Making Dance Modern: Knowledge, Politics, and German Modern Dance, 1890 – 1927 Ana Isabel Keilson Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2017 © 2017 Ana Isabel Keilson All Rights Reserved Abstract Making Dance Modern: Knowledge, Politics, and German Modern Dance, 1890 – 1927 Ana Isabel Keilson Between 1890 and 1927, a group of dancers, musicians, and writers converged in Germany, where they founded an artistic movement that has come to be known as German modern dance. This dissertation provides a history of the origins of this movement and its central figures, including Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, Isadora Duncan, Mary Wigman, Rudolf Laban, Hans Brandenburg, and Valeska Gert. These figures, I show, developed modern dance in an attempt to theorize and transform the social order. With the exception of Gert, this was a social order based upon principles of stability, unity, and consensus. Modern dancers promoted this order through practices of performance, pedagogy, and writing; they elaborated their ideas in conversation with contemporary and historical debates in Western theatrical music, natural science, philosophy, and politics. Their efforts sought to demonstrate that the coordinated movement of society hinged upon a logic and order inherent to the physical movements of the individual dancer, whose dancing body and the knowledge it contained formed a perfect model for all bodies. In contrast to many of their contemporaries in literature and the arts, German modern dancers developed what this dissertation labels as “embodied conservatism,” which was an attempt to actively shape society according to principles of physical alignment, harmony, and order. Though embodied conservatism was not a discrete program for politics, by the First World War it became a platform for ideas and values of the Weimar political right. These included questions about human agency and freedom, which were foundational to the development of modern dance beginning with Jaques-Dalcroze and Duncan, and which dancers such as Wigman and Laban made central to their respective approaches to dance. This dissertation shows how, particularly after 1919, modern dancers in Germany transformed questions of social sovereignty and the individual’s capacity for creative genesis into questions of national identity perceived as vital to the maintenance of a stable society. This dissertation concludes by arguing that embodied conservatism enabled German modern dancers to conceive of National Socialism as an organic extension of their original vision for social order. Table of Contents Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………..ii Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………………v Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………. 1 Modern Harmony Part I 1890 – 1913 Chapter 1………………………………………………………………………………………... 40 The Moving Self and the Social Order: Émile Jaques-Dalcroze and the Origins of Rythmique, 1890 - 1905 Chapter 2………………………………………………………………………………………... 89 The Metabolic Movement of Isadora Duncan and Ernst Haeckel, 1899 - 1909 Chapter 3……………………………………………………………………………..………... 143 Nature, Man, Movement: Dance and the Institute Jaques-Dalcroze at Hellerau, 1906 - 1913 Part II 1913 – 1927 Chapter 4…………………………………………………………………………………….… 182 Mary Wigman and the Sovereign Self, 1913 - 1927 Chapter 5………………………………………………………………………………………. 251 Making Dance Modern: Rudolf Laban and the Science of Dance, 1919 - 1927 Chapter 6………………………………………………………………………………………. 309 The Social Theory of Hans Brandenburg and Valeska Gert Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………….. 352 From Harmony to Happiness: German Modern Dance, 1928 – 1936 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………360 i Acknowledgments I came to this project as a dancer. Many of the artists chronicled in this dissertation founded the dance techniques, schools, and systems in which I received my professional training beginning at a young age. My desire as a dancer to understand the historical underpinnings – and historical lacunae – of this tradition stimulated my decision to come graduate school, to learn the German language, and to engage in the study of history. This was an undertaking that I could not have done alone, and there are many people to whom I owe my thanks. First, to Sam Moyn, my academic adviser. Sam has been unfailingly supportive of my work from the day I wandered into his office as a prospective student and handed him a research paper that I’d written in my spare time about a dancer named Mary Wigman. Though many individuals have challenged the basic premise of this project, Sam’s understanding of it has come as second nature, and for that alone I am grateful. Second, my thanks to Debbie Coen, whose questions and feedback have shaped my ideas in ways too numerous to count. Her work is a constant source of inspiration to me, and I am honored to have studied so closely with her. Lynn Garafola encouraged me to write that research paper on Wigman, and her faith in my thinking mind as well as my moving body has given me the confidence to follow my research intuition and to stand my intellectual ground. It is safe to say that without them, this project would not exist. Special thanks to Adelheid Voskuhl for her feedback over this past year, and to Alys X. George for her questions and generous reflections during my dissertation defense. A number of institutions have provided me with the time and support necessary to complete this project. Thanks to the History Department at Columbia University, and especially to Susan Pedersen, Adam Kosto, Patrick McMorrow, and Sharee Nash. Thanks to Casey Blake, ii Angela Darling, and the American Studies Department at Columbia University for giving me a second home at Columbia. Thanks to Anke te Heesen, Kerstin Brudnachowski, and my colleagues at the Lehrstühl für Wissensgeschichte, Humboldt Universität (Berlin); to the History Department at Sciences Po (Paris); to Dorothee Brantz and Elisabeth Asche at the Center for Metropolitan Studies (CMS), Technische Universität (Berlin), who supported me during the early stages of my dissertation research. My final year of writing was sponsored by a dissertation completion grant from the Council for European Studies (CES). Research support for this project has come from the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst), the Barnard Alumnae Association for Graduate Study, the John Anson Kittredge Foundation, and the Lillian Karina Foundation (Stockholm). There are many archivists and librarians who provided crucial assistance along the way. Before graduate school, I had the honor of serving as assistant to David Vaughan, who taught me everything I need to know about dance archives. Thanks to Satu Mariia Harjanne and Peter Bohlin at the Carina Ari Library (Stockholm); Thomas Thorausch and Donatella Cacciola at the Tanzarchiv Köln; Gabriele Ruiz at the Tanzarchiv Leipzig; and Dr. Thomas Bach at the Ernst Haeckel Haus at the Universität Jena. Special thanks to the archival assistants at the Performing Arts Division of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and to Dr. Renate Rätz, who generously gave me her time and knowledge in our sessions spent transcribing Mary Wigman’s illegible handwriting. Drafts of these chapters have been presented at various conferences and colloquia, and my thanks to their participants for their questions and observations. Among them include Columbia University’s Intellectual and Cultural History Workshop (ICHW); the Graduate Conference in Political Theory and Intellectual History, Cambridge University (2016); the U.S. iii Intellectual History Conference (USIH) at Stanford University (2016); the Futures of Intellectual History Conference at NYU (2015); and the Society of Dance History Scholars / Congress on Research in Dance (SDHS / CORD) conference at the University of Iowa (2014). I am deeply thankful to mentors, colleagues, and friends. Thanks to Marion Kant, Volker Berghahn, Stefanos Geroulanos, and Susan Manning for detailed feedback on chapter drafts, and to Andreas Huyssen for feedback on my dissertation prospectus. Thanks to Elizabeth Schwall, Joanna Dee Das, Victoria Philips, and Jens Giersdorf for their questions and insights. For conversations and long walks, my thanks to Stephen Wertheim, Kristen Loveland, Saskia Schäfer, An Paenhuysen, Christoph Schaub, Marion Kadi, Laure Poupard, Joshua Hudelson, Abram Kaplan, Tom Meaney, Jude Webre, and David Hayes. I wish to thank my family. Daniel McCusker and John Kramer introduced me to modern dance and since then they have given me the space to write chapters and to make dances. Robert and Kristine Reynolds have shown me views of the cape from the water, and cheered me on to the finish line. My mother, Bobbie Keilson, has given me a room of my own, supporting me with a love and patience that knows no end. It is to her – and to the memory of my father, Len – that I dedicate this work. This dissertation is my second child: Liva Ruth, you are my first. You have shaped my thoughts in ways I am only beginning to understand, and I thank you for teaching me to discover the world. Finally, for Justin Reynolds, my partner of the mind and heart, I find movement more than words. With grace, passion, and strength he has lifted me up and set me in motion. In short, he has shown me how to dance. iv To my mother, and the memory of my father v Introduction Modern Harmony One cannot escape from this brutal and aggressive logic that exhibits itself in all the values and non-values