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Modern Dance Before 1914: Commerce or Religion?

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 36; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01472526.2013.834538

1532-4257

Edward Ross Dickinson,

Sports, Gender, and Society

Abstract The popularity of modern dance in Europe before 1914 can be explained in part by its astute appeal to a range of aesthetic and moral registers important to diverse segments of the new urban “mass” market of the period, and by its success in building a complex of co-marketing strategies with other cultural endeavors including film, fashion, ballet, opera, and both academic and avant-garde art. At the same time, modern dance was also able to position itself as a de facto liturgy for a new, nascent secular and biological religion in formation during the same period, variously called evolutionism, the religion of joy, or the religion of life. This combination—astute market strategy plus religious fervor—was characteristic of the culture market in this period. Notes 1. The literature on this subject is now substantial. See, in addition to the works cited later in this article, Isa Partsch-Bergsohn, Modern Dance in Germany and the United States: Crosscurrents and Influences (London: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994); Dianne S. Howe, Individuality and Expression: The Aesthetics of the New German Dance, 1908–1936 (New York: Peter Lang, 1996); Karl Toepfer, Empire of Ecstasy: Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture, 1910–1935 (Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 1997); Gabriele Brandstetter, “Ausdruckstanz,” in Handbuch der deutschen Reformbewegungen, 1880–1933, ed. Diethart Kerbs and Jürgen Reulecke (Wuppertal: Peter Hammer, 1998); Gunhild Oberzaucher-Schüller, ed., Ausdruckstanz: Eine mitteleuropäische Bewegung der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Wilhelmshaven: F. Noetzel, 1992); Hedwig Müller and Patricia Stöckemann, “ … jeder Mensch ist ein Tänzer”: Ausdruckstanz in Deutschland zwischen 1900 und 1945 (Giessen: Anabas, 1993); Hedwig Müller, “Von der äusseren zur inneren Bewegung: Klassische Ballerina–moderne Tänzerin,” in Die Schauspielerin: Zur Kulturgeschichte der weiblichen Bühnenkunst, ed. Renate Möhrmann (Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1989). On particular performers, see, for example, Shelley C. Berg, “Sada Yacco in London and Paris, 1900: Le Rêve Réalisé,” Dance Chronicle: Studies in Dance and the Related Arts, vol.18, no. 3 (1995): 343–404; Amy Koritz, Gendering Bodies/Performing Art: Dance and Literature in Early Twentieth-Century British Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995) and “Dancing the Orient for England: Maud Allan's The Vision of Salomé,” in Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance, ed. Jane C. Desmond (Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1997); Brygida Maria Ochaim, “Miss Saharet,” Tanzdrama, vol. 16 (1991): 34–36; Brygida Maria Ochaim, “Die Barfusstänzerin Olga Desmond,” Tanzdrama, vol. 39 (1997): 19–21; Richard Nelson Current and Marcia Ewing Current, Loie Fuller: Goddess of Light (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997); Karin Ehrich, “Im Sauseschritt,” Tanzdrama, vol. 58 (2000): 8–11. 2. See Jodie Medd, “‘The Cult of the Clitoris’: Anatomy of a National Scandal,” Modernism/Modernity, vol. 9 (2002): 21–49 and Edward Ross Dickinson, “‘Must We Dance Naked?’ Art, Beauty, and Politics in Munich and Paris, 1911 and 1913,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 20, no. 1 (2011): 95–131. 3. Quoted in Felix Cherniavsky, “Maud Allan, Part III: Two Years of Triumph, 1908–1909,” Dance Chronicle, vol. 7, no. 2 (1984): 141. 4. Ernst Schur, Der moderne Tanz (Munich: Verlag Lammers, 1910), 44. 5. Among studies that have tried to put modern dance in its cultural and intellectual context, perhaps the most successful is Ann Daly, Done Into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). 6. See Edward Ross Dickinson, “Reflections on Feminism and Monism in the Kaiserreich, 1900–1913,” Central European History, vol. 34, no. 2 (2001): 191–230. This is a point that has been made, in somewhat different terms, by Rae Beth Gordon in “Natural Rhythm: La Parisienne Dances with Darwin: 1875–1910,” in Modernism/Modernity, vol. 10, no. 4 (2003): 617–56. 7. Quoted in Peter Kurth, Isadora: A Sensational Life (New York: Little, Brown, 2001), 100. 8. Quoted in Julie Wheelwright, The Fatal Lover: Mata Hari and the Myth of Women in Espionage (London: Collins & Brown, 1992), 13, 15, 20; Enrique Gómez Carrillo, El misterio de la vida y de la muerte de Mata-Hari (Madrid: Renaciemento, 1923), 41. 9. Quoted in Jochen Schmidt, Tanzgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts in einem Band (Berlin: Henschel, 2002), 28. 10. Ruth St. Denis, An Unfinished Life (New York: Harper, 1939), 92, 96; J. E. Crawford Flitch, Modern Dancing and Dancers (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1912), 192; Schur, Der moderne Tanz, 87, 77, 86. 11. Quoted in Felix Cherniavsky, “Maud Allan, Part I: The Early Years, 1873­–1903,” Dance Chronicle, vol. 6, no. 1 (1983): 30, 31; Felix Cherniavsky, “Maud Allan, Part II: First Steps to a Dancing Career, 1904–1907,” Dance Chronicle, vol. 6, no. 3 (1983): 196, 203. 12. Quoted in Charles S. Mayer, “Ida Rubinstein: A Twentieth-Century Cleopatra,” Dance Research Journal, vol. 20 (1988): 34; Harry Graf Kessler, in Tagebuch (1906–1914), vol. 4 (Stuttgart: Cotta, 2005), 574; Karl Ettlinger, in “Sent M’ahesa,” a review of 1910, reprinted in Tanzdrama, vol. 14 (1991): 32; Sibylle Dahms and Stephanie Schroedter, eds., Der Tanz—Ein Leben: In Memoriam Friderica Derra de Moroda (Salzburg: Selke Verlag, 1997), 19; Frank-Manuel Peter and Rainer Stamm, Die Sacharoffs—zwei Tänzer aus dem Umkreis des BlauenReiters (Cologne: Wienand, 2002), 98; Program of the Kleines Theater, undated, in Staatsarchiv Munich, Pol.Dir. 3806/4. 13. Enrique Gómez Carrillo, “El teatro en Paris,” Mundial 3 (1913): 475. 14. Claude Conyers, “Courtesans in Dance History: Les Belles de la Belle Époque,” Dance Chronicle, vol. 26, no. 2 (2003): 222. See also Katja Schneider, “Schlank, biegsam, grazil: Das Körperbild im klassischen Tanz ses 20. Jahrhunderts,” Tanzdrama, vol. 36 (1997): 11–15. 15. See Ulrike Thomas, “Dünn und dick, schön und hässlich: Schönheitsideal und Körpersilhouette in der Werbung 1850–1950,” in Bilderwelt des Alltags: Werbung in der Konsumgesellschaft des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Peter Borscheid (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1995), 242–81. See also Arthur Marwick, IT: A History of Human Beauty (London: Hambledon Press, 2004); Peter N. Stearns, Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West (New York: New York University Press, 2002), especially 12–13 and 159–67. 16. See Peter Wollen, “Fashion/Orientalism/The Body,” in New Formations, vol. 1 (1987): 10, 12; Judith R. Walkowitz, “The ‘Vision of Salomé’: Cosmopolitanism and Erotic Dancing in Central London, 1908–1918,” American Historical Review, vol. 108, no. 2 (2003): 342; Paul Poiret, My First Fifty Years, trans. Stephen Haden Guest (London: Gollancz, 1931), 177, 201–06; Gabrielle Brandtstetter, “Tanzreform und Reformkleid: Zur Textilkunst von Mariano Fortuny,” Tanzdrama, vol. 14 (1991): 4–7; Paolo Peri, “La trama della sua vita,” in Fortuny nella belle époque, ed. Leonardo Fumi (Milan: Electa, 1984), 62–64. 17. See Suzanne Shelton, Ruth St. Denis: A Biography of the Divine Dancer (Austin: University of Texas, 1981), 82; Brygida Maria Ochaim, “Die getanzten Bilder der Rita Sacchetto,” Tanzdrama, vol. 14 (1991), 24; Peri, “La trama,” 64. 18. Michael de Cossart, Ida Rubinstein (1885–1960): A Theatrical Life (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1987), 57. 19. Deborah Jowitt, Time and the Dancing Image (New York: W. Morrow, 1988), 60–61. 20. See Conyers, “Courtesans”; Brygida Ochaim, “Varieté-Tänzerinnen um 1900,” in Varieté-Tänzerinnen um 1900, ed. Ochaim and Claudia Balk (Frankfurt: Stroemfeld, 1998). 21. Ochaim, “Die getanzte Bilder der Rita Sacchetto,” 22–25; Hillel Schwartz, “Torque: The New Kinaesthetic of the Twentieth Century,” in Incorporations, ed. Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter (New York: Zone, 1992), 101; Karin Ehrich, “Im Sauseschritt,” Tanzdrama, vol. 58 (2000): 8 (on Leistikow); Ochaim, “Die getanzten Bilder,” 25 (on Sacchetto); Elizabeth Kendall, Where She Danced (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1979), 39 (on St. Denis); Grete Wiesenthal: Die Schönheit der Sprache des Körpers in Bewegung, ed. Leonhard M. Fiedler and Martin Lang (Salzburg: Residenz, 1985), 155, 39 (on Wiesenthal); Brygida Ochaim “Varieté-Tänzerinnen” and “Biographien,” in Ochaim and Balk, Varieté-Tänzerinnen, 76, 133, 135–38 (on Sacchetto, Napierkowska, Desmond, Anita Berber, Polaire, Saharet); Cléo de Mérode, Le Ballet de ma vie (1955; reprint, Paris: Editions Pierre Horay, 1985), 227. 22. See, for example, Shelton, Ruth St. Denis, 22–28; Gunhild Oberzaucher-Schüller, “Das bislang verschattete Leben der Miss Gertrude,” Tanzdrama, vol. 50 (2000): 6–11; Kendall, Where She Danced, 27–29. The best discussion of the connection between modern dance and vaudeville is Claudia Balk, “Vom Sinnenrausch zur Tanzmoderne,” in Ochaim and Balk, Varieté-Tänzerinnen, especially 53–57. 23. See, for example, Shelton, Ruth St. Denis, 83; Ochaim, “Varieté-Tänzerinnen,” 132–33; Conyers, “Courtesans,” 230; Dahms and Schroedter, Der Tanz, 19, 22. 24. See Nancy Chalfa Ruyter, “American Delsartism: Precursor of an American Dance Art,” Educational Theater Journal, vol. 25, no. 4 (1973): 421–35. 25. See Shelton, Ruth St. Denis, 29, 57; Ochaim, “Die getanzten Bilder,” p. 23; Kendall, Where She Danced, 23–27; Deborah Jowitt, “The Impact of Greek Art on the Style and Persona of Isadora Duncan,” Proceedings, Tenth Annual Conference of the Society of Dance History Scholars, Irvine, California, February 13–15, 1987, 195–97. 26. Julia Keay, The Spy Who Never Was: The Life and Loves of Mata Hari (London: Michael Joseph, 1987), 41. 27. See Regina J. Woody, Dancing for Joy (New York: Dutton, 1959), 155–56; Shelton, Ruth St. Denis, 51–52, 71, 72 and St. Denis, Ruth St. Denis, 55–61; Ochaim, Varieté-Tänzerinnen, 133 and Gómez-Carillo, “El teatro,” 476; Rudolf Lämmel, Der moderne Tanz (Berlin: Oestergaard, 1928), 69 and Laure Guilbert, Danser avec le IIIe Reich: Les Danseurs modernes sous le nazisme (Brussels: Complexe, 2000), 32. 28. See Wheelwright, Fatal Lover, 28, 33. 29. Quoted in Shelton, Ruth St. Denis, 42. 30. See Kendall, Where She Danced, 29, 54. 31. Iris Garland, “The Eternal Return: Oriental Dance (1900–1914) and Multicultural Dance (1990–2000),” Proceedings, Dancing in the Millennium: An International Conference,Washington, D.C., June 19–23, 2000, 195; Jowitt, “The Impact of Greek Art,” 197; Daly, Done Into Dance, especially 9–10, 16, 112. 32. Peter and Stamm, Die Sacharoffs, 160, 34 (quotation). 33. Evelyn Dörr, “‘Wie ein Meteor tauchte sie in Europa auf … ’: Die philosophische Tänzerin Isadora Duncan im Spiegel der deutschen Kritik,” in Isadora and Elizabeth Duncan in Deutschland/in Germany, ed. Frank-Manuel Peter (Cologne: Wienand, 2000), 33. 34. Cossart, Ida Rubinstein, 50. 35. “Die Reformtänzerin Villany,” Prager Tageblatt, October 8, 1910; Erich Felder, “Münchner Keuschheitsgelüste,” Der Turm, vol. 1, no. 1 (1911): 18; “Der Münchener Theaterskandal,” Berliner Tageblatt, November 24, 1911; clipping in Adorée-Via Villany, Tanz-Reform und Pseudo-Moral: Kritisch-satyrische Gedanken aus meinem Bühnen- und Privatleben, trans. Mirjam David (Paris: Villany, 1912), 267. 36. Pompeyo Gener, “Tortola Valencia,” Mundial, vol. 2 (1912): 527. 37. Modernism was fascinated with the archaeological; for a good brief discussion see Jeffrey Schnapp, Michael Shanks, and Matthew Tiews, “Archaeology, Modernism, Modernity,” Julian Thomas, “Archaeology's Place in Modernity,” and (for a critical comment) Robert Harrison, “Archaeology on Trial,” all in Modernism/Modernity, vol. 11, no. 1 (2004): 1–36. 38. See lists in Claudia Jeschke and Gabi Vettermann, “Isadora Duncan, Berlin and Munich in 1906: Just an Ordinary Year in a Dancer's Career,” Dance Chronicle, vol. 18, no. 2 (1995): 228; Cherniavsky, “Maud Allan, Part I,” 29; Nils Jockel and Patricia Stockemann, ‘Flugkraft in unendliche Ferne’: Bühnentanz in Hamburg seit 1900 (Hamburg: Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, 1989), 23. 39. See for example Helen Thomas, Dance, Modernity and Culture (New York: Routledge, 1995), 58–59; Ruth Freydank, ed., Theater als Geschäft: Berlin und seine Privattheater um die Jahrhundertwende (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1995). On the hybrid audience of modern dance, see Gustav Frank and Katja Schneider, “Tanz-Technik: Körperdispositive in der Massenkommunikation der Moderne,” Tanzdrama, vol. 54 (2000): 10. 40. Theresa Cameron, “The Tannhäuser Bacchanale in Bayreuth,” in Ausdruckstanz, 280–83; Shelton, Ruth St. Denis, 75; Ochaim, “Die getanzte Bilder,” 24; Christine Lüders, Apropos Mata Hari (Frankfurt: Verlag Neue Kritik, 1997), 24, 26. 41. See Peter and Stamm, Die Sacharoffs, 98; Mara Pilar Queralt, Tórtola Valencia (Barcelona: Lumen, 2005), 38. 42. Cherniavsky, “Maud Allan, Part II,” 219–23; St. Denis, An Unfinished Life, 77–78; Isadora Duncan, My Life (1927; reprint, New York: Liveright, 1955), 80; Dahms and Schroedter, Der Tanz, 16; Queralt, Tórtola Valencia, 31; Fuller, Fifteen Years, passim and particularly later chapters. 43. On Delsartean “salon performers” and upper-class orientalism, see Thomas, Dance, Modernity and Culture, 63, 78–79. 44. Shelton, Ruth St. Denis, 84; Cherniavsky, “Maud Allan, Part II,” 150. For evidence to the contrary, however, see Phryné, 43, or Karl Storck's review of Isadora Duncan's performance in Berlin in January 1903, “Ganz ohne Cancan,” reprinted in Tanzdrama, vol. 1 (1987): 24. 45. On Heymel see Hermann Wilhelm, Die Münchener Bohème (Munich: Buchendorfer, 1993), 130–31. 46. See Wiesenthal, Der Aufstieg, 207, 209; Alfred Oberzaucher and Gunhild Oberzaucher-Schüller, “Wer waren die Lehrer von Gertrud Bodenwieser?” Tanzdrama, vol. 33 (1996): 16; Lüders, Apropos, 82; Patrizia Veroli, “Auf der Suche nach der Ekstase,” Tanzdrama, vol. 20 (1992): 22; Peter and Stamm, Die Sacharoffs, passim; Horst Koegler, “A Single Being and a Single Soul with Two Bodies: Alexander and Clothilde Sacharoff and the pre–World War I Munich Avant-Garde,” Dance Chronicle, vol. 26, no. 2 (2003): 253–59. See also Gisela Barche and Claudia Jeschke, “Bewegungsrausch und Formbestreben,” in Ausdruckstanz, 317; Gabriele Fritsch-Vivié, Mary Wigman (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1999), 30–35. 47. See particularly the collection Tanz in der Moderne: Von Matisse bis Schlemmer, ed. Karin Adelsbach and Andrea Firmenich (Cologne: Wienand, 1996); Susan Laikin Funkenstein, “There's Something about Mary Wigman: The Woman Dancer as Subject in German Expressionist Art,” Gender & History, vol. 17, no. 3 (2005): 826–59; and Jill Lloyd, German Expressionism: Primitivism and Modernity (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991), especially 87–96. 48. See the lucid summary in James Shedel, “Aesthetics and Modernity: Art and the Amelioration of Change in Fin de Siècle Austria,” Austrian History Yearbook, vol. 19, no. 1 (1983): 135–42. 49. Marie Luise Becker, “Die Sezession in der Tanzkunst,” Bühne und Welt, vol. 12 (1910): 27–43; review cited in Peter and Stamm, Die Sacharoffs, 99. See also Carrie J. Preston, “The Motor in the Soul: Isadora Duncan and Modernist Performance,” Modernism/Modernity, vol. 12, no. 2 (2005): 273–89. 50. See particularly Dee Reynolds, “Dancing as a Woman: Mary Wigman and ‘Absolute Dance,’” Forum for Modern Language Studies, vol. 35, no. 3 (1999): 297–310; Evelyn Dörr, “Rudolf von Laban: The ‘Founding Father’ of Expressionist Dance,” Dance Chronicle, vol. 26, no. 1 (2003): 1–29. 51. Max Osborn, Der bunte Spiegel: Erinnerungen aus dem Kunst-, Kultur-, und Geistesleben der Jahre 1890 bis 1933 (New York: F. Krause, 1945), 171, 172. 52. See for example Duncan, My Life, 82–83, 85–86. 53. Kessler, quoted in St. Denis, An Unfinished Life, 93, 90; Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Die unvergleichliche Tänzerin” (1906), in Gesammelte Werke: Prosa II, ed. Herbert Steiner (Frankfurt: S. Fischer Verlag, 1951), 262; Ernst Schur, Der moderne Tanz, 98. 54. Clipping in Villany, Tanz-Reform, 271. 55. Max Halbe, quoted in “Der Müncherner Theaterskandal,” Berliner Tageblatt, November 21, 1911. 56. Quoted in Fiedler and Martin, Grete Wiesenthal, 106. 57. Osborn, Der bunte Spiegel, 173. 58. Ellen Key, Der Lebensglaube: Betrachtungen über Gott, Welt, und Seele (Berlin: S. Fischer Verlag, 1906), 26. 59. Ellen Key, Über Liebe und Ehe (Berlin: S. Fischer Verlag, 1911), 181. 60. Ibid., 4, 31, 33; Ellen Key, Liebe und Ethik (Berlin: Pan Verlag, 1905), 18, 19. 61. Key, Lebensglaube, 290–91, 299. 62. Key, Liebe und Ethik, 40, 41. 63. Ibid., p. 18. 64. Key, Über Liebe und Ehe, 48. 65. Waldemar Zude, “Nacktkultur und Vita sexualis,” Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenchaft, vol. 3, no. 1 (1916): 80. 66. Duncan, Der Tanz, 11, 24–25. 67. Duncan, My Life, 154. 68. Peter and Stamm, Die Sacharoffs, 80; Rudolf von Delius, Die Philosophie der Liebe (Darmstadt: Reichl, 1922), 10–11, 86, 68. 69. Ernst Schur, “Über das Erotische,” Die Neue Generation, vol. 4, no. 1 (1908): 50. 70. Bruno Meyer, “Muss man nackt tanzen?” Die Schönheit, vol. 9, no. 11 (1911): 574. 71. Otto von Erlbach, “Das Nackte auf der Bühne,” Allgemeine Rundschau, vol. 4, no. 5 (1907): 215. 72. Otto von Erlbach, “Bühne und Neuheidentum,” Allegemeine Rundschau, vol. 9, no. 12 (1912): 613. 73. Ernst Lennartz, Duncan—She—Desmond: Beiträge zur Beurteilung und Geschichte der Nackt-Kultur (Cologne: Benziger, 1908), 3. 74. “Im Tivoli,” Weser-Zeitung, March 14, 1909; R. B., “Mlle. Villany,” Münchner Zeitung, November 17, 1911; F. Kl., “Tanz-Matinee Mlle Adorée Via Villany,” Münchner Post, November 20, 1911. 75. Hofmannsthal, “Die unvergleichliche Tänzerin,” 262; Wheelwright, Fatal Lover, 23; Cherniavsky, “Maud Allan, Part III,” 126. 76. Villany, quoted in “La danseuse nue,” Figaro, May 6, 1913; Barrison quoted in Oberzaucher-Schüller, “Das bislang verschattete Leben,” 9; de Moroda quoted in Dahms and Schroedter, Der Tanz, 18, 26. 77. Clipping in Villany, Tanz-Reform, 287–88; Erich Felder, “Münchner Keuschheitsgelüste,” Der Turm, vol. 1, no. 1 (1911): 18. 78. Isadora Duncan, Der Tanz der Zukunft (The Dance of the Future): Eine Vorlesung, trans. Karl Federn (Leipzig: Eugen Diederichs, 1903), 17, 18, 25. 79. Key, Über Liebe und Ehe, 59. 80. Karl Brunner, “Die Jugendlichen im Lichtspielgesetz,” Zentralblatt für Jugendrecht und Jugendwohlfahrt, vol. 12, no. 2 (1920): 68–70; “Selbstschutz gegen den Schmutz,” Volkswart, vol. 2, no. 5 (1909): 85. 81. Friedrich Theodor Vischer, Aesthetik, oder die Wissenschaft des Schönen, pt. III, section II (Stuttgart: C. Mäcken, 1857), 1155. 82. Otto Henne am Rhyn, Die Gebrechen und Sünden der Sittenpolizei (Leipzig: Max Spohr, 1897), 166. 83. Lennartz, Duncan, 5, 26. 84. Key, Lebensglaube, 291 and Liebe und Ehe, 59. 85. Michael Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany: A Social History, 1890–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). 86. Florentine Fritzen, Gesünder Leben: Die Lebensreformbewegung im 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2006). 87. Corinna Treitel, A Science for the Soul: Occultism and the Genesis of the German Modern (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). 88. Michael Saler, “Modernity and Enchantment,” American Historical Review, vol. 111, no. 3 (2006): 692–716.