Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-31T23:23:32.737Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Ausdruckstanz Facing History and Memory: Reenacting the Past

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2024

Julia Hoczyk
Affiliation:
Narodowy Instytut Muzyki i Tańca, Warsaw
Wojciech Klimczyk
Affiliation:
Jagiellonian University, Krakow
Get access

Summary

In my article “Ausdruckstanz: Traditions, Translations, Transmissions” on the historiography of German modern dance, I commented on three essays presented in a section of the volume Dance Discourses: Keywords in Dance Research, which deals with dance and politics and the controversial history of Ausdruckstanz, whose intricacies did not fully manifest themselves until the late 1990s. I focused on the relationship (often perceived as tension) between history and memory, and among the many questions I raised, two seem to me to be still stimulating: what is the relationship between schisms and continuities in historical and memorial narratives? Which is the road to take between truth in history, faithfulness of memory and the right of forgetting?

Thanks to the research carried out by Susan Manning, Marion Kant and Lilian Karina, Inge Baxmann, Laure Guilbert, who could work in archives inaccessible until then, and to the cultural framework offered by Inge Baxmann,

official historical narratives have been integrated with forgotten or neglected stories, and modern dance has been reinserted into cultural history. We were also confronted with the memories transmitted by Ausdruckstanz recognized protagonists, who continued to work and live in Germany after the rise of the Nazi Regime, and with those dancers who were forced into exile. The majority of them were Jewish, the others were dancers politically engaged in communist or socialist organizations. At that time, the history and memory of German modern dance seemed to have told different truths, often each one standing firm on the principle of non-negotiability, and their relationship has been loaded with emotionally charged binary oppositions such as bad vs. good, false vs. true, ideological vs. authentic, and so on. Altogether, these new narratives – which were based on historical documents, oral testimonies and incorporated techniques and repertoires – told a different version of events and biographies compared to what was assumed as true for decades by scholars, critics and artists. Re-reading the ambiguous shift from the experimental phase of the 1910s and 1920s to the rise of Nazism has shown how Ausdruckstanz was the result of a long process of cultural transformation and the forerunner of compelling modern utopias.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Jagiellonian University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×