DOCSLIB.ORG

PDF Download Rudolf Laban

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
PDF Download Rudolf Laban RUDOLF LABAN : AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Valerie Preston-Dunlop | 370 pages | 12 Nov 2018 | Dance Books Ltd | 9781852731243 | English | Hampshire, United Kingdom Rudolf Laban : An extraordinary life PDF Book However, after a short time spent in a military school, Rudolf Laban decided that his real interest was art and, from to , he studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. This book, the first full biography of Laban, tells the remarkable story of his life of idealism, disillusion and determination. Amidst all this, Laban has created 25 Laban schools and choirs for the education of children and adults, men and women, professionals and amateurs right across Europe — all of this by the age of 50, by which time he had settled in Berlin, where he continues to keep a dance laboratory for his own research. Laban died on July 1, Her husband's job transferred them to Atlanta, where she transitioned to a full-time job as a medical transcriptionist while raising a family. The choreography of a ballet can now be recorded down to the finest movement, such as the position of the little finger on the left hand. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here He was a performer, a choreographer and a mentor, but his ideas were always part of a broader vision of movement as theatre art, as community celebration, as self-discovery. Recognized as a leading force in the European dance world, he was invited to choreograph the opening of the Olympics in Berlin. Laban, born in in Bratislava then a city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire , dropped out of military school to become a painter and moved to Munich at the age of twenty-eight to study choreography. For three years preceding the war, Laban was director of the Lago Maggiore summer festivals at Ascona, Switzerland, where he headed a self-sustaining art colony. Close Search. Latterly her focus has been on establishing Choreological Studies as the practically-oriented scholarship of dance as a performing art, contextualising Laban's movement theories with those of other dance artists and researchers. Though he began as a painter, architect and illustrator it is in movement and dance that Laban made his lasting impact. For this purpose, the premises at Addlestone were given to the Trust, and the Art of Movement Studio was incorporated. Photo Johann Adam Maisenbach. Christopher Turner is an editor of Cabinet. His life-long involvement in movement and dance began in Munich in when he was commissioned to choreograph mass events for the Bavarian carnivals. This song embodies that all-encompassing love and gets the whole room groovin'. During World War II, when Mars Bars were mass-produced for soldiers, Laban was called in to increase productivity on the assembly line. As a result of their work together, they jointly wrote Effort, a presentation of their findings. In some of these images he blended in caricatures of faces and animals; we believe different animals represented different people, for example Lisa Ullmann his colleague and companion for the last 20 years of his life is purported to be characterised as a cat. In , Laban established the German Society for Written Dance and began to organize dance congresses and publish books on movement theory, establishing himself as the leading authority on dance in Germany. After studying architecture, stage design and drama, he became fascinated by dance, seeking to understand movement in a new way, without the confines of classical ballet technique. Wells, Herman Hesse, Isadora Duncan, Magnus Hirschfeld, and Franz Kafka spent time there, along with a nonconformist crowd of back-to-nature types, nudists, pacifists, feminists, and libertine philosophers. In , an open-air production was prepared for 1, performers, the parts being notated and sent to the sixty participating choirs in different cities to be rehearsed ahead of time. In subsequent years, he established many movement choirs in addition to those that were branches of the already existing Laban schools. A visionary, a mystic, a lover, a leader, dancer, an artist, a teacher, a theorist. He married twice and fathered nine children; at one point, he lived with two women at once. He developed an internationally used movement notation Labanotation , while uncovering the basic principles of movement structure and purpose. These will be available separately: they are not included with the book. The ecstasy of movement Laban embodied is transformed into its apparent opposite: an abstract geometry of carefully ordered shapes. As an Austro-Hungarian choreographer, dancer, teacher, philosopher, and writer, he worked alone and in collaboration with such great figures of European modern dance as Mary Wigman and Kurt Jooss. His legacy is not in great choreographic works, but in theoretical methods deeply based on practice. In the closing scene, we see disciples opening studios and schools all over Britain, under his guidance and unbeknownst to him, all over the world by the earlier followers who were scattered years before. His mother intervenes. Rudolf Laban is most known by his patented system of movement notation through symbols called Labanotation or Kinetography Laban, which enables to record any movement of human body. Rudolf Laban : An extraordinary life Writer Photo Johann Adam Maisenbach. But Marissa Osato likes to give her students an unexpected challenge: to resist hitting the beats. Becoming one of Laban's apprentices, she went with him into factories, with Lisa Ullmann into schools, with British Dance Theatre into performing, with Kurt Jooss and Albrecht Knust in Germany into notation and theatre work. He charted the multiple forms and functions of the body in action; its patterns of movement in the surrounding space and the expressive qualities of movement that affect communication and individual characterisation. To the untrained eye, Kinetography looks esoteric and occult, but to the few who can read it the complex strips of hieroglyphs allow them to recreate dances much as their original choreographers imagined them. Amidst all this, Laban has created 25 Laban schools and choirs for the education of children and adults, men and women, professionals and amateurs right across Europe — all of this by the age of 50, by which time he had settled in Berlin, where he continues to keep a dance laboratory for his own research. The analysis is flexible, providing a means of observing, understanding and describing movement — both quantitatively and qualitatively — which can be applied to all forms of movement and areas of body movement research. Language: German. As an Austro-Hungarian choreographer, dancer, teacher, philosopher, and writer, he worked alone and in collaboration with such great figures of European modern dance as Mary Wigman and Kurt Jooss. His mother intervenes. By his work and inspiration at both the professional and community levels, had spawned a host of Laban Schools across Central Europe and raised his profile as the foremost figure in the evolution and development of European Modern Dance. And while brighter, more in-person days may be around the corner—or at least on the horizon—parents may be facing yet another hurdle to help our dancers through: virtual summer-intensive auditions. Today, his ideas have generated innovations in dance, acting, performance, the study of non-verbal communication, in ergonomics, industry and management, personality assessment and psychotherapy. He has become an artist, a dancer. Now that he was disabled, Kinetography allowed him to dance instead in his mind. Notify me of new posts via email. The boys sees all of this, not as you or I would see it, but as a series of movements in space, weight and time. Language: Italian. Dream artist. Through architecture even, he observes the movement of bodies in space. Having fallen out of favour with the regime, Laban left Germany in and, after some time in Paris, arrived in England in However, in he was called on to work in a new capacity. Posted on November 25, Teachers Trending. Laban abandoned his army cadetship to become a student of art and architecture, first in Munich and then in Paris. Happy th Birthday Mr Shepard! Despite his experimental approaches and his move to free dance from the constraints of prior dance forms and musical structures, Laban became an established figure in dance in Germany and Europe and was head of the Berlin Opera Ballet when the Nazis came to power, holding that position until Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:. In , Lisa Ullman, who had been his close associate during these years, opened her Art of Movement Studio in Manchester. During this visit, he started Irma-Betz on the study of script. In May , when the choreographer Rudolf von Laban came to America on an ethnographic mission to record Native American dances, a reporter accosted him before he had even stepped ashore. Rudolf Laban was all these things and more. The author, Valerie Preston-Dunlop, became a student of Rudolf Laban's at the age of sixteen, and has remained involved with his work throughout her career. Recent Publications And so, I will ask you to imagine the film I have produced about his life rolling before your eyes, capturing, I hope, the essence of Laban. In Laban's footsteps. He is passionate and obsessive about this and by the age of 40 his family life ceases as he runs two dance theatre companies, a school, a movement choir, writes articles and books and creates dance works. Please login. Another scene shows the same boy in the countryside of Sarajevo or Bosnia. Notify me of new comments via email. Their songs are simultaneously stripped-down and complex and feel transcendent. In , we learned that there are some unique advantages of virtual summer programs: the lack of travel and therefore the reduced cost and the increased access to classes led by top artists and teachers among them.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 2014 Latent Tradition in Modern Dancing
    IV LISBON SUMMER SCHOOL FOR THE STUDY OF CULTURE Latencies: Europe 1914 - 2014 Latent tradition in modern dancing: The body politics of “The Green Table” (Cristina Graça) Abstract In the turmoil of the Weimar Republic German choreographer Kurt Jooss created The Green Table (1932), a farsighted ballet that critically looked back at the atrocities and suffering inflicted by of World War I and anticipated the events of World War II. Although Jooss´s piece drew directly from the ongoing political climate, the narrative was placed in an untraceable location and time, thus rendering it a timeless, universal protest against war that made The Green Table artistically and aesthetically resilient. In this paper we will analyze how Jooss expressed political opinions and conveyed social commentary, claiming his share of the sensible in Rincière´s words, through both experimental and traditional movement (modern dance and ballet), and how dance as a non-verbal art form used its instrument, the human body, to convey images of tradition, repression and cultural symbolisms of race and gender. Key words: gendered body; tradition; political commentary; representational power. 1 Quite often dance tends to be thought of as apolitical. Yet it goes with no contention that dancing bodies and the movement they perform are in their own way political, enabling the artist to intervene in the public sphere. Even when it apparently becomes abstract and self-referential, as in some Balanchine ballets, or in Merce Cunningham´s choreographies, dance still conveys political
    [Show full text]
  • The Experience Theater Choreographed by Pina Bausch
    Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Presença ISSN: 2237-2660 Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul Pereira, Sayonara O Teatro da Experiência coreografado por Pina Bausch Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Presença, vol. 8, núm. 3, 2018, Julho-Setembro, pp. 487-521 Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul DOI: 10.1590/2237-266076215 Disponível em: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=463556259005 Como citar este artigo Número completo Sistema de Informação Científica Redalyc Mais informações do artigo Rede de Revistas Científicas da América Latina e do Caribe, Espanha e Portugal Site da revista em redalyc.org Sem fins lucrativos acadêmica projeto, desenvolvido no âmbito da iniciativa acesso aberto E‐ISSN 2237‐2660 The Experience Theater choreographed by Pina Bausch Sayonara Pereira Universidade de São Paulo – USP, São Paulo/SP, Brazil ABSTRACT – The Experience Theater choreographed by Pina Bausch – A theater where the spectator is involved in all senses, offering welcoming conditions. In the work of Pina Bausch, everyday body behavior is not just a matter of style; her dance develops content with a proper writing, inviting the spectator to experience a poetic reality. For this purpose, the article initially presents a historical line of Tanztheater, its attributes and interrelationships, closing with the specific characteristics of four works of the choreographer, created in the period comprising the initial two decades (1974-1989) of her fruitful production, and which were watched live by the author of the text. Keywords: Tanztheater. Pina Bausch. Experience Theater. Choreographies. RÉSUMÉ – Le Théâtre de l’Expérience chorégraphié par Pina Bausch – Un théâtre où le spectateur est impliqué dans tous vos sens, en offrant des conditions d’accueil.
    [Show full text]
  • Download the Transcript
    CF VDC interview Melissa Obenauf/Živili 1 VDC Interview Transcript Živili/Melissa Pintar Obenauf 2.21.18 Total Time: 1:59:24 OhioDance Verne-Riffe Building 77 S. High St. Studio 3 Columbus, OH, 43215 Key: CF: Candace Feck MO: Melissa Obenauf JC: Jessica Cavender JD: Jane D’Angelo CF: We begin our long-awaited conversation! MO: Yes! CF: Let’s begin by talking about what inspired the founding of Živili, what led up to it, and how it began. MO: It’s an oft-told story, so I have no problem telling it again. When I graduated from college, and I graduated from OSU, where I had what was called “the elective sequence in dance” — so, basically I had two majors. When I graduated, my father, who is of Croatian descent — my grandparents are both from Croatia — said “Let’s go to Croatia! And let’s see where Ma and Pa are from.” And I said, “Sure — let’s do it!” So, I had grown up in a household where my mom was a professional violinist, so I was real involved with music, and had taken ballet from a very young age at Miami Conservatory1 —Miami is where I grew up. I was wanting to know more about my heritage, and had recently attended a dance company performance of a Yugoslavian dance company that had come to Miami, Florida. I was entranced with that and thought “Oooh! This is something I would like to know more about.” I had taken Folk Dance classes while I was in college with Maggie Patton,2 and loved folk dance.
    [Show full text]
  • Tanztheater, Pina Bausch and the Ongoing Influence of Her Legacy
    AusArt Journal for Research in Art. 5 (2017), 1, pp. 219-228 ISSN 2340-8510 www.ehu.es/ojs/index.php/ausart e-ISSN 2340-9134 DOI: 10.1387/ausart.17704 UPV/EHU TANZTHEATER, PINA BAUSCH AND THE ONGOING INFLUENCE OF HER LEGACY Oihana Vesga Bujan1 London Contemporary Dance School. Postgraduate Choreography in The Place Introducction Pina Bausch and the Tanztheater Wuppertal have been fundamental in the inter- national establishment of Tanztheater as a new and independent dance genre, and their impact is evident and vibrant in the current contemporary dance scene. To support this statement I will first unfold the history of modern dance in Germany, from Rudolf Laban and the German expressive dance movement of the 1920’s, to the creations of Kurt Jooss and finally the formation of Tanztheater Wuppertal in 1973. I will then study Bausch’s life and work, and reveal the essential and unique characteristics of her style, to ultimately prove the ongoing influence of her legacy, looking at one of the final pieces of the 2013 London based choreographic competition The Place Prize. Keywords: TANZTHEATER; BAUSCH, PINA; CHOREOGRAPHY; THEATER TANZTHEATER, PINA BAUSCH Y LA INFLUENCIA ININTERRUMPIDA DE SU LEGADO Resumen Pina Bausch y ThanztheaterWuppertal han sido fundamentales en la difusión interna- cional del Tanztheater/Danza-Teatro, como un nuevo e independiente genero de danza, con evi- dente y substancial impacto en el actual escenario de la danza contemporánea. Para remarcar dicha importancia, señalo en primer lugar, el recorrido de la danza contemporánea en Alemania, desde Rudolf Laban y el movimiento de danza expresiva alemana de los años 1920; hasta las creaciones de KurtJoos, y finalizo con la creación de TanztheaterWuppertal en 1973.
    [Show full text]
  • Dancers Under Duress: the Forgotten Resistance of Fireflies Laure Guilbert
    Dancers Under Duress: The Forgotten Resistance of Fireflies Laure Guilbert “The dance of the fireflies, this moment of grace that resists the world of terror, is the most ephemeral, the most fragile thing that exists”. Georges Didi-Huberman, Survivance des lucioles (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 2009). The “Unknown Dancer” She was sent to Drancy, deported from there to Auschwitz, and In the past years, I have undertaken many archival trips in Europe was gassed upon her arrival. and to Australia, searching for traces of the life of the German- speaking dancers and choreographers who fled the Third Reich Apart from these tragic cases, which have been detailed by other and occupied Europe. During that time, it became clear to me that researchers, I made a discovery that left me speechless while read- much work also needs to be undertaken so that we might gain a ing The Informed Heart: Autonomy in a Mass Age by the psychologist deeper understanding of the tragedy: those dancers, choreogra- Bruno Bettelheim from Vienna. In his book, Bettelheim analyzes the phers and dance producers who were trapped in ghettos and de- resources he managed to mobilize for surviving his own internment ported to extermination camps. In this paper I outline several fields from 1938-1939 in the Dachau concentration camp near Munich, of reflection that have enabled me to begin tracing the plight of and Buchenwald, near Weimar. Bettelheim at one point describes those artists caught up in Nazi totalitarianism. an event that takes place in Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. He sets the scene at the entrance to a gas chamber, and de- Certainly not all escaped the eye of the storm, not the least be- scribes a naked woman ordered to dance by an SS officer who had ing René Blum, director of the renowned Ballets Russes de Monte learned she was a dancer.
    [Show full text]
  • The Spectator As Mitreisender in the Tanztheater of Pina Bausch
    DOCTORAL THESIS A Perplexing Pilgrimage: The Spectator as Mitreisender in the Tanztheater of Pina Bausch Campbell Daly, Janis Award date: 2009 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 30. Sep. 2021 A Perplexing Pilgrimage: The Spectator as Mitreisender in the Tanztheater of Pina Bausch By Janis Campbell Daly, BA (Hons), MA A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of PhD School of Arts Roehampton University University of Surrey July 2009 Abstract Focusing on spectator issues and performative processes in postmodern dance performance, the thesis offers a new ecological approach for the analysis of dance based on the premiss that the spectator’s interactive role as Mitreisender or ‘fellow traveller’ in Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater is integral to the creation of the live experience and to a realisation of her work in performance. Centred on the multi- faceted role of Mitreisender as intrinsic to Bausch’s collaborative approach, the limited scope of phenomenological discourse to spectator-centred accounts highlights the need for a broader analytical approach to address the interactive dialectic between spectator, performer and their sensory environment and their physiological engagement in Bausch’s interrogative, exploratory processes.
    [Show full text]
  • Dance and Exile Research and Showcasing in Austria – an Attempt at a Chronology
    גרט ויזנטל רוקדת את יצירתה אנדנטה, וינה, 08/1906, גרטרוד קראוס רוקדת את יצירתה וודקה, וינה 1924, באדיבות מורה ציפרוביץ, וינה 1920, צילום: לא ידוע, באדיבות מוזיאון התיאטרון צילום: מוריץ נהר, באדיבות מוזיאון התיאטרון מוזיאון התיאטרון בוינה Mura Ziperowitsch, Wien, 1920, Photo: Unknown, Courtesy of Theatermuseum -KHM – Museumsverband Gertrud Kraus in Wodka, Wien 1924, Photo: Martind Grete Wiesenthal in Ändante con moto, Wien, Imboden, Courtesy of Theatermusem – KHM 08/1906, Photo: Moritz Naher, Courtesy of Theatermusuem, KHM-Museumsverband Dance and Exile Research and Showcasing in Austria – An Attempt at a Chronology Andrea Amort The broadly defined topic of exile, to a varying extent still relevant Nazi dictatorship. Presciently, Gertrud Kraus left Austria in 1935 to dance )modern dance and ballet( today, mainly covers those and emigrated to Palestine/Israel. Rudolf von Laban )Bratislava dance practitioners in Austria who, in the wake of Austro-Fascism 1879 – Weybridge, Surrey 1958(, the influential founder of Aus- and the racist and political measures of Nazi dictatorship, were druckstanz )expressionist dance(, is nowadays considered a na- restricted in their activities and went into inner emigration or else tional figure especially in Germany and England and, in recent were active in resistance, persecuted, expelled, or murdered. In years, also in Slovakia despite having been born in the Austro- dance scholarship also artists who had emigrated much earlier Hungarian Monarchy. He left Berlin in 1937 and escaped via Paris on and were committed to Zionism )among others, the Ornstein to England. sisters and Jan Veen, alias Hans Wiener ]sic[( are included in this topic. No precise statistics of the persecuted and murdered are avail- able; we estimate, however, that at least 200 dance practitioners All dance practitioners mentioned in the following – with the ex- were affected.
    [Show full text]
  • UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles From
    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles From Community to Humanity: Dance as Intangible Cultural Heritage A dissertation completed in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Culture and Performance by Filip Petkovski 2021 © Copyright by Filip Petkovski 2021 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION From Community to Humanity: Dance as Intangible Cultural Heritage by Filip Petkovski Doctor of Philosophy in Culture and Performance University of California, Los Angeles, 2021 Professor Anurima Banerji, Co-Chair Professor Janet O’Shea, Co-Chair Abstract My dissertation project examines the gradual phases of recontextualizing, folklorizing, heritagizing, and choreographing dance in Macedonia, Serbia, and Croatia, and in the Former Yugoslavia in general. In order to demonstrate how dance becomes intangible cultural heritage, I combine UNESCO archival materials with ethnographic research and interviews with dancers, choreographers, and heritage experts. While I trace how the discourses around folklore and intangible cultural heritage were used in the construction of the Yugoslav, and later in the post- Yugoslav nation states, I also write about the hegemonic relationship between dance and institutions. I emphasize dance as a vehicle for mediating ideas around authenticity, distinctiveness, and national identity, while also acknowledging how the UNESCO process of safeguarding and listing culture allows countries such as Macedonia, Serbia, and Croatia to achieve international recognition. By studying the relationship between dance, archives, and UNESCO conventions, we can understand the intersection between institutions and issues ii around nationalism, but also how discourses of dance shifted dance production and reception in various historical and political contexts during and after the existence of the Yugoslav state.
    [Show full text]
  • Eureka and Serendipity: the Rudolf Von Laban Icosahedron and Buckminster Fuller’S Jitterbug
    Bridges 2010: Mathematics, Music, Art, Architecture, Culture Eureka and Serendipity: The Rudolf von Laban Icosahedron and Buckminster Fuller’s Jitterbug Caspar Schwabe Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts 2640 Nishinoura, Tsurajima-cho Okayama 712-8505, JAPAN E-mail: [email protected] Abstract Rudolf von Laban’s (1879-1958) famous dance notation (1926) is based on the icosahedron. Laban strongly believed that our anatomy is built according to the laws of what he called a “dynamic crystallization”. The rational six-sided cube could not describe the movement of the human body sufficiently. The idea of using the twenty-sided icosahedron as a matrix was a serendipitious discovery of Laban and it took place long before the scientific boom started around the icosahedron with the finding of the icosahedral viruses in 1959 and quasicrystals in 1984, which all are based on a “dynamic” or icosahedral symmetry. Laban’s idea of the reunification of mind and body through a “hands-on” icosahedron model is a good example of the avant-garde movement just about 100 years ago. Buckminster Fuller’s (1895-1983) discovery of the “jitterbug” transformation (1948) was his “eureka” experience, and “Eureka” was the title of an emotional paper he wrote in the same year. It is the favorite “hands-on” model to demonstrate the “synergetics” concept. It states that regular geometric bodies do not stand statically next to one another but they are subjected to various phases - the tetrahedron, octahedron, icosahedron, cuboctahedron – of a process of mutual transformation. The epoch-making confirmation of the “jitterbug” came only after Fuller’s death.
    [Show full text]
  • Paper 7 Modern Dance and Its Development In
    PAPER 7 MODERN DANCE AND ITS DEVELOPMENT IN THE WORLD AFTER 1960 (USA, EUROPE, SEA) MODERN EXPERIMENTS IN INDIAN CLASSICAL DANCE, NEW WAVE AFTER 1930, UDAYSHANKAR AND LATER CONTEMPORARY, CREATIVE ARTISTS MODULE 16 MODERN DANCE IN GERMANY AND FRANCE According to historians, modern dance has two main birthplaces: Europe (Germany specifically) and the United States of America. Although it evolves as a concert dance form, it has no direct roots in any ballet companies, schools, or artists. Germany is the birthplace of modern dance, theatre realism, and both dance and theatre production dramaturgy. The country’s history is interwoven with its dance, music, art, literature, architecture, religion, and history. In addition to the direct dance training and rehearsals, students will see performances and visit museums and other cultural sites in one of Europe’s most exciting capitals. Contemporary dance in Germany is characterized by a vibrant globalization and combines elements from drama, performance and musical theatre. It is the story of three passionate choreographers and their colleagues who created European modern dance in the 20th century despite the storms of war and oppression. It begins with Rudolph Laban, innovator and guiding force, and continues with the careers of his two most gifted and influential students, Mary Wigman and 1 Kurt Jooss. Included are others who made significant contributions: Hanya Holm, Sigurd Leeder, Gret Palucca, Berthe Trumpy, Vera Skoronel, Yvonne Georgi and Harold Kreutzberg. The German strain of contemporary dance as it has manifested itself in the United States is usually overlooked if not unacknowledged. There is general agreement that modern dance, a 20th-century phenomenon, has been dominated by Americans.
    [Show full text]
  • The Role of Dance in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games
    SEVENTH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM FOR OLYMPIC RESEARCH 12 The Role of Dance in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games Why Competition became Festival and Art became Political ELIZABETH A. HANLEY - USA ive Olympic rings: the symbol of the modern Olympic Games. At one time there were also five Olympic Art Competitions: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature. But, what about the art of dance? Where was F dance in this mix of art competitions? In order to comprehend fully the role of dance at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, it is essential to take a brief look at the historical background of the Olympic Art Competitions. When the enthusiastic young Frenchman, the Baron Pierre de Coubertin, achieved his dream of reviving the Ancient Olympic Games as an international festival in the spring of 1896, with Athens as the first modern host city, he also desired to combine art with athletic feats, as in the ancient model. However, the first modern Games was not the time to introduce his artistic aspirations, and the succeeding two Olympic Games faced many obstacles. In Paris 1900 and St. Louis 1904, combining the Olympic Games with a World's Fair in each instance did not bode well for adding art competitions, and the survival of the Olympic Games was threatened. When Athens clamored loudly soon afterwards to host the Olympic Games permanently, since Greece was the original home of the Ancient Olympic Games, the Baron was not pleased; his vision was to share the Games with the world each Olympiad. However, while in Greece in 1896, Coubertin agreed to interim Games in the city of Athens.
    [Show full text]
  • Rudolf Laban and Kurt Jooss: the Good, the Bad and the Very (Un)Fortunate
    Rudolf Laban and Kurt Jooss: the good, the bad and the very (un)fortunate In his autobiography, written at the great age of 26, Jooss wrote: “I landed at the Stuttgart Academie of Music with the idea of becoming a singer, but I was most dissatisfied. I studied drama and with great success, but I remained empty […] A chance meeting introduced me to Rudolf von Laban and to the world of dance, which was quite unknown to me.”1 Later Jooss was to recall this meeting in more detail in his interview with John Hodgson - as a member of the German Youth Movement Jooss had dance classes learning German folk dance. His un- named teacher knew the editor of die Tat which had published two articles by Laban. This teacher asked the editor where Laban lived and they were delighted to learn that Laban was in Stuttgart.2 How fortunate then that Laban had settled in Stuttgart in the post-war instability that had left him unable to stay in Switzerland; the history of European Modern Dance may have been quite different if Jooss and Laban had not come together at this time. Jooss recognised this himself saying “It’s unimaginable luck to meet someone like Laban and to have him as a master. I think that was the greatest gift the gods could have given me.”3 Jooss described to Hodgson how he and Laban met one Sunday afternoon in July 1920 and that the following week they, Jooss and his teacher, went for a class with Laban where he gave Jooss the task of ‘You are a slave and you’ll be sacrificed’ to improvise.
    [Show full text]