BOOK REVIEWS

INDIVIDUALITY AND EXPRESSION:

THE AESTHETICS OF THE NEW GERMAN
DANCE, 1908-1936
New Studies in Aesthetics, Vol. 24
xii + 312 pp., 33 illustrations
Dianne Sheldon Howe
Peter Lang: New York,
Washington DC/Baltimore, Bern,
Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Vienna, Paris, 1996, ISBN 0-8204-2656-3

EMPIRE OF ECSTASY:
NUDITY AND MOVEMENT IN GERMAN
BODY CULTURE, 1910-1935
xvii 422 pp., 84 illustrations
+

Karl Toepfer
University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London,
1997, ISBN 0-520-20663-0

The authors of these two books look at one of the most powerful
influences on Western modern dance in the first half of this cen-
tury: the impact of German culture and aesthetics on the art of
movement. Both chose a similar period: 1908/1910-1935/1936,
and both chose to analyse this powerful movement by examining
its representatives. The perspectives are slightly different: one book
emphasises the more general body culture in Germany whereas
the other concentrates on the aesthetics of the artistic expressions
on expressive dance.
Dianne Sheldon Howe follows the aesthetics of Ausdruckstanz'
-

by looking at nine 'outstanding' dancers, some of whom were

writers and teachers at the same time: Grete Wiesenthal, Niddy
Impekoven, Mary Wigman, Gret Palucca, Berthe Trümpy Vera
Skoronel, Yvonne Georgi, Harald Kreutzberg and Valeska Gert.
Before we learn about the artistic lives of these dancers, the author
offers two introductory chapters on the general social, political and
intellectual situation in Germany; the first chapter searches for the

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roots of Ausdruckstanz, the second discusses the artistic system of

Ausdruckstanz.
The study begins with immediate statements that frame and
conduct the research work that follows; they concern criteria
for modern dance as well as essential influences on the dance
movement:
1. The distinctive individualism which highlights the aesthetics
of Ausdruckstanz and stood in marked contrast to the rise of
Nazism.
2. The revolutionary impact, which was directed against the
artificiality of structure, movement, and spectacle of the old
court ballet and created a desire to find a new way to move
which was capable of expressing the individual statement in the
form of a free artistic composition.
3. The avant garde movement in the arts, among them
Ausdruckstanz, which produced radical art forms in search of
a new subjective reality.
4. The main theme of Ausdruckstanz was humankind and its fate.
5. Ausdruckstanz with all its social, cultural and intellectual in-
fluences represented the leap of dance into the modern age.
6. The demise of Ausdruckstanz by 1936 which was caused by
the concentration on self expression. The movement was short
lived and lasted barely over a quarter of a century, though its
influence reached far beyond this period.
7. The aim of the representatives of Ausdruckstanz was to create
a universal dance that could be
sought by the experience itself.
8. Though Ausdruckstanz developed mainly in Germany, the
author 'counts' Austria and Switzerland 'into German cultural
life because the artists and ideas moved easily back and forth
across national borders within the
German-speaking nations'.
With a rapidly changing life around the turn of the century
the only thing 'that could be counted on' (p. 3) was what the artist
knew in his or her soul. But even the soul and the unconscious
were subject of the natural sciences. The perceptions of time and
space had been challenged radically. We are told that 'all of these
ideas', the ideas which Einstein, Planck, Freud or Jung developed,
'found their way into the art of the time with its emphasis in the
unconscious and confessions of inner truth. The artists desired to
present in their art universal and cosmic ideas and the simultaneity
or randomness of time'
(p. 4).
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 BOOK REVIEWS

In descriptive passages we can follow the change in German

social and cultural life, such as industrialisation with all its impli-
cations like urbanisation, growth of population, growth of the
cities or the lessening influence of the state church.
Chapter 2 deals with the evolution of Ausdruckstanz itself: the
beginnings in Munich before World War I; the Jaques-Dalcroze
branch near Dresden with its emphasis on music and musical
rhythm; Rudolf von Laban and his idea of the Movement choir;
the Dance Congresses and an attempt to understand the problem
of Ausdruckstanz and politics; and finally the author explains
why she chose the nine personalities that are portrayed in chapters
3-8. Each of these chapters offers a short biographical overview,
analyses dance technique or suggests a definition of the particular
dance and dance content, and describes the use of the medium
and the choreographic methods.
The book is a useful addition to studies on Ausdruckstanz
though it does not reach beyond the already known and discussed.
The chapters on the nine personalities, the main body of the book,
will probably prove to be the most helpful section for further
studies by providing material which otherwise has to be assembled
from many sources and archives. But this book lacks a theoretical
basis which would allow the investigation of Ausdruckstanz at
a deeper level. One of the most troublesome aspects of the book
is that there is no contemporary criticism of the principles of
Ausdruckstanz; there is no questioning of the application of philo-
sophical thoughts, of a certain 'Weltanschauung' mentioned.
Levinson, Lewitan and similar journalists and dance writers are
quoted only in connection with single dance works; their initiation
of fundamental discussions concerning the enemy groups of ballet
and modern dance in Germany, a Germanic belief system, the
introduction of racial categories and Wigman's concept of
Absolute dance', and the necessity of social involvement in dance
are left out completely.
It is a tempting idea to compare parallel developments in the
natural sciences and the arts. But here the translation from one
sphere into the other is constructed so directly and taken so literally
that it is hard to imagine any independent artistic development at
all. It reads though dancers and choreographers were busy em-
as

bodying quantum theory, atoms, electronics, etc., and fitting them

into some vaguely mystic but nevertheless scientifically respectable

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'Weltanschauung'.
Some statements are bold, but, unfortunately, nonsense: Ballet
'was a casualty of the First World War', probably because it
represented 'old courtly life', whatever time 'old' stands for. Why
it did not survive as it stood for 'bourgeois life as well' remains a
mystery. 'The other dance forms' which are seen as having been
'casualties' as well, are not mentioned (p. 9).
In order to understand the complex contradictions and differ-
ences in Ausdruckstanz multiple perspectives are needed. There-
fore various contemporary theoretical concepts, which illuminate
both the differences and fierce battles between the artists the
unifying ideas are essential to understand the phenomenon
Ausdruckstanz'. They are hardly mentioned.
Karl Toepfer's study is a very sophisticated and extensive
investigation into German body culture. It asks extremely
important questions about modernity and shows a very impressive
and thorough empirical research. It presents a huge amount of
material; the book can be used as a kind of reference for this
particular period.
The book has sixteen chapters. It begins with an analysis of the
peculiar quality of dance figures in photography at the time. Five
chapters are devoted to several aspects of nude culture and nude
dancing, and a seventh chapter to schools of bodily expressivity. A
further five chapters investigate the various dance arrangements:
solo dancing, pair dancing, group dancing, theatre dancing and
mass dancing, while the last three
chapters move to different areas,
to the questions of music and movement, of dance criticism, and
dance as image. The book concludes with thoughts on ecstasy
and modernity. Many chapters are further subdivided; the sub-
jects stated in the chapter headlines are often looked at through
personalities representing, portraying or characterising the par-
ticular question in a prominent way.
In his 'theoretical context' Toepfer asks about the elements of
'culture' and why and how nudity, movement and dance emerged
in Germany to take such an important place in the formation of a
modern culture. His main concern is 'to offer a fairly comprehen-
sive description and interpretation of specific achievements pecu-
liarly associated with Germanic ideas about what makes the body
modern' (p. 6). In order to achieve this aim, he poses the following
problems:
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 BOOK REVIEWS

1. How can the body itself assume a modern identity, and how,
with this process, ideal and perverse norms are created.
2. How the sexes differ in using their bodies and what these
attitudes signify.
3. The problems of relations between bodies and mechanised
identities.
4. The modern relations between the body and metaphysical
dimensions of identity, such as soul, spirit, consciousness.
5. The ways to achieve a modern body and how such a body
would function in between individual and social identity.
While Karl Toepfer's book sets out to study the questions con-
cerning modernism, Dianne Howe's book summarises modernism
in a very general fashion. She writes: 'The Germans' concern for
healthful living surfaced with the Körperkulture (Physical culture)
movement ...' and 'At the end of the nineteenth century many life
reform movements were founded ...' (p. 11). Toepfer writes an
entire book on these two sentences. Both authors share a certain
notion of what modernism is: for Howe, it is a 'life in the rabbit
warren that was the city' and this life was 'characterised by

anonymity, a sense of rootlessncss, alienation and disorientation

and a standardisation of existence' (p. 4). Here modernism is
immediately narrowed down to one reaction towards modernism
which can be found for instance in films such as Metropolis by Fritz
Lang. Although Toepfer is much more aware of the vast and
complex modernisation process and all its implications, he tends
to study the results of modernity rather than the process itself. Both
authors give the impression that modernism is a more or less
homogeneous thing, and that modernity happened at a certain
time the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century thus
creating a new time scale. It is this idea of a 'before' and 'after',
- -

a time with insight and a dark non-enlightened one beforehand,

that leads to a special evaluation of the achievements of the early
twentieth century and a peculiar short-sightedness of the com-
plexity of developments of the nineteenth century which the twen-
tieth century still has to deal with. A conception of modernity and
modernism as being something 'good' directs the research and the
results. Both investigations end with the years 1935 and 1936.
Why? Does modernism end with the rise of Nazism? Is the thought
of Nazism being part of modernism so frightening and troubling
that it in the end is unthinkable?
-
-

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 DANCE RESEARCH

Howe had declared on her first pages of the book that Aus-
druckstanz stood in marked contrast to the rise of Nazism.
Toepfer, on the other hand, is much more careful to judge the
entire culture and then rescue it. In his book, German body culture
is seen 'neither as a unified nor a unifying force on the European
...

cultural scene' (p. 6) and it is explained that body culture had gone
into a decline when the Nazis rose to power. Neither author is
prepared to test this stream of modernity in German culture and
ask how it reacted to an extreme time and an extreme political
regime and, in this sense, both books are unsatisfactory.
Toepfer's book, however, is recommended for its intense and
rich display of material, its insights into how artists of the time
functioned and in showing the breadth of German body culture
and the many aspects that need to be considered in order to
understand the movement and dance culture of the first half of this
century.
Marion Kant

SPECTACULUM EUROPAEUM: THEATRE AND

SPECTACLE IN EUROPE (1580-1750);
HISTOIRE DU SPECTACLE EN EUROPE
(1580-1750)
818 pp., DM 248 (h/b)
Pierre Behar and Helen Watanabe-O 'Kelly (eds)
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999, Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten
zur Barockforschung 31
This massive, heavy handbook brings together a group of collab-
orators from diverse countries. Their aim is to provide an up-
to-date and fairly comprehensive survey of our knowledge (and
its limitations) of the festivals performed across Europe in early
modern times; to indicate primary and secondary sources for
further work; and to identify areas which require more research.
The handbook attempts to cover the whole of Europe (West and
East); it is written in French for those sections dealing with the
Romance-speaking world and in English for all other countries.
Although divided into five major sections Drama, Opera, Ballet,
Tournaments, Triumphs and Entries with each geographical
—

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