Abstract
This chapter considers the consolidation of modern dance as a form as evident in modern dancers’ writings. It looks at the period 1923–1933 in Austria, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Mary Wigman wrote about her new dance and that of her contemporaries, saying that they are standing at the beginning. The beginnings of this new form, and how dancers saw their world, is analysed by reference to the writings of many dancers. They include: Gertrud Bodenwieser, Leslie Burrowes, Isadora Duncan, Valeska Gert, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Kurt Jooss, Elizabeth Selden and Mary Wigman.
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Notes
Mary Wigman, ‘Tänzerisches Schaffen Der Gegenwart’, In Paul Stefan, ed., Tanz in Dieser Zeit, 5–7 (Wien: Universal-Edition, 1926),
translated by Walter Sorell as Mary Wigman, ‘We Are Standing at the Beginning’, In Walter Sorell, ed. and trans., The Mary Wigman Book: Her Writings Edited and Translated, 81–85 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1926, 1975). Sorell took his title from the opening of her third paragraph — ‘Wir stehen am Anfang’ (1926, 5). A possible translation for Wigman’s chapter would be ‘Dance Creations of the Present’.
This and the following period tend to be the most widely discussed. A great deal of the literature considers the situation in Germany in relation to the rise of Nazism, followed by those that relate the development of dance in the United States of America. A few accounts detail modern dance as a transatlantic phenomenon and there are very few that consider the modern dance in the United Kingdom. Much of the literature is focused on individual artists and often, especially in the case of Manning, these give a detailed picture of the broader context too. See Jack Anderson, Art without Boundaries: The World of Modern Dance (London: Dance Books, 1997);
Ramsay Burt, Alien Bodies: Representations of Modernity, ‘Race’, and Nation in Early Modern Dance (London, New York: Routledge, 1998);
Carter and Fensham, Dancing Naturally; Lynn Garafola, ed., Of, by, and for the People: Dancing on the Left in the 1930s (Madison, WI: Society of Dance History Scholars at A-R Editions, 1994);
Ellen Graff, Stepping Left: Dance and Politics in New York City, 1928–1942 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997); Guilbert, Danser Avec Le IIIe;
Lilian Karina and Marion Kant, Hitler’s Dancers: German Modern Dance and the Third Reich [Translated from German] (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003);
Susan Manning, Modern Dance, Negro Dance: Race in Motion (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004);
Susan Manning, Ecstasy and the Demon: The Dances of Mary Wigman, new ed. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006);
Susan Manning and Lucia Ruprecht, eds, New German Dance Studies (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012);
Hedwig Müller, Mary Wigman: Leben Und Werk Der Grossen Tänzerin (Berlin: Quadriga, 1986);
Larraine Nicholas, Dancing in Utopia: Dartington Hall and Its Dancers (Alton: Dance Books, 2007);
Valerie Preston-Dunlop, Rudolf Laban, an Extraordinary Life (London: Dance Books, 1998);
Dee Reynolds, Rhythmic Subjects: Uses of Energy in the Dances of Mary Wigman, Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham (Alton: Dance Books, 2007);
Janice Ross, Moving Lessons: Margaret H’Doubler and the Beginning of Dance in American Education (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000);
Patricia Stöckemann. Etwas Ganz Neues Muß Nun Entstehen: Kurt Jooss Und Das Tanztheater (München: K. Kieser, 2001);
Karl Toepfer, Empire of Ecstasy: Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture, 1910–1935 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
The NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeitpartei — National-Socialist German Workers Party) gained the most seats in the German Reichstag in the elections of November 1932 with 33% of the popular vote. Adolf Hitler was appointed Reich chancellor on 30 January 1933 and this post and that of president were merged and confirmed by referendum on 19 August 1934, making Hitler Führer of Germany and de facto supreme leader of the Third Reich. There is a vast literature on the politics of this period and on the Third Reich in particular. There is an excellent brief overview, with key documents, at http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-c.org/chapter. cfm?subsection_id=93. For books that put the situation in a broader global context, I favour Niall Ferguson, The War of the World (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2007),
which contains a substantial bibliography and David Reynolds, The Long Shadow: The Great War and the Twentieth Century (London: Simon & Schuster, 2013).
Her American contemporaries Isadora Duncan and Ruth St Denis erred on the side of hyperbole when writing about the dancer and the future. St Denis, writing in 1924, talks of the dancer as ‘one who expresses in bodily gesture the joy and power of his being; but writes of the dancers’ world in a way similar to Wigman when she says that ‘we dancers today are struggling and sacrificing so that at some precious hour in the future we may live!’. See Ruth St Denis, ‘The Dance as Life Experience’, In Jean Morrison Brown, ed., The Vision of Modern Dance, 22– (London: Dance Books 1924), 22 (first published in Denishawn Magazine 1, no. 1 (1924): 1–3).
From her 1921 article to her 1929 celebration of his work on the occasion of his birthday: Mary Wigman, ‘Rudolf Von Labans Lehre Vom Tanz’, Die neue Schaubühne 3, no. 5/6 (1921): 99–106;
Mary Wigman, ‘Rudolf Von Laban Zum Geburtstag’, Schrifttanz 2, no. 4 (1929): 65–66.
Mary Wigman, ‘Stage Dance — Stage Dancer’, In Walter Sorell, ed. and trans., The Mary Wigman Book: Her Writings Edited and Translated, 107–115 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1927, 1975), 112 (originally published in ‘Das Deutsche Kulturtheater’, Magdeburg Tageszeitung 15 May 1927).
Gertrud Bodenwieser, ‘Dancing as a Factor in Education’, The Dancing Times (November 1926), 169, 71. Bodenwieser, an Austrian dancer, performed in London and Manchester England in 1929 and a number of her pupils taught in the United Kingdom. She went on to establish modern dance in Australia. For details of her career see Shona Dunlop MacTavish, An Ecstasy of Purpose, the Life and Art of Gertrud Bodenwieser (Dunedin, New Zealand: Shona Dunlop MacTavish, Les Humphrey and Associates, 1987);
Bettina and Charles Vernon-Warren, eds, Gertrud Bodenwieser and Vienna’s Contribution to Ausdruckstanz (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1999),
Isadora Duncan, ‘I See America Dancing’, In Sheldon Cheney, ed., The Art of the Dance by Isadora Duncan (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1928, 1969) (from the original Ms Cheney, 145) (first published in the New York Herald-Tribune, 2 October 1927).
Isadora Duncan, My Life, 11th ed. (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1928, 1936), 359; Duncan, ‘I See America Dancing’, 49.
Elizabeth Duncan, ‘Nature, Teacher of the Dance’, In Oliver M. Sayler, ed., Revolt in the Arts, 245–248 (New York: Brentano’s, 1930); Martha Graham, ‘Seeking an American Art of the Dance’, In Sayler, Revolt in the Arts, 249–255.
Doris Humphrey, ‘Interpretor or Creator?’, In Selma Jeanne Cohen, ed., Doris Humphrey: An Artist First, 250–252 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1929, 1972) (first published in Dance Magazine, January 1929);
Doris Humphrey, ‘What Shall We Dance About?’ In Cohen, Doris Humphrey, 252–254 (first published in Trend: A Quarterly of the Seven Arts, June-July-August 1932);
Doris Humphrey, The Art of Making Dances (New York: Grove, 1959).
There was considerable discussion in the US dance press at this time, including The Dance Magazine survey of 13 dancers’ views on ‘the German dance’ following Wigman’s first US tour. See Louise Brown et al., ‘What Dancers Think about the German Dance’, The Dance Magazine of Stage and Screen 16, no. 1 (May 1931): 14–15, 63, 64.
Mary Wigman, ‘Composition in Pure Movement’, Modern Music 8, no. 2 (January/February 1931): 20–22, 20.
Mary Wigman, ‘Group Dance/Choreography’, In Walter Sorrel, ed. and trans., The Mary Wigman Book: Her Writings Edited and Translated, 129–131 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1927, 1975); (originally published as ‘Gruppentanz/Regie’, In Rudolf Bach, ed., Das Mary Wigman Werk (Dresden: Carl Reissner, 1933), 45–47).
Whilst this basis for making dance is less common in the twenty-first century it was a predominant way of thinking in the 1930s and consistent with ways of thinking about other art forms. See, especially, R.G. Collingwood’s contemporary account of artists and art making: R.G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938; repr. 1958).
Rudolf von Laban, ‘Dance Composition and Written Dance’, In Valerie Preston-Dunlop and Susanne Lahusen, eds, Schrifttanz a View of German Dance in the Weimar Republic, 38–39 (London: Dance Books, 1990) (originally published in Schrifttanz 1, no. 2 (October 1928): 19–20).
Valeska Gert, ‘Dancing (from a Talk Given at Radio Leipzig)’; In Preston-Dunlop and Lahusen, eds, Schrifttanz (originally published Schrifttanz 4, no. 1 (June 1931)).
Valeska Gert, ‘Mary Wigman und Valeska Gert’, Der Querschnitt 6, no. 5 (1926): 361–362.
Elizabeth Selden was a European dancer who had trained with Laban, Wigman and others; she taught for five years at the Bennett School, Millbrook, New York City, and then lectured and performed at Berkeley, California. She wrote two books on the modern dance. After World War II she returned to Germany on the staff of the Education Branch of the US military government in Germany, as part of the denazification programme. She maintained contact with Wigman and is mentioned in one of Wigman’s letters to Holm of 1958: Claudia Gitelman, ed., Liebe Hanya: Mary Wigman’s Letters to Hanya Holm (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 153.
An account of her writings interpreted as a ‘dance theory’ is given in Judith B. Alter, Dance-Based Dance Theory: From Borrowed Models to Dancebased Experience (New York: Peter Lang, 1991).
Elizabeth Selden, ‘The New German Credo; In The Dancer’s Quest, 25–32 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1935) (first published in the New York Evening Post, January 1929).
Larraine Nicholas recounts Burrowes’s career and her visits to the Wigman School as described in her letters to Dorothy Elmhirst of Dartington Hall: Larraine Nicholas, ‘Leslie Burrowes: A Young Dancer in Dresden and London, 1930–34’, Dance Research 28, no. 2 (2010): 153–178. My references are to the original documents held in the NRCD, University of Surrey. Burrowes trained with Margaret Morris at her London school in 1924. She was employed to teach dance at Dartington Hall in 1928. In 1930, Elmhirst paid for Burrowes to visit Germany, and she spent some time at the Wigman School in Dresden, and wrote to Elmhirst of her experiences there.
Leslie Burrowes, ‘Typed Transcript of Letter to Dorothy Elmhirst’, dated 6 May 1930, NRCD LB/E/i/i.
Mary Wigman, ‘The Philosophy of Modern Dance’, In Selma Jeanne Cohen, ed., Dance as a Theatre Art, 149–153 (New York: Harper & Row, 1933, 1974) (originally published in Europa 1, no. 1 (May–July)).
Mary Wigman, ‘Das “Land Ohne Tanz”’, Tanzgemeinschaft 1, no. 2 (April 1929): 12–13.
Mary Wigman, ‘Der Neue Künstlerische Tanz Und Das Theater’, Tanzgemeinschaft 1, no. 1 (1929): 1–9.
Mary Wigman, ‘Rudolf Von Laban Zum Geburtstag’, Schrifttanz 2, no. 4 (1929): 65–66.
Mary Wigman, ‘Der Tanzer Und Das Theater’, Blätter des Hessischen Landestheater 7 (1929/1930): 49–58.
Mary Wigman, ‘Der Tänzer’, Tanzgemeinschaft: Vierteljahrschrift für tänzerisches Kultur 2, no. 2 (1930): 1–2.
Mary Wigman, ‘Wie Ich Zu Albert Talhoffs Totenmal Stehe’, Der Tanz 3, no. 6 (June 1930): 3–4.
Mary Wigman, ‘Composition in Pure Movement’, Modern Music 8, no. 2 (January/February 1931): 20–22.
Mary Wigman, ‘The Mood of the Modern Dance’, Theatre Magazine 52, no. 6 (January 1931): 45, 62.
Mary Wigman, ‘The World and the Theatre: Wigman Writes of Dancers’, Theatre Arts 15, no. 12 (December 1931): 966–968.
Mary Wigman, ‘Mein Erster Erfolg’, Die schöne Frau 7, no. 9 (1931/1932): 1–2.
Mary Wigman, ‘Wer Kann Tanzen, Wer Darf Tanzen?’, Der Tanz 5, no. 11 (1932): 3–4.
Mary Wigmann (sic), ‘How I Arrange My Ballets and Dances. A Symposium. vii. A Record of an Interview with The Dance Journal’, The Dance Journal 4, no. 3 (1932): 671–673.
Mary Wigman, ‘Das Tanzerlebnis’, Die Musik 11 (1933): 801–802.
Mary Wigman, In Rudolf Bach, ed., Das Mary Wigman Werk (Dresden: Carl Reissner, 1933).
Marion Kant in Lilian Karina and Marion Kant, Hitler’s Dancers: German Modern Dance and the Third Reich [Translated from German] (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003).
See Manning, Ecstasy and the Demon, 146–147; Mary Wigman, ‘Der Tanzer Und Das Theater’, Blätter des Hessischen Landestheater 7 (1929/1930): 49–58.
First published as Mary Wigman, ‘Der Tänzer’, Tanzgemeinschaft: Vierteljahrschriftür für tänzerisches Kultur 2, no. 2 (1930): 1–2. The section on Turning discussed here begins: In der Mitte des Raumes dreht sie sich mit Schritten, die klein, schnell sind, um sich selbst. Schneller werden die Schritte, höher die Streckung auf den Spitzen, stärker die Spannung des Körpers. Rasend im Schwung dreht sie sich um den eigenen Mittelpunkt. Plötzlich geschieht das Selt-same: sie hebt sich über den Boden, steht still in der Luft, ruhige Schwebe. Wohl weiß sie, daß sie weiter dreht, aber sie fühlt die Bewegung nicht mehr. Gehoben, ganz leicht, schwebt sie, die große Seligkeit tragend.
Mary Wigman, ‘The Dancer’, In Walter Sorell, ed. and trans., The Mary Wigman Book: Her Writings, 117–121 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1975), 118.
A Jooss Leeder School of Dance Prospectus (c. 1936) (author’s copy) makes brief reference to ballet as part of the curriculum as follows: ‘Dance Technique.… Training in such values of Classical Ballet as are of general importance is included’ (n.p.). Anne Hutchinson-Guest, who was a student from 1936 to 1938, recalls that during her time there was very little ballet taught: ‘Sad to say, “ballet” was a dirty word at the Jooss-Leeder School. It was scorned, frowned upon, derided.… Before I came, one ballet class a week was on the schedule, but unfortunately that had been dropped. During my years only once was a ballet class given’. Ann Hutchinson Guest, ‘The Jooss-Leeder School at Dartington Hall’, Dance Chronicle 29, no. 2 (2006): 161–194, 176.
See Michael Huxley, ‘Kurt Jooss in Exile in England’, Discourses in Dance 5, no. 1 (2012): 39–58.
Most evident in New Dance (1936) and her writing about its composition in both its extant forms: Doris Humphrey, ‘New Dance’, In Selma Jeanne Cohen, ed., Doris Humphrey: An Artist First, 238–244 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, c. 1936, 1972);
Doris Humphrey, ‘New Dance’, In Sali Ann Kriegsman, ed., Modern Dance in America: The Bennington Years, 284–286 (New York: Harper Row, c. 1936, 1981).
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Huxley, M. (2015). We (Dancers) Are Standing at the Beginning. In: The Dancer’s World, 1920–1945: Modern Dancers and Their Practices Reconsidered. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137439215_3
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