Laban's The Mastery of Movement on the Stage, first published in 1950, quickly came to be accepted as the standard work on his conception of human move-ment. When he died, Laban was in the process of preparing a new edition of the book, and so for some time after his death it was out of print. That a second edition appeared was solely due to the efforts of Lisa Ullmann, who, better than any other person, was aware of the changes that Laban had intended to make. The rather broader treatment of the subject made advis-able the change of title, for it was recognised that the book would appeal to all who seek to understand movement as a force in life. In this fourth edition Lisa Ullmann has taken the opportunity to make margin annotations to indicate the subject matter referred to in a particular section of the text, so that specified topics may be easily found. Kinetograms have been added to most of the examples in Chapters 2 and 3, as Laban originally intended, for the growing number of people who read and write movement notation. Lisa Ullmann has also compiled an Appendix on the the structure of effort, drawing largely on material from an unpublished book by Laban. The relationship between the inner motivation of movement and the outer functioning of the body is explored. Acting and dancing are shown as activities deeply concerned with man's urge to establish values and meanings. The student is introduced to basic principles underlying movement expres-sion and experience and the numerous exercises are intended to challenge his or her intellectual, emotional and physical responses. The many descrip-tions of movement scenes and mine-dances are designed to stimulate penetra-tion into man's inner life from where movement and action originate.

When towards the end of the last century Rudolf Laban began to take an interest in all forms of dance, it was with an en-thusiastically searching mind, looking for the very roots of active living. He believed the key for the unfolding of human capacities to be embedded in the dynamic configurations of dance and that man could enhance his creative powers by becoming aware of the nature of shapes and rhythms through which living organisms express and communicate. Choreutics can be said to contain the essence of Laban's thought as well as an elaboration of the framework which he found useful for the penetration of the bewildering complexity of human movement. This he based on the unity of space and movement and he recognised a natural order in which the energy from within unfolds in space. This book gives a cogent account of the basis of Laban's Space Harmony; this may become of similar significance to the dancer, dance teacher and choreographer as Harmony of Music-with which it can be compared- is to the musician. Of special interest in this volume is the explicit presentation of the grammatical and syntactical aspects of the language of move-ment together with consideration of its nota-tion. It is shown that this language is relevant not only to the dancer, actor and musician but also to the architect, designer and sculptor, and moreover that the aspects of Harmony stretch beyond the bounds of aesthetical use into the field of everyday living.