Sigurd Leeder was a German dancer, choreographer and dance education theorist. He was born in Hamburg on 14 August 1902, the son of Carl Eduard Gottfried Leder, lithographer, and Martha Auguste Anna Henriette Friedrich. He died in Herisau, Switzerland, on 20 June 1981. He developed a method of teaching expressive dance and contributed, with Albrecht Knust, to the development and dissemination of labanotation, which pioneered the written language of symbols to record and represent modern dance.

Kurt Jooss was a famous German ballet dancer and choreographer mixing classical ballet with theatre; he is also widely regarded as the founder of Tanztheater. Jooss is noted for establishing several dance companies, including most notably, the Folkwang Tanztheater, in Essen.