8 In the Company of Visionaries:
Dalcroze, Laban, and Perrottet
By Paul Murphy, State University of New York at Fredonia1
That the musical theories of mile
Jaques-Dalcroze (1865-1950) would
intersect with the movement
theories of Rudolf von Laban
(1879-1958) is a notion that, in
retrospect, seems inevitable given
the creative paths pursued by
these two visionary artists. As
contemporaries, Dalcroze and
Paul Murphy
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 (1889-1983),
a remarkable musician, dancer, and educator who
literally embodied much of Dalcrozes and Labans
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 Dalcrozes and Labans direct and (via Perrottet)
indirect exchange and by citing distinct differences in
their view of music and dance.
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
1 For more detailed references or other inquiries regarding this article, email Paul Murphy at Paul.Murphy@fredonia.edu.
Volume 41, Number 1 Fall/Winter 2014
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 Stravinskys Le sacre du printemps
(1913)in collaboration with Vaslav Nijinsky, and
Nicholas Roerich, along with Dalcrozes student
Marie Rambert who served as both performer and
dance mistressas well as the choreography of Witch
Dance by Mary Wigman (1914), who, in addition to
having earned the Dalcroze Certificat, was a student of
Labans 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 exchangebe it artistic, philosophical,
theoretical, or socialwe 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 Verit 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 Verit (Bergsohn, 2003).

Suzanne Perrottets 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 Dalcrozes 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 Dalcrozes 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 (1860
1905), an early European champion of vegetarian diets
and natural, holistic health. While undergoing a six-
week 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 schools 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
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 1979. Unless other-
wise indicated, the information here about Mme. Perrottet is drawn from Dr. Odoms articles.
9
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. 26-27)
This was not Labans only invitation to visit Hellerau;
Dalcrozes 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 Dalcrozes 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 ofalbeit
indirectinteraction between Dalcroze and Laban. She
was able to convey a first-hand understanding of Dalcrozes
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 Perrottets role in the Laban School
in Zurich in 1915-1916:
The large practice room in the ground floor
apartment at Seegartenstra 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. 55-56)
Volume 41, Number 1 Fall/Winter 2014
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
change3 (Fig. 1) illustrates Perrottets 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 Labans 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 devils
intervalthe middle of the octave is always viewed
as lintervalle 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
3 An image of this poster can be viewed on the web at
http://www.kunsthaus.ch/en/library/collection/special-collections/suzanne-perrottet-estate/.
Volume 41, Number 1 Fall/Winter 2014
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 Labans
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.
(Drr, 2008)
Perspectives
At least on the surface, Labans 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 persons 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 Dalcrozes,
then Labans 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 Dalcrozes theories in education
is clear: his ideas, techniques, and materialsnow a
century oldare 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. Labans movement analysis
and Labanotation are also taught throughout the
world; they have evolved into their own disciplines

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
ones 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. 28-29.), witnessed in the Fte de Juin in Geneva
(1914), and demonstrated by Labans Festival Vaudois
at Lausanne (1913) involving 1,800 people. Dalcrozes
cultivation of plastique anime is likewise connected
to Labans 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 Dalcrozes work cannot be dismissed.
From his own account of that first visit to Hellerau,
Labans 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]
Dalcrozes 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
11
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. 26-27.)
Conclusion
Preston-Dunlops 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 influencedand initially quite impressed
by Dalcrozes work. But, conversely, we cant help
but wonder if it was Labans work with immense
performing ensembles at the Festival Vaudois at
Lausanne in 1913 that influenced Dalcrozes idea for a
similar spectacle at the Fte de Juin in Geneva a year
later, and, even a half-decade after that for his famous
Eurhythmics and Moving Plastic essay in 1919.
Now, a century hence, we are perhaps best served by
viewing Dalcroze and Labanthrough Perrottetboth
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.
Volume 41, Number 1 Fall/Winter 2014
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 accompa-
nist for ballet and modern dance. He is co-author of The
Musicians Guide to Aural Skills (W. W. Norton 2011)
and author of the Spanish/English edition General Rules
of Accompaniment: Jos de Torress 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.
Drr, 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, , (1930). Eurhythmics, Art and Education.
(F. Rothwell, Trans.) Ed. Cynthia Cox. New York:
Arno Press, 1980.
FIND US!
Twitter
@dalcrozeusa
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Volume 41, Number 1 Fall/Winter 2014
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 mile 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, mile, in International
Encyclopedia of Dance: A Project of Dance Perspectives
Foundation, Selma Jeanne Cohen (Ed.), pp. 594-97.
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 Teachers
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.