Introduction

  Origins

  Dance as Art

  "Epidemie
  des Tanzes"

  Dance
  and Politics

MODERN DANCE IN BERLIN

This pathway introduces you to the city of Berlin during the early decades of the twentieth century by guiding you through the culture of modern dance (Ausdruckstanz) in Germany. As part of the larger intellectual movements of the time, such as Dadaists, Expressionists and Bauhaus artists in search for alternate forms of expression, it was born out of a revolution against the codified movement and narrative structure of ballet. Modern dance in Germany highlights a new perception toward body in modernity that was unprecedented in its intensity. And it was Berlin, the newly growing metropolis with its endless movements of people and traffic, fluctuations of masses and perceptions, shocks and spectacles, that captured most intensely the unique experience of modernity that "Ausdruckstanz", the German modern dance, represented through the immediacy of bodily movement without extravagant costumes or musical accompaniment.

Modern dance was a movement lead and popularized predominantly by women. During the Weimar Republic, the image of a physically fit, fashionable young city woman who goes dancing after the work was one of the new, socially constructed female roles that emphasized movement, strength and physical power. While many sports were encouraged for women, such as tennis and gymnastics, dance was the most popular. Although the concept of the ‘neue Frau’ was entangled in the complicated relationship between the cultural body politics, mass media and politics of female emancipation, dance during the Weimar period was a way for women to break out of the social constrictions and become more visible in the public sphere. Modern dance in Germany blurred the distinction between dance as modern art and dance as mass culture, offering both a possibility for women to become more public and a limit for their arts to be taken seriously. This site invites you to explore the city of Berlin during the early decades of modernity and re-examine German modern dance as a cultural ‘movement’ by women in the history of German modernism.