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GREEN CLOWNS
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Attending Laban Conference will give delegates the rare opportunity to see a performance of Laban’s 1928 work Green Clowns.
A short documentary about its recreation will also be shown.
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Green Clowns by Rudolf Laban |
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Fifty years ago Rudolf Laban, the dancer, choreographer and renowned movement theoretician died. His life’s work raised the status of dance as an art form, and his explorations into the theory and practice of dance and movement transformed the nature of dance scholarship. In order to mark this anniversary, Dr Valerie Preston-Dunlop and Alison Curtis-Jones have recreated Rudolf Laban’s suite Green Clowns (Die Grünen Clowns).
Green Clowns was first performed on 23 June 1928 under the direction of Dussia Bereska at the Stadttheater, Essen by Kammertanzbühne Laban, the chamber dance group established by Laban in the early 1920s.
Green Clowns is the epitome of Laban’s tragic-comic output. It was part of the programme for the 2nd Dancers’ Congress at Essen in 1928, which Kurt Jooss, with Laban and the committee, organised. At the Congress, Laban presented his Tanzschrift, known today as Labanotation, which had just been completed. He also presented at the Congress ‘Choreologie’, the study of the syntax of movement. Both of these led to the publication ‘Schriftanz’, started in July 1928 and published by Universal Edition, in Vienna, as the first dance journal designed for serious discussion. Laban continued to concentrate on the promotion of his Kinetographie and Choreologie, until 1930 when he moved to the Berlin State Opera appointment. Bereska went to Paris, and opened a Laban school there.
Recreating Rudolf Laban's Green Clowns 1928-2008. A documentary film directed by Lesley-Anne Sayers.
This DVD features a performance of Green Clowns produced at Laban with undergraduate students during 2008, staged by Valerie Preston-Dunlop and Alison Curtis Jones. It also features a 50-minute documentary that follows and explores the processes of recreation and the frame work, sources and methods involved in mounting this work.
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Green Clowns by Rudolf Laban |
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Photographs of Grunen Clowns, Die (Choreographic work: Laban assisted by Bereska, Dussia). Performed by Kammertanzbuhne Laban at the Essen Dancers' Congress 1928 [a rehearsal]. Photographer unknown.
Any information on the copyright holder should be addressed to archivist@laban.org
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