Sigurd Leeder

Sigurd Leeder (birth name: Carl Eduard Wilhelm Leder) was a German dancer, choreographer and dance education theorist.

In 1933, he taught Ida Rubinstein's Persephone company in Paris, where he met Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst, soon-to-be patrons, who invited him, Jooss and their dancers to England in early 1934, following rising Nazi oppression.

He developed his method of teaching based on the study of eukinetics and choreutics – which had begun in Essen – the various dynamics of movement and the coordination of spatiality in and around the body.

As a result of restrictive measures during the early part of the Second World War, he spent a few months in an internment camp, then moved to Cambridge in 1940, where he reformed the Jooss-Leeder Dance Studio with Kurt Jooss.

In addition to teaching in London, he regularly participated in summer courses in Switzerland, notably alongside his peers in modern dance, including Mary Wigman, Rosalia Chladek and Harald Kreutzberg.

They dedicated themselves to the development of the signs and language of Laban notation, the transcription of choreographies and the writing of movement studies for teaching.