closely with Dalcroze as he experimented with exercises in breathing, walking, and conducting. At this time, she was immersed not only in Dalcroze s work, but also in the broader world of European modernism and, especially, educational innovation. At Hellerau, her duties were substantial, teaching nearly as much as Dalcroze and Gorter did, in addition to attending Dalcroze s lessons and touring throughout Russia and Germany. But in May of 1912, to recuperate from this vigorous schedule, and at the request of the Dohrn family, the primary benefactors of Hellerau, she took leave at the Weisser Hirch (White Deer) sanatorium established outside Dresden by Dr. Heinrich Lahmann ( ), an early European champion of vegetarian diets and natural, holistic health. While undergoing a sixweek convalescence at Weisser Hirsch she met Laban who was also staying at the sanatorium recovering from exhaustion. Ultimately, she fell in love with him, and in 1916 bore a child, named Allar. Most importantly the stay at the sanatorium allowed for the direct interaction between Laban and Perrottet, allowing her to share her rich understanding of the work that she and Dalcroze were so intensely developing. As Valerie Preston- Dunlop describes the occurrence: Laban took a cure at the Weisser Hirsch Sanatorium outside Dresden, a place renowned for its alternative approach to health. Over-work, a perpetual state with Laban, led to persistent and insidious stomach troubles and depression. Coincidentally he was invited to the dress rehearsal of the Dalcroze school s opening of their new premises, purpose-built in the garden suburb of Dresden-Hellerau. This was a grand occasion of great interest to the dance community of Europe, people coming from England and further afield to see the first performance in the magnificent surroundings of what was regarded as the most significant new school of movement of the day. To have been invited implies that Laban was already a recognized figure in the arts. (Preston-Dunlop, 1998, pp ) This was not Laban s only invitation to visit Hellerau; Dalcroze s biographer, Irwin Specter, notes that Laban actually visited the site frequently and even returned there after the war when the school reopened under different direction (Preston-Dunlop, 1998). Although the summer of 1912 might very well have been the first opportunity for Laban and Dalcroze to meet in person, it is likely that the hours of discussion between Perrottet and Laban were just as fruitful for the exchange of ideas regarding music and movement, with Dalcroze s work being transmitted directly through the thoroughly engaged colleague Perrottet. One could go even further to suggest that Suzanne Perrottet, both from within and from outside the confines of Hellerau, provided the most significant means of albeit indirect interaction between Dalcroze and Laban. She was able to convey a first-hand understanding of Dalcroze s work, methods, and theories and was thus instrumental in helping inspire and solidify the theories of movement analysis ripening in the mind of Laban. As she was for Dalcroze, Perrottet was an invaluable collaborator for Laban in his teaching. Evelyn Doerr provides a sense of Perrottet s role in the Laban School in Zurich in : The large practice room in the ground floor apartment at Seegartenstraß was planned as the department for the art of movement, acting, and music. It was here that dance, pantomime, acting, recitation, oration and rhetoric, singing and instrumental music, theory, harmony, aural training, rhythmics and, for the special classes, film acting would be taught. The school was furthermore affiliated to a Reigenturnschule led by Suzanne Perrottet. As a former Dalcroze student, she in particular addressed the artistic development of the body according to the method of Dalcroze and taught classes for children and lay dancers in vocal and breathing training, and maintenance and speaking. (Doerr, 2008, pp ) 2 Dr. Selma Odom, Professor Emerita of dance history and criticism at York University has provided an excellent introduction into the role of Suzanne Perrottet in these articles, which are drawn in part from her interview with the artist in Zurich in Unless otherwise indicated, the information here about Mme. Perrottet is drawn from Dr. Odom s articles.

3 10 In 1924, when Laban left Zurich for Germany, Perrottet stayed, and changed the name of his former Labanschule to Bewegungs-Schule Suzanne Perrottet [Movement School of Suzanne Perrottet]. A poster explaining this change 3 (Fig. 1) illustrates Perrottet s understanding of the term eurhythmics : A message to the friends of our aspirations! Because the name Eurythmics has received, through the use of Rudolf Steiner, a certain color, which is not related to the direction of our work, we have decided that the previous name of our school School of Eurythmics (former Labanschule) be changed to the Movement- School Suzanne Perrottet (Former Labanschule). We hope, thereby, to avoid any further confusion of our efforts with the system of Rudolf Steiner. At the same time, we are pleased to announce that we have gained as a staff member in our school, Miss Ria Ryser of the Wigman School in Dresden. (trans. Murphy) Perrottet played an even more direct role as Laban developed his theories and moved away from an inherited assumption of music as obligatory scaffolding to dance. As an accomplished musician, first studying the violin, then the piano (at which she became an expert improviser), Perrottet not only served as music teacher to Laban s pupils, but as she recounted in a conversation with Giorgio J. Wolfensberger, was also an invaluable primary advisor and accompanist to Laban himself as he pursued his own compositional aspirations despite his limited formal training in music: This musical collaboration was very fruitful, since during my long training in traditional music I had also learned composition and notation. So the music that Laban was seeking presented me no significant problems. He wrote songs and dance pieces and gave me themes to develop. The music was built harmonically on the devil s interval the middle of the octave is always viewed as l intervalle du diable. Laban also criticized musical notation as being much too complicated. He had developed a new form of notation that used numbers instead. He also said that the five horizontal lines were also not necessary any more. Musical sounds were probably written earlier in an expanding spiral [that] corresponded to the anatomical ear. (Wofensberger, G., 1995, p. 143) In fact, Perrottet was a crucial collaborator in Laban s teaching of dance and was most likely responsible for the mere inclusion of music in his own teaching, given his view of music and dance as two separate pursuits. (Dörr, 2008) Perspectives At least on the surface, Laban s ideas of movement hardly demonstrate the same orientation toward education, as do those of Dalcroze. For Laban, movement, and movement analysis serve dance in both its broadest terms (the art of dance) and its most individualized terms (a person s harmony of movement). Indeed, as the dance historian John Foster states, Laban was not intrinsically interested in movement as an educational tool and vehicle and that only part of his work has ideas with educational significance. (Foster, 1977, p. 39) In contrast, though, he also suggests that a post-hellerau educational connection existed in England when first Dalcroze s, then Laban s theories began to be integrated into general education. Foster explains: A liaison has always existed between the work of Dalcroze and Laban. Even when Laban came to England, Dalcroze pupils were here. [For example,] Miss Edith Clark, a one-time Staff Inspector of Physical Education, worked with Dalcroze and studied at Hellerau but also supported the efforts to introduce Laban movement in English schools. (Foster, 1977, p. 39) Today, the legacy of Dalcroze s theories in education is clear: his ideas, techniques, and materials now a century old are used throughout the world not only in musical education, but in related educational contexts as well. Regarding Laban, it is evident today that his principles and methodology of movement analysis have likewise had a profound global effect on dance and movement educators. Laban s movement analysis and Labanotation are also taught throughout the world; they have evolved into their own disciplines 3 An image of this poster can be viewed on the web at

4 11 and are utilized by performers and choreographers in explicit and subtle ways. In the same way that a Dalcroze education remains with a student throughout life, so does a genuine, internalized understanding of one s own movement qualities through the analysis originally developed by Laban. This is so because, fundamentally, both Laban and Dalcroze share at the core of their work the sincerest respect for the individual, a motivation that cultivates individual expression not only as a thing to be developed in terms of the individual, but also something that benefits all of us as social beings. Foster also notes that explicit links between the two visionaries do exist: both require that proponents and teachers of their work be creative, imaginative models themselves. Both experimented with the effect of large movement ensembles as suggested by Dalcroze in The Technique of Moving Plastic (Dalcroze, 1930, pp ), witnessed in the Fête de Juin in Geneva (1914), and demonstrated by Laban s Festival Vaudois at Lausanne (1913) involving 1,800 people. Dalcroze s cultivation of plastique animée is likewise connected to Laban s broader concept of movement: both hold a similar understanding, stemming from Classical antiquity, of the goals of eurhythmics (Foster, 1977). In a contemporaneous account of the relationship between Dalcroze and Laban, Nathalie Tingey, a student at Hellerau, and later President of the Dalcroze Teachers Union in England, states, So far as Jaques contact with Laban was concerned, both worked very amicably together at first in 1910 when Jaques went to Hellerau, but disagreed later in their respective views on the place of (a) music and movement and (b) dance and music. (Foster, 1977, p. 58.) Although it is clear that Laban ultimately pursued a future for dance and movement that was independent from music, his early regard for and influence by Dalcroze s work cannot be dismissed. From his own account of that first visit to Hellerau, Laban s enthusiasm for what Dalcroze was doing is unequivocal:... At last I felt strong enough to take a look at the garden city of Hellerau and visit Jacques [sic] Dalcroze s institute. It was on a day when festival rehearsals as well as classroom lessons were being performed for artists and journalists.... What an enormous cultural achievement! You are aware how familiar I am with rhythm, as well as dance, music, etc. Here, it evolves altogether into a religiously complete effect, our religion of the future. I have met Jacques himself, his teachers and students, and I am exuberant just thinking of the possibilities... it was an experience that will play a part in my own development. (Perrottet, S., 1995, p. 93.) Still, Valerie Preston-Dunlop is keen to point out what was perhaps an unbridgeable gap between the immediate goals of Dalcroze and Laban as she interprets this initial contact between the two artists: While the reports of the performances [at Hellerau] were glowing in the reviews, and Laban was full of praise for it, he saw no future for a successful way forward in dance while it remained tied to music, as it was in the Dalcroze method. In fact this [first] performance spurred him on to bypass Dalcroze and to try to find his own way towards a revolution in dance. (Dunlop-Preston, V., 1998, p ) Conclusion Preston-Dunlop s apt assessment, rather than confusing the issue of influence between Dalcroze and Laban, confirms that the debate on this topic is far from settled. On the one hand, it is not difficult to view Laban and Dalcroze as striving in large part for a common goal, that is, to revise our understanding of both artistic expressiveness and the means by which we cultivate that in ourselves and others. On the other hand, it is equally plausible that the first visit to Hellerau was, indeed, the motivation for Laban to follow what was clearly a strong, but perhaps nascent desire to liberate dance from music. Surely Laban was influenced and initially quite impressed by Dalcroze s work. But, conversely, we can t help but wonder if it was Laban s work with immense performing ensembles at the Festival Vaudois at Lausanne in 1913 that influenced Dalcroze s idea for a similar spectacle at the Fête de Juin in Geneva a year later, and, even a half-decade after that for his famous Eurhythmics and Moving Plastic essay in Now, a century hence, we are perhaps best served by viewing Dalcroze and Laban through Perrottet both as artists with curiosity too dynamic to be confined by one specific, immediate objective, and as enlightened visionaries who shared and borrowed with a steadfast gaze into the future.

5 12 Paul Murphy is Chair of the Division of Music Theory, History, and Composition at SUNY-Fredonia. He holds the Certificate in Dalcroze Eurhythmics from Carnegie Mellon University and has a life-long experience as an accompanist for ballet and modern dance. He is co-author of The Musician s Guide to Aural Skills (W. W. Norton 2011) and author of the Spanish/English edition General Rules of Accompaniment: José de Torres s Treatise of 1736, (Indiana University Press, 2000). His interest in Spanish harmonic theories of the Baroque period has resulted in scholarly articles for Theoria and Studies in Medievalism, as well as presentations throughout the United States and Europe. He regularly teaches courses across the music theory and musicianship curriculum, including a popular offering Rhythm and Gesture in Music. References Albright, D. (2004). Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dörr, E. (2008). Rudolf Laban: The Dancer of the Crystal. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Foster, J. (1977). The Influences of Rudolph [sic] Laban. London: Lepus Books. Jaques-Dalcroze, É, (1930). Eurhythmics, Art and Education. (F. Rothwell, Trans.) Ed. Cynthia Cox. New York: Arno Press, Lee, J. W. (1995). Dalcroze by Any Other Name: Eurhythmics in Early Modern Theatre and Dance. Dissertation, Texas Tech University. Moore, S. F. (1992). The Writings of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze: Toward a Theory for the Performance of Musical Rhythm. Ph.D. Dissertation, Indiana University. Newlove, J., & Dalby, J. (2004). Laban for All. New York: Routlage. Odom, S.J. (1998). Jaques-Dalcroze, Émile, in International Encyclopedia of Dance: A Project of Dance Perspectives Foundation, Selma Jeanne Cohen (Ed.), pp New York: Oxford University Press. Odom, S. J. (2002). Meeting Suzanne Perrottet. American Dalcroze Journal, 28(3), 6-8. Odom, S. J. (2002). Suzanne Perrottet: Writing a Teacher s Career. American Dalcroze Journal, 29(1), 6-8. Partch-Bergsohn, I. & Bergsohn, H. (2003). The Makers of Modern Dance in Germany: Rudolf Laban, Mary Wigman, Kurt Jooss. Hightstown, NJ: Princeton Book Company. Preston-Dunlop, V. (1998). Rudolf Laban: An Extraordinary Life. London: Dance Books. Spector, I. (1990). Rhythm and Life: The Work of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze. Stuyvesant, NY: Pendraon Press. Wolfensberger, G.J. (1995). (Ed. and trans.) Perrottet, Suzanne: Ein Bewegtes Leben. Weinheim: Beltz Quadriga. FIND US! Facebook