Introduction

  Origins

  Dance as Art

  "Epidemie
  des Tanzes"

  Dance
  and Politics

MODERN DANCE IN BERLIN

Dance as Art

Dance, as part of modernist project, was developing into a serious art during the early twentieth century through the dancers’ conscious effort to distance their dances from the dance as mass entertainment. This page first introduces you to modern dance in Germany as represented by choreographies of Wigman and her dance troupe and performed in Berlin theater stages.

Wigman’s narration: "But I went on dancing. Then one day – suddenly, it seemed – the tide turned completely. No more hisses, no more sharp words. I was being acclaimed as a great dancer and more than that, as an innovator", Wigman, 52.

Click to view the following:

• Brief biography of Wigman (with pictures of her childhood). Wigman narrates her beginning.
  
  
• Wigman’s choreographies and performances in Berlin (with critics’ reception, one quoted in Delius 18: "there must be a disorder, the erotic is lacking, one sees here the type of the ‘man-woman’"). x.:
  
  
  1. pictures of her earliest works: Lento, Witch Dance I, Monotony etc (from Manning).
     
     
  2. pictures of her later ones: Landscape, Totenmal etc (from Language of Dance).Clip is a studio practice changing to stage performance of the same dance.
     
     
  3. Video clips of her choreographies: Witch Dance II, Dance of Summer, Seraphic Song, Pastoral etc. (Fire dances between the Poles).Note the shifting landscape.
     
     
  4. Wigman and Masks
     
     
  5. Wigman’s theories and manifestos about her dances, article on "Today’s girls and dance".
     
     
  6. The media and its problematic relationship with the success of an artist:
     
     
     1. newspaper interview: ‘I want no man to want to marry my dancers’, "she seemed to suffer".
        
        
     2. law suit scandal in NY.
        
        
  View entire Wigman video