The practitioners of this free dance or danse plastique strove for pure, natural movements. They sought to allow the body to speak for itself, freed from social and sexual conventions. The dancers abandoned the strict rules of classical Russian ballet and staged radical performances with ecstatic elements. An important source of inspiration for this Russian dance form was the American dancer Isadora Duncan (1877-1927). Attracted by the wave of artistic experimentation in the wake of the Russian Revolution, in 1921 she established a dance school in Moscow. Duncan was inspired by the ancient Greeks and viewed her dance as a rediscovery of the classical principles of beauty, movement and form. The Russian dancers also took inspiration from Oriental dance and the circus as well as interaction with other artistic disciplines such as photography, film and architecture. The entire Russian avant-garde was focussed on the creation of a ‘new man’ to reflect the new social order. Artists from different disciplines such as music, the visual arts, photography, film and architecture collaborated with each other to further this goal.

In her book Vnachale bylo telo (In the Beginning was the Body) about the development of free dance, Misler discusses in depth the Choreological Laboratory, founded in Moscow in 1923 by the artist Oton Engels and the art historians and critics Aleksandr Larionov and Aleksei Sidorov. This interdisciplinary research centre was part of the Russian Academy for Artistic Sciences, founded in 1921 by Wassily Kandinsky, which focussed on the relationship between dance, the visual arts, theatre, music, philosophy and other disciplines. As Misler explains, ‘Dance was important for Kandinsky’s concept of “synthetic art” because it combined space, music and movement.’ In the Choreological Laboratory, the artists, art historians and critics enlisted several photographers to document the kinetic experiments. ‘One of the important subjects within the laboratory was how movement could be captured and which medium was best suited to this purpose. They experimented with notation systems, photography and film.’ As a result, the Laboratory ensured that much information about these ephemeral experiments has survived.

‘The fascinating thing about the Choreological Laboratory is that the phenomenon of dance was explored from different perspectives: philosophy, photography and the visual arts’, says Johannes Schwartz.‘That makes it so infectious and irresistible; the new developments had real momentum. It was an amazing time for photography. The medium liberated itself from the dominance of painting and discovered its own pictorial qualities. It was spectacular, for example, that you could freeze the movement through photography. New notation systems were also developed to record the fleeting forms of the dance. The old systems were no longer suitable for the new movements and without notation they would soon be forgotten.'

The fascinating thing about the Choreological Laboratory is that the phenomenon of dance was explored from different perspectives: philosophy, photography and the visual arts’ (Schwartz).