With this tribute to Dr. Juana de Laban, Dance Research Journal acknowledges the part that the whole life of the scholar plays in one's contribution to a field. In this particular case, we are trying to show the multiplicity of experiences that Juana de Laban brought to her profession. Although well-recognized as a teacher and a scholar, Juana's early life and her professional dancing career remained a mystery to many of her colleagues, friends, and students. The field of dance research, new by the standards of many disciplines, has been the product of a number of dedicated individuals, many of whom are still living. How we can responsibly document their lives, and in the process, the discipline of dance studies, is a question to which these articles on Juana de Laban attempt a response.

I knew Juana de Laban for about twenty-three years. She was my mentor and distinctly affected the course of my life. Throughout those years I was thrilled but perplexed as to why this very strong woman with so many prominent associations would choose to befriend me, and why our friendship kept recurring after periods of being apart. When at the end of her life she handed her personal collection to me for deposit in the Dallas Theater Center, I became the link between this dynamic individual and her final effort to remain part of the fabric of life. In retrospect, as her personal and professional history unfolds a clearer picture emerges.

I have constructed this biography from her materials and from correspondence with her family, students, and colleagues. I must stress that Juana was an extremely private person. She almost never spoke of personal things. Many persons still living also wish to respect her privacy. Furthermore, her own notes are often in conflict as to dates and figures. This brief account, therefore, stands to be verified, expanded and perhaps corrected in time.

It is a modest space, an angular, cramped room with exposed pipes overhead, a concrete floor. On all sides sprout wooden shelves laden with three thousand books and journals, photographs, slides, programs, and memorabilia – the Juana de Laban Collection, now housed at the Dallas Theater Center. To find the collection, one must climb narrow stairs and burrow through the Theater's wardrobe area to the tiny room beyond that houses the material lovingly collected by that bright and fiercely proud dance historian and critic who was also, overwhelmingly, the daughter of Rudolf Laban.

Any scholar's library reflects his heart and mind, his interests and aspirations, his education. Juana de Laban's collection reveals an intellect remarkably catholic in its taste, astonishing in its breadth. It is the sort of library that skips across disciplines to include volumes on anthropology, psychology, history, aesthetics and criticism, all related to the study of human movement.

I think of Juana often, and her memory remains undiminishedly vivid. And that word – vivid – seems the best to evoke so many things about her: her crisp slightly accented speech with its medley of languages; the clear, bright colors she liked to wear; the keen cobalt glance; and most of all her opinions – her palpable intellectual presence. Even though by the time we met she was in her mid-fifties, her hair had faded to a warm ashen grey, and she had lost the high coloring that must have been hers as a young woman, the impact of her physical presence was quite undiminished I think, and one couldn't help but be aware of its authentic potency as well as the vigor of her opinions and reactions in any situation that caught her interest. I think of her as having been tall but perhaps it was just that she carried herself so erectly and occupied space with such energy and assurance.

While gathering the articles for this issue of Dance Research Journal with Dianne Woodruff, I often smiled as I recognized “the essential Juana” in the written perceptions of my colleagues. It has been hard to resist adding my own reminiscences, for “Dr. Laban” was a powerful figure in my introduction to dance after I transferred to UCLA's Dance Department in 1963. In fact, it was Dr. Laban who taught me dance history.

I particularly remember laboring for months on my first dance history term paper. The topic consumed me then and amuses me no end today: Dancing had been born of animals and evolved to great humanistic expressions. How such a daringly broad yet hopelessly unlimited hypothesis got accepted, I will never understand. Part of the explanation may lie in the fact that Curt Sachs's World History of Dance was the uncritically-used text for the class, and part of the explanation may lie with my valiant effort to rationalize two earlier undergraduate years as an analytical biology major. Dr. Laban grasped the opportunity for interdisciplinary education and had me reading many things in science, including Jane Goodall's work with chimpanzees and Darwin's Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals. I was fascinated by the worlds of thought opening, but completely at sea in the necessity of bringing ideas together for a term paper.

In 1949, Mabel Dolmetsch first published her work on dance history, Dances of England and France from 1450 to 1600, with their music and authentic manner of performance. Five years later, her companion volume, Dances of Spain and Italy from 1400 to 1600, appeared. Recently, both volumes have been reprinted by Da Capo Press, New York (1975), and they are thus readily available to anyone interested in the reconstruction of dances of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. While Da Capo Press is to be applauded for providing these classic works with a renewed distribution, the absence of a modern preface discussing the progress which has been made in historical dance reconstruction since the original composition of these books may well mislead readers into believing that they represent the current state of the art.

“My school work became more and more difficult for me. Nobody listened to me at school or at home. I gave up trying to do my homework and closed out everything but stolen outings to join my friends at the stage door. I got terrible grades, but still I found no way to study. I could not seem to learn anything from a book. I was expelled from school.

“To make matters worse, my father constantly yelled at me and then he would end up beating me. Finally, I remember my father screamed, ‘You cannot spend your days at home anymore. You are fourteen and a half years old and it is time you start working. I will find you work as a furrier or a goldsmith apprentice, whichever allows you time off for the Sabbath.’ When he could get no response from me, he took his cane and beat me until it broke.”