To dance a feeling

To coincide with the German Festival in India which is on tillMarch 2001, PRASANNA RAMASWAMY takes us through a series of images from the history of German modern dance and dance theatre.

THE massive granite building of the Folkwang Tanz Schule and its expansive courtyard are bathed in the gentle, yet bright, spring sunlight. Sounds of the violin, piano and dance steps float in the air. Images from the history of German modern dance and dance theatre surge in one's memory. It is in this space that the very first seeds of modern dance, dance theatre were sown by Kurt Jooss in the late 1920s. If classical ballet got its first professional framework in 1661 with the academy established by Louis XIV, it became more accessible to a middle-class public with the reforms carried out by Noverre in the 18th century, touched a high point of choreographic excellence with Marius Petipa's Swanlake in 1895, refined and renewed itself further and culminated in an explosively expressive form with the great dancer Nijinsky.

The galloping developments in the modern dance scene took off from Isadora Duncan who radically rejected the regulated technique of ballet and chose to choreograph and dance through an emancipated understanding of herself as a woman, thereby shifting the position of the dancer from that of the interpreter of roles to one of self expression; closely following this was the expressionist dance of Rudolf Laban and Mary Wigman whose understanding and articulation of dance was based on a philosophy of life and a metaphysical experience. Around the same time Max Planck's and Einstein's scientific theories were shaking off the old world view.

Laban's school of thought had quickly enveloped an abundant number of dancers who were working from diverse ideologies yet shared a common striving for an expression of an individual world vision. Laban went on to develop a new system of movement of natural and harmonius body movements and invented and sytematised a symbolic alphabet and termed it as kinetography which attempted to extend the inner movement as the outer movement. This technique of movement till date known as Labanotation in international dance parlance became the central point of expression dance.

Around the same time, Doris Humphrey and Martha Graham made their departures from their predecessors, Ted Shawn and Ruth St.Denis' style and emerged with their distinct styles. Interestingly, many of the post-war German choreographers were going to study under Graham in later years. Laban's most celebrated pupil Kurt Jooss was invited to the FTS and within a couple of years, he established a studio repertory company there. Kurt Jooss who is designated the pragmatist of the expressionist dance once said, "dance should not only express the spiritual; this spirituality is always only the basis of nourishment, the basic accord on which the building of a work of art can bloom; but dance as a form of art is meant to cultivate from the chaos of intentional and coincidental movements in thrifty economy and artistic limit, only the essentially important in the most possible purity." This comment from Jooss, made in the early 1930s, when juxtaposed with a statement by Pina Bausch in the 1970s "I am less interested in how people move than what moves them" which till date remain both a direction and motivation for modern dancers, are sufficient to sum up the modern dance theatre scene in Germany.

Even as Kurt Jooss was emerging simultaneously as a seer in dance pedagogics and a major choreographer with his "Green Table" in which he portrayed soulless politicians and questioned the concept of power, he had to go into exile very soon as he refused to fire the Jewish members of his company as well as to design the 1936 Berlin Olympics. His "Green Table" could be widely seen and performed once again only in the 1960s after his return to FTS.

In the meanwhile, as Rose Auslander, a Jewish poet astoundedly records, "much has changed into much". With all the reversals that had happened in the years in-between, it was once again the classical dance which dominated the municipal theatres. With the student movement gathering momentum, an increasing social relevance gets articulated and demanded in the artistic discourse; with this new consciousness several dance academies and schools were started in the same North Rhine Westphalia where FTS is situated and all over Germany. In the early 1970s the Wuppertal Dance theatre invited the then young Pina Bausch as the Director.

Subsequently, the social developments in the 1970s led to several departures including that of young choreographers creating modern dance ensembles out of traditional municipal theatres. Gerhard Bohner in 1972 in Darmstadt and Pina Bausch after some time would rename their Ballet company theatres into dance-theatre, very consciously turning away from the dominating traditionalism of classical dance. Interestingly, the change was initiated by Bohner and Johan Kresnik who came from a background of ballet and opera houses and into this stream the Folkwang dancers Pina Bausch, Rheinhild Hoffmanna and Susanne Linke and many others naturally joined.

The changes that the classical ballet has undergone can be punctuated from the work of Balanchine, living as an immigrant in the U.S., whose choreography is described as neo-classical, which in actuality rejected the narrative and explored to discover the essence of movement, down the line to William Forsyth who heads the Frankfurt Ballet Company. Even though the graph reveals names like Bejart and John Neumeier, their works were primarily directed towards fresh embellishments in arrangement whereas Forsyth went on to rework the formal framework of balletic movements by acceleration, reidiomisation and a completely new syntax, thereby evolving an abstract language framework for his discourse. Even while retaining the balletic aesthetics in its superstructure, he revolutionises the dancing by introducing theatrical elements like set designing which transforms the dancing space into a changing sculpture and integrates lighting as an element challenging reality and a mediating transparent curtain between the acting and audience spaces.

The content of the new dance-theatre comprised of social realities and conventions and male-female relationship. The formal framework freely borrowed from everyday movement, montage technique of cinema and integrated into its design an unmediated contact with the public.

The stylistics had an astonishing variety ranging from the poetic images of Pina Bausch to the explosively violent collages of Kresnik. With seemingly unrelated elements, a continuous play of contrasts, repetitive dance sequences, juxtapositioning the vulnerable and violent, with sets which are bordering on fantasy landscapes and executed with incomparable imagination which simultaneously become motifs of the discourse and remain a playhouse for the dancers, combined with a collage of brilliant music, Pina's work recreates the universe and includes the spectator.

Pina returns the dance to the dancer, acrobatics to the playful space of children, narratives to story-tellers and a sense of sanctity to the ritual. Kresnik locates his anger and disappointment through his selected real life protagonists like Rosa Luxemburg or Ulrike Meinhoff, arranges their life story through a series of poster-like collages with bold symbols and screams out his protest.

Pina's work creates spaces for dancers to open up the vulnerable private spaces, cocooned by the social fabric, and unravels micro narratives which legitimises the personal, whereas Kresnik recreates the public space on stage and helps the personal in the audience to access, relocate and reorganise themselves in the public space through the experience.

Hundreds of dancers created their own companies, worked in the free scene, created their own forums also out of factory platforms, pubs and abandoned train stations. Susanne Linke, a great dancer in whose movements one can almost witness the travelling line of energy, has created many interesting and experimental choreographic works for the FTS and the Bremen Dance Theatre where she has been till recently working with the young Swiss dancer Urs Dietrich with whom she has also danced duets. Linke had worked with Rheinhild Hoffman, her collaborator from Folkwang days on "Uber Kreuz" a work which will also be presented in India soon as part of the German Festival events. Well into her 50s, Linke is working on a dance academy project in Essen which will open up several possibilities for dancers, performers, dance teachers, researchers and so on.

Besides these internationally known dancers, there are many who are becoming celbrities like Sasha Waltz who initially trained at the Wigman academy at Karlsruhe and later on at U.S. and worked in the free scene in Berlin; with three choreographic works she was catapulted to fame and was invited to direct the coveted Berlin Schaubuhne. The dancescape is dotted with an astonishing range of stylistics and thematic concerns; it oscillates from the extremely dramatic Mikulastic to a completely introspective Anna Huber; it is also dotted with a multinational, multiethnic presence and aesthetics. FTS trained Henrietta Horn, a relatively young newcomer, is drawing rave reviews and already heads the FTS company.

Among many dance teaching institutions, what distinguishes FTS is that the school does not train just dancers but opens up avenues for human beings to dance a feeling. Apart from classical, modern and folk dancing, the syllabus includes Labanatology. The principles developed by Laban and Jooss are not fossilised as method but are constantly re-examined and renewed based on the observations of everyday movements. The dancer is rather encouraged to find the feeling of a movement than to master the technique of the movement.

The overall design of classical ballet teaching takes into account the needs of the modern dancer. Most of the teachers of modern dance are dancers who are working with Pina Bausch. The essence of it is that the teaching design acknowledges individuality and organicity. Therefore the dance education at the FTS combines a firm base in the classical dance but focusses on life related experiences and not just acquisition of technique.

Apart from the oldest and most productive FTS there are many private as well as state subsidised dance acdemies. Noticeably it is the industrial state of North Rhine Westphalia of mining and heavy industry where at a policy level dance is marked as a creative resource of the state and extended support. It is true that in recent years due to economic recession there are cuts in the culture budget; still there are many state and municipal theatres which are run with state funding and part or full financial support being extended to free groups and individual dancers.

There are dance fairs and dance platforms of an annual nature in Essen, Brotfabrik in Bonn and hundreds of festivals and platforms happening throughout the year which bring together the dancing community and its audiences from different parts of the world. The society for contemporary dance, a wing of Cologne Media Park serves as a treasure house of textual and visual information for researchers. In addition to preservation of costumes, props and posters in specially acclimated rooms in acid-free boxes under filtered light, there are several exhibitions both permanent and transitory. While various institutions are involved in systematic documentation and releasing tele-dance journals, there is a lot of interaction and experimentation going on with specially choreographed cinematic and video dance, many such works already having received critical acclaim and awards in dance film festivals. Once in two years the Forum at Bonn, one of the largest stages in Germany conducts an experimental dance festival which features exemplery productions which have a design that interrelates dances, film and media.

As I step out of the Folkwang Dance School I hear the chiming of the bells from the ancient church located in the same street. Suddenly I remember that one of the dancers told me that there are inner city churches like that of those in Dortmund which are from time to time opened for modern dance performances or shows of work in progress where the public sits at the choir stall and the dancers perform in the cleared out nave of the Gothic Church. In one century, dance sure has come a long way.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Entertainment
Previous : Confessions at Venice
Next     : Neil Simon comedy