Director Luca Guadagnino's film Suspiria (2018) depicts the dancer Susie Bannion joining a dance ... more Director Luca Guadagnino's film Suspiria (2018) depicts the dancer Susie Bannion joining a dance academy secretly run by a coven of witches in Berlin during the German Autumn of 1977. This article analyzes how Mary Wigman's Hexentanz II, contemporary dance, and horror film practices inform Susie's neo-expressionist movement form, which is also steeped in the discourse surrounding the RAF (Red Army Faction), the West German far-left militant organization, and fascism. I argue that “historical breathing”—breaths and sighs—takes on a sensorial mode by surveying the past and current situation of the dance school. By inhaling, Susie embodies the dance Volk (1948) and can feel its vexed choreographic history—its occult origins and Ausdruckstanz practices. Furthermore, her dance futilely attempts to comes to terms with the Nazi past but inevitably replicates the violence of the RAF.
The Chinese American skater Nathan Chen and the Japanese skater Yuzuru Hanyu have demonstrated wh... more The Chinese American skater Nathan Chen and the Japanese skater Yuzuru Hanyu have demonstrated what we call a 'hyperathletic-artistic turn': recognizing an almost superhuman, quad-jumping ability along with an equally developed artistic side. This article closely analyses their 2018 Olympic season performances exploring costuming, music, dance choreography, and jumping ability. While Chen's balletic and dancerly choreography-a 'return of the dancer' aesthetic-maintains an individualistic maverick instead of commercially recognisable macho hypermasculinity, Hanyu's 'soft masculine queer turn' draws from the queer costuming and mannerisms of Johnny Weir and the confidence of Evgeni Plushenko. Through their performances and choreography, we argue that Chen and Hanyu importantly carve out emerging artistic forms of East Asian and Asian-American masculinities in the predominantly white sport of figure skating. These skaters are part of a driving force in an East Asian turn in men's figure skating.
Asian sporting masculinities in figure skating: media representations of Nathan Chen and Yuzuru Hanyu as rivals, 2023
In sport and sport media, figure skating is often perceived as 'feminine' and male skaters freque... more In sport and sport media, figure skating is often perceived as 'feminine' and male skaters frequently occupy an ambiguous position, especially for Asian (American) athletes in a historically White-dominated sport. Based on discourse analysis, this article compares how English-and Japanese-language news narratives represent elite male figure skaters Nathan Chen and Yuzuru Hanyu, who are close rivals and skate for the United States and Japan respectively. We demonstrate how English-language media reinforce (U.S.) nationalism by portraying 'Quad King' Chen as hypermasculine for his athleticism and 'Ice Prince' Hanyu as feminized for his exceptional artistry. Despite being pitted against each other, we argue that in Japanese media narratives, their convivial rivalry and sportsmanship reveal what we call 'Asian sporting masculinities', alternative constructions of masculinities complicating monolithic stable understandings of masculinity in or congruous with the West. This study advances critical media and cultural studies by rethinking masculinities in Asian sporting bodies.
This article analyzes the staging, costuming, make-up, and gestural semiotics of Zeremonienmeiste... more This article analyzes the staging, costuming, make-up, and gestural semiotics of Zeremonienmeister and Persisches Lied, two 1929 photographs of the German Expressionist dancers Harald Kreutzberg and Yvonne Georgi, while reflecting upon the affordances of still photography as a medium for the representation of their movement-based art form. In these staged photographs, Kreutzberg and Georgi present their distinctive brand of modernist movement aesthetics, which both Orientalized and queered the dancing body. In cultivating a queer indeterminacy, these dancers embraced the emancipatory ethos of Weimar modernism, but by treating the East as an amalgamized, exotic source for civilizational regeneration, they exploited non-white cultures and became vulnerable to, and later complicit in, the instrumentalization of their dance aesthetics by the Nazi regime.
Circus and the Avant-Gardes History, Imaginary, Innovation, 2022
Loïe Fuller’s mesmerising Serpentine Dance appears to many viewers as a floating, morphing and qu... more Loïe Fuller’s mesmerising Serpentine Dance appears to many viewers as a floating, morphing and queer image of voluminous fabric – erasing the effort behind the taxing physicality and creating an indeterminate (re)presentation. The queerness and variety of American vaudeville stages, the Folies Bergère and the circus in Paris provided Fuller with a space to experiment and transgress stereotypical gender roles in work. Stéphanie Di Giusto’s 2016 biopic The Dancer highlights Fuller’s perpetual physicality throughout the cinematic depiction: constant shots of her injured and exhausted body; corporeal exertion while dancing. Engaging with queer discourses and tying the depiction of Fuller into larger discussions of the circus as queer space, this chapter argues that the film depicts Fuller’s dance and life as perpetually exhausting work and a struggle for a queer identity; this albeit elusive enterprise reflected her ephemeral dances and the draining variété life.
This article analyses the film I, Tonya (Craig Gillespie, 2018) by focusing particularly on the t... more This article analyses the film I, Tonya (Craig Gillespie, 2018) by focusing particularly on the theatrical technique of direct address to the camera. This method creates a mode of agitation which fluctuates between Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt (distanciation) and empathy. The use of facial close-ups, zooms, and tracking shots into intimate spaces develop audience emotion through an alternative narrative of Tonya Harding. However, scenes perpetually undermine the developed trust through contradictory testimony and the figure of Tonya calling the viewer her “attacker.” The film I, Tonya aggressively deals with larger social and political implications regarding domestic violence in lower socioeconomic households in the US, uncritical media consumption, and capitalist structures.
The camera slowly fades into a centered frame of two intimately intertwined bodies in hyperflexib... more The camera slowly fades into a centered frame of two intimately intertwined bodies in hyperflexible positions. One fair-skinned individual is grasping his left foot above his head with his right hand. Because of the flatness of the image, his shoulder seems to disappear behind the arm of a brown-skinned person sitting behind him. The intricacies of this opening pose beg the viewer to logically deconstruct this amalgamated bodily construction into a cohesive whole.
Th is article analyzes the East German fi gure skater Gaby Seyfert’s costuming, music selection,
... more Th is article analyzes the East German fi gure skater Gaby Seyfert’s costuming, music selection, and choreography from television broadcasts of her competitive and show performances between 1963 and 1970. My analysis shows that she aesthetically adhered to prescriptions of SED ideology by following GDR dance styles, incorporating ballet and folk- dance steps and exuding an embodied “Sovietness,” thus cultivating a large fan base in the GDR and the Soviet Union. Th is success brought more interest to fi gure skating and strengthened the image of East German skating against the capitalist West. Aft er 1969 her performances began expressing Western features due to the infl uences of her continued exposure to international travel, her Eislauf- Familie (ice- skating family), and access to Western media, all of which allowed her to explore her own Eigensinn (personal agency). I argue that her career carved out an alternative form of East German resistance while working within the confi nes of the GDR.
This article analyzes scenes from the screendance Körper (Body, Sasha Waltz,
2000)1—choreographed... more This article analyzes scenes from the screendance Körper (Body, Sasha Waltz, 2000)1—choreographed by Sasha Waltz and filmed by Jörg Jeshel and Brigitte Kramer. While Waltz’s piece Dialoge 99, choreographed with the kinesthetic experience of Berlin’s Jewish Museum, played a large role in shaping Körper’s aesthetic, the filmmakers draw stylistically from juxtaposing color and black and white shots as well as the theme of piles from Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955)2 in the screendance. Körper occupies a dichotomous aesthetic—by engaging with concentration camp-like treatment of human bodies and paradoxically highlighting consensual experimentation with bodily materiality and building on somatic practices.
This paper the "wildness" associated with Tonya Harding's first triple axel on live TV, and the "... more This paper the "wildness" associated with Tonya Harding's first triple axel on live TV, and the "wildness" of it's reverberating affect through the live broadcast and through YouTube.
At the 1987 World Figure Skating Championship, Katarina Witt skated to instrumental music from We... more At the 1987 World Figure Skating Championship, Katarina Witt skated to instrumental music from West Side Story playing the role of Maria. But how could her performance to Broadway show tunes be in line with SED ideology? Through histoire croisée-establishing multiple intersections with different cultures and tracing their continuing effects-this article examines how Witt's, her coach Jutta Müller's and choreographer Rudy Suchy's privileged exposure to Western culture through dance, music, film, experiences abroad, and other skaters' choreography and costuming inspired reappropriated manifestations through an East German lens into the packaging of Witt's skating programs in the 1980s. Using television broadcasts, I analyze the gradual to overt Americanization of her programs as her government loosened its grips by granting her more artistic freedom.
After watching Pina Bausch’s Café Müller in 1985 for the first time,
the awestruck Wim Wenders de... more After watching Pina Bausch’s Café Müller in 1985 for the first time, the awestruck Wim Wenders decided to make a film with the choreographer featuring her dances. After Bausch’s untimely death in 2009, however, Wenders dedicated the film Pina to her. I argue that their comparable aesthetics—focusing on the image instead of a narrative—allow him to experiment with the filming of dance. Wenders still consciously references Bausch’s Tanztheater form but also enhances the viewer’s experience by using various filmic techniques not easily possible on stage: first, Wenders invokes a dancefilm lens using such techniques as gesture dance and what I am calling voiceover vignettes. Second, he edits earlier footage of Bausch and company into his own filming using match cuts to allow the specter of Bausch to dance again with her ensemble. These aesthetic methods, therefore, widen the scope with which he and other filmmakers can conceptualize of the dancing body in filmic space.
In diesem Artikel untersuche ich, inwiefern Harry Graf Kesslers Besuch von Gesellschaftsbällen
un... more In diesem Artikel untersuche ich, inwiefern Harry Graf Kesslers Besuch von Gesellschaftsbällen und Aufführungen des frühen modernen Tanzes um 1900 ihn dazu inspirierten, seine Erfahrungen schriftlich zu dokumentieren. Auf Grund dieser Veranstaltungen entwickelte er eine ästhetische Sicht, die er mit den Schriften Friedrich Nietzsches und Henri de Régniers und deren Bestreben, die Welt ästhetisch neu wahrzunehmen, verband. Dieser Aufsatz untersucht, wie die experimentellen Tänze Loïe Fullers,Ruth St. Denis’und der Ballets Russes den Grafen mit vorher nie gesehenen Tanzbewegungen konfrontierten, die die Entwicklung einer eigenen Tanzästhetik anregten. Zentrale Elemente dieser Tanzästhetik sind Intellektualisierung, aber auch Erotisierung des Tanzkörpers.Weiterhin ermöglichten es diese Entwicklungen Kessler, das Ballet Josephslegende zu konzipieren und so die Beobachterperspektive mit der Perspektive des Tanzschaffenden zu vertauschen.
The Austrian writer and journalist Robert Muller displayed a natural proclivity for both keenly o... more The Austrian writer and journalist Robert Muller displayed a natural proclivity for both keenly observing and depicting the moving body. In his novel Tropen: Der Mythos der Reise (1915), Muller's protagonist, a German engineer named Hans Brandlberger, embarks on a journey into South America to examine not only its lush landscape but also the indigenous Dumara tribe. He thoroughly describes their bodies as they take part in ritual dances: first, the tribesmen in a communal dance and second, the priestess Zana in a series of solos and duets. Lasting an astonishing twenty-four pages, his dance depictions continually hint at developing fantastical and animalistic elements that culminate in the tribesmen Mold donning wings and flying as a result of Zana's ecstatic dancing. These two scenes are central to Muller's understanding of dance's far-reaching power, which he demonstrates by displaying the everyday ritual event as it turns into an uncontrollable, irrational performance. These representations of dance accentuate the animalistic nature of humans and demonstrate a desired disassociation from the self: a break with reality for the dancer, the protagonist, and the reader. In this article, I argue first that Muller creates his own literary expressionist dance (Ausdruckstanz) infused stylistically by performances of Rudolf Laban, Mary Wigman, and others. Second, I posit that Muller goes a step further and differentiates his dance from other expressionist dances by introducing another level of reality, that of the fantastic. Moki's ability to fly and Zana's multiple animal metamorphoses serve as transformative moments. This desired state— another valid dimension of reality— is made possible through the power of dance and is used to suspend belief momentarily, on the part of JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN STUDIES, VOL. 48, NO. 2
Klaus Mann's knowledge of writing and staging plays led to interest in exploring dance. His novel... more Klaus Mann's knowledge of writing and staging plays led to interest in exploring dance. His novel Der fromme Tanz (1925) and the dance-pantomime libretto Die zerbrochenen Spiegel (1926) deal specifically with this movement medium. This article first addresses Mann's experience of watching Weimar dance performances, which developed his idea of " erschütternde Anmut, " and explores its connection with his conceptualization of spiritu-ality. The novel's protagonist, Andreas Magnus, desires to break away from his bourgeois home and embark on a " pious dance " in Berlin. In the pantomime, the main character, Prinz Narzissus, lives a decadent, self-absorbed existence, dancing ecstatically between three mirrors, but gives no regard to an impending mass of workers. I argue that, for Mann, dance serves predominantly as a solitary spiritual guide that celebrates the body and the carnal. This self-absorbed model, however, does not fit into the changing society of the workers' demonstration and demands social awareness.
Director Luca Guadagnino's film Suspiria (2018) depicts the dancer Susie Bannion joining a dance ... more Director Luca Guadagnino's film Suspiria (2018) depicts the dancer Susie Bannion joining a dance academy secretly run by a coven of witches in Berlin during the German Autumn of 1977. This article analyzes how Mary Wigman's Hexentanz II, contemporary dance, and horror film practices inform Susie's neo-expressionist movement form, which is also steeped in the discourse surrounding the RAF (Red Army Faction), the West German far-left militant organization, and fascism. I argue that “historical breathing”—breaths and sighs—takes on a sensorial mode by surveying the past and current situation of the dance school. By inhaling, Susie embodies the dance Volk (1948) and can feel its vexed choreographic history—its occult origins and Ausdruckstanz practices. Furthermore, her dance futilely attempts to comes to terms with the Nazi past but inevitably replicates the violence of the RAF.
The Chinese American skater Nathan Chen and the Japanese skater Yuzuru Hanyu have demonstrated wh... more The Chinese American skater Nathan Chen and the Japanese skater Yuzuru Hanyu have demonstrated what we call a 'hyperathletic-artistic turn': recognizing an almost superhuman, quad-jumping ability along with an equally developed artistic side. This article closely analyses their 2018 Olympic season performances exploring costuming, music, dance choreography, and jumping ability. While Chen's balletic and dancerly choreography-a 'return of the dancer' aesthetic-maintains an individualistic maverick instead of commercially recognisable macho hypermasculinity, Hanyu's 'soft masculine queer turn' draws from the queer costuming and mannerisms of Johnny Weir and the confidence of Evgeni Plushenko. Through their performances and choreography, we argue that Chen and Hanyu importantly carve out emerging artistic forms of East Asian and Asian-American masculinities in the predominantly white sport of figure skating. These skaters are part of a driving force in an East Asian turn in men's figure skating.
Asian sporting masculinities in figure skating: media representations of Nathan Chen and Yuzuru Hanyu as rivals, 2023
In sport and sport media, figure skating is often perceived as 'feminine' and male skaters freque... more In sport and sport media, figure skating is often perceived as 'feminine' and male skaters frequently occupy an ambiguous position, especially for Asian (American) athletes in a historically White-dominated sport. Based on discourse analysis, this article compares how English-and Japanese-language news narratives represent elite male figure skaters Nathan Chen and Yuzuru Hanyu, who are close rivals and skate for the United States and Japan respectively. We demonstrate how English-language media reinforce (U.S.) nationalism by portraying 'Quad King' Chen as hypermasculine for his athleticism and 'Ice Prince' Hanyu as feminized for his exceptional artistry. Despite being pitted against each other, we argue that in Japanese media narratives, their convivial rivalry and sportsmanship reveal what we call 'Asian sporting masculinities', alternative constructions of masculinities complicating monolithic stable understandings of masculinity in or congruous with the West. This study advances critical media and cultural studies by rethinking masculinities in Asian sporting bodies.
This article analyzes the staging, costuming, make-up, and gestural semiotics of Zeremonienmeiste... more This article analyzes the staging, costuming, make-up, and gestural semiotics of Zeremonienmeister and Persisches Lied, two 1929 photographs of the German Expressionist dancers Harald Kreutzberg and Yvonne Georgi, while reflecting upon the affordances of still photography as a medium for the representation of their movement-based art form. In these staged photographs, Kreutzberg and Georgi present their distinctive brand of modernist movement aesthetics, which both Orientalized and queered the dancing body. In cultivating a queer indeterminacy, these dancers embraced the emancipatory ethos of Weimar modernism, but by treating the East as an amalgamized, exotic source for civilizational regeneration, they exploited non-white cultures and became vulnerable to, and later complicit in, the instrumentalization of their dance aesthetics by the Nazi regime.
Circus and the Avant-Gardes History, Imaginary, Innovation, 2022
Loïe Fuller’s mesmerising Serpentine Dance appears to many viewers as a floating, morphing and qu... more Loïe Fuller’s mesmerising Serpentine Dance appears to many viewers as a floating, morphing and queer image of voluminous fabric – erasing the effort behind the taxing physicality and creating an indeterminate (re)presentation. The queerness and variety of American vaudeville stages, the Folies Bergère and the circus in Paris provided Fuller with a space to experiment and transgress stereotypical gender roles in work. Stéphanie Di Giusto’s 2016 biopic The Dancer highlights Fuller’s perpetual physicality throughout the cinematic depiction: constant shots of her injured and exhausted body; corporeal exertion while dancing. Engaging with queer discourses and tying the depiction of Fuller into larger discussions of the circus as queer space, this chapter argues that the film depicts Fuller’s dance and life as perpetually exhausting work and a struggle for a queer identity; this albeit elusive enterprise reflected her ephemeral dances and the draining variété life.
This article analyses the film I, Tonya (Craig Gillespie, 2018) by focusing particularly on the t... more This article analyses the film I, Tonya (Craig Gillespie, 2018) by focusing particularly on the theatrical technique of direct address to the camera. This method creates a mode of agitation which fluctuates between Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt (distanciation) and empathy. The use of facial close-ups, zooms, and tracking shots into intimate spaces develop audience emotion through an alternative narrative of Tonya Harding. However, scenes perpetually undermine the developed trust through contradictory testimony and the figure of Tonya calling the viewer her “attacker.” The film I, Tonya aggressively deals with larger social and political implications regarding domestic violence in lower socioeconomic households in the US, uncritical media consumption, and capitalist structures.
The camera slowly fades into a centered frame of two intimately intertwined bodies in hyperflexib... more The camera slowly fades into a centered frame of two intimately intertwined bodies in hyperflexible positions. One fair-skinned individual is grasping his left foot above his head with his right hand. Because of the flatness of the image, his shoulder seems to disappear behind the arm of a brown-skinned person sitting behind him. The intricacies of this opening pose beg the viewer to logically deconstruct this amalgamated bodily construction into a cohesive whole.
Th is article analyzes the East German fi gure skater Gaby Seyfert’s costuming, music selection,
... more Th is article analyzes the East German fi gure skater Gaby Seyfert’s costuming, music selection, and choreography from television broadcasts of her competitive and show performances between 1963 and 1970. My analysis shows that she aesthetically adhered to prescriptions of SED ideology by following GDR dance styles, incorporating ballet and folk- dance steps and exuding an embodied “Sovietness,” thus cultivating a large fan base in the GDR and the Soviet Union. Th is success brought more interest to fi gure skating and strengthened the image of East German skating against the capitalist West. Aft er 1969 her performances began expressing Western features due to the infl uences of her continued exposure to international travel, her Eislauf- Familie (ice- skating family), and access to Western media, all of which allowed her to explore her own Eigensinn (personal agency). I argue that her career carved out an alternative form of East German resistance while working within the confi nes of the GDR.
This article analyzes scenes from the screendance Körper (Body, Sasha Waltz,
2000)1—choreographed... more This article analyzes scenes from the screendance Körper (Body, Sasha Waltz, 2000)1—choreographed by Sasha Waltz and filmed by Jörg Jeshel and Brigitte Kramer. While Waltz’s piece Dialoge 99, choreographed with the kinesthetic experience of Berlin’s Jewish Museum, played a large role in shaping Körper’s aesthetic, the filmmakers draw stylistically from juxtaposing color and black and white shots as well as the theme of piles from Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955)2 in the screendance. Körper occupies a dichotomous aesthetic—by engaging with concentration camp-like treatment of human bodies and paradoxically highlighting consensual experimentation with bodily materiality and building on somatic practices.
This paper the "wildness" associated with Tonya Harding's first triple axel on live TV, and the "... more This paper the "wildness" associated with Tonya Harding's first triple axel on live TV, and the "wildness" of it's reverberating affect through the live broadcast and through YouTube.
At the 1987 World Figure Skating Championship, Katarina Witt skated to instrumental music from We... more At the 1987 World Figure Skating Championship, Katarina Witt skated to instrumental music from West Side Story playing the role of Maria. But how could her performance to Broadway show tunes be in line with SED ideology? Through histoire croisée-establishing multiple intersections with different cultures and tracing their continuing effects-this article examines how Witt's, her coach Jutta Müller's and choreographer Rudy Suchy's privileged exposure to Western culture through dance, music, film, experiences abroad, and other skaters' choreography and costuming inspired reappropriated manifestations through an East German lens into the packaging of Witt's skating programs in the 1980s. Using television broadcasts, I analyze the gradual to overt Americanization of her programs as her government loosened its grips by granting her more artistic freedom.
After watching Pina Bausch’s Café Müller in 1985 for the first time,
the awestruck Wim Wenders de... more After watching Pina Bausch’s Café Müller in 1985 for the first time, the awestruck Wim Wenders decided to make a film with the choreographer featuring her dances. After Bausch’s untimely death in 2009, however, Wenders dedicated the film Pina to her. I argue that their comparable aesthetics—focusing on the image instead of a narrative—allow him to experiment with the filming of dance. Wenders still consciously references Bausch’s Tanztheater form but also enhances the viewer’s experience by using various filmic techniques not easily possible on stage: first, Wenders invokes a dancefilm lens using such techniques as gesture dance and what I am calling voiceover vignettes. Second, he edits earlier footage of Bausch and company into his own filming using match cuts to allow the specter of Bausch to dance again with her ensemble. These aesthetic methods, therefore, widen the scope with which he and other filmmakers can conceptualize of the dancing body in filmic space.
In diesem Artikel untersuche ich, inwiefern Harry Graf Kesslers Besuch von Gesellschaftsbällen
un... more In diesem Artikel untersuche ich, inwiefern Harry Graf Kesslers Besuch von Gesellschaftsbällen und Aufführungen des frühen modernen Tanzes um 1900 ihn dazu inspirierten, seine Erfahrungen schriftlich zu dokumentieren. Auf Grund dieser Veranstaltungen entwickelte er eine ästhetische Sicht, die er mit den Schriften Friedrich Nietzsches und Henri de Régniers und deren Bestreben, die Welt ästhetisch neu wahrzunehmen, verband. Dieser Aufsatz untersucht, wie die experimentellen Tänze Loïe Fullers,Ruth St. Denis’und der Ballets Russes den Grafen mit vorher nie gesehenen Tanzbewegungen konfrontierten, die die Entwicklung einer eigenen Tanzästhetik anregten. Zentrale Elemente dieser Tanzästhetik sind Intellektualisierung, aber auch Erotisierung des Tanzkörpers.Weiterhin ermöglichten es diese Entwicklungen Kessler, das Ballet Josephslegende zu konzipieren und so die Beobachterperspektive mit der Perspektive des Tanzschaffenden zu vertauschen.
The Austrian writer and journalist Robert Muller displayed a natural proclivity for both keenly o... more The Austrian writer and journalist Robert Muller displayed a natural proclivity for both keenly observing and depicting the moving body. In his novel Tropen: Der Mythos der Reise (1915), Muller's protagonist, a German engineer named Hans Brandlberger, embarks on a journey into South America to examine not only its lush landscape but also the indigenous Dumara tribe. He thoroughly describes their bodies as they take part in ritual dances: first, the tribesmen in a communal dance and second, the priestess Zana in a series of solos and duets. Lasting an astonishing twenty-four pages, his dance depictions continually hint at developing fantastical and animalistic elements that culminate in the tribesmen Mold donning wings and flying as a result of Zana's ecstatic dancing. These two scenes are central to Muller's understanding of dance's far-reaching power, which he demonstrates by displaying the everyday ritual event as it turns into an uncontrollable, irrational performance. These representations of dance accentuate the animalistic nature of humans and demonstrate a desired disassociation from the self: a break with reality for the dancer, the protagonist, and the reader. In this article, I argue first that Muller creates his own literary expressionist dance (Ausdruckstanz) infused stylistically by performances of Rudolf Laban, Mary Wigman, and others. Second, I posit that Muller goes a step further and differentiates his dance from other expressionist dances by introducing another level of reality, that of the fantastic. Moki's ability to fly and Zana's multiple animal metamorphoses serve as transformative moments. This desired state— another valid dimension of reality— is made possible through the power of dance and is used to suspend belief momentarily, on the part of JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN STUDIES, VOL. 48, NO. 2
Klaus Mann's knowledge of writing and staging plays led to interest in exploring dance. His novel... more Klaus Mann's knowledge of writing and staging plays led to interest in exploring dance. His novel Der fromme Tanz (1925) and the dance-pantomime libretto Die zerbrochenen Spiegel (1926) deal specifically with this movement medium. This article first addresses Mann's experience of watching Weimar dance performances, which developed his idea of " erschütternde Anmut, " and explores its connection with his conceptualization of spiritu-ality. The novel's protagonist, Andreas Magnus, desires to break away from his bourgeois home and embark on a " pious dance " in Berlin. In the pantomime, the main character, Prinz Narzissus, lives a decadent, self-absorbed existence, dancing ecstatically between three mirrors, but gives no regard to an impending mass of workers. I argue that, for Mann, dance serves predominantly as a solitary spiritual guide that celebrates the body and the carnal. This self-absorbed model, however, does not fit into the changing society of the workers' demonstration and demands social awareness.
Join Dr Wesley Lim as he presents his 2023 National Library Fellowship research on the papers of ... more Join Dr Wesley Lim as he presents his 2023 National Library Fellowship research on the papers of dancer and choreographer Gertrud Bodenwieser.
Dancer and choreographer Gertrud Bodenwieser fled Austria in 1938, arriving in Australia in the following year. She brought European modern dance to her new homeland and established her own modernist movement form, which drew influence from her intersectional identities as a Jewish, Austrian, and Australian woman.
As the 20th century dawned, authors, artists, and filmmakers flocked to cities like Paris and Ber... more As the 20th century dawned, authors, artists, and filmmakers flocked to cities like Paris and Berlin for a chance to experience a bustling urban life and engage with other artists and intellectuals. Among them were German-speaking authors and filmmakers such as Harry Graf Kessler, Rainer Maria Rilke, August Endell, Alfred Döblin, Else Lasker-Schüler, Segundo de Chomón, and the brothers Max and Emil Skladanowsky. In their writing and artistic work from that period, they depicted the perpetual influx of stimuli caused by urban life—including hordes of pedestrians, bustling traffic, and a barrage of advertisements—as well as how these encounters repeatedly paralleled their experiences of watching early twentieth-century dance performances by Loïe Fuller, Ruth St. Denis, and Vaslav Nijinsky. The convergence these writers and filmmakers saw between the unexpected encounters during their urban strolls and modern dance performances led to writings that interwove the two motifs.
Drawing on cultural, literary, dance, performance, and queer studies, Dancing with the Modernist City analyzes an array of material from 1896 to 1914—essays, novels, short stories, poetry, newspaper articles, photographs, posters, drawings, and early film. It argues that these writers and artists created a genre called the metropolitan dance text, which depicts dancing figures not on a traditional stage, but with the streets, advertising pillars, theaters, cafes, squares, and hospitals of an urban setting. Breaking away from the historically male, heteronormative view, this posthumanist mode of writing highlights the visual and episodic unexpectedness of urban encounters. These literary depictions question traditional conceptualizations of space and performance by making the protagonist and the reader feel like they embody the dancer and the movement. In doing so, they upset conventional depictions of performance and urban spaces in ways paralleling modern dance.
Uploads
Papers by Wesley Lim
develop audience emotion through an alternative narrative of Tonya Harding. However, scenes perpetually undermine the developed trust through contradictory testimony and the figure of Tonya calling the viewer her “attacker.” The film I, Tonya aggressively deals with larger social and political implications regarding domestic violence in lower socioeconomic households in the US, uncritical media consumption, and capitalist structures.
and choreography from television broadcasts of her competitive and show performances
between 1963 and 1970. My analysis shows that she aesthetically adhered to
prescriptions of SED ideology by following GDR dance styles, incorporating ballet and
folk- dance steps and exuding an embodied “Sovietness,” thus cultivating a large fan base
in the GDR and the Soviet Union. Th is success brought more interest to fi gure skating and
strengthened the image of East German skating against the capitalist West. Aft er 1969 her
performances began expressing Western features due to the infl uences of her continued
exposure to international travel, her Eislauf- Familie (ice- skating family), and access to
Western media, all of which allowed her to explore her own Eigensinn (personal agency).
I argue that her career carved out an alternative form of East German resistance while
working within the confi nes of the GDR.
2000)1—choreographed by Sasha Waltz and filmed by Jörg Jeshel and Brigitte
Kramer. While Waltz’s piece Dialoge 99, choreographed with the kinesthetic
experience of Berlin’s Jewish Museum, played a large role in shaping Körper’s
aesthetic, the filmmakers draw stylistically from juxtaposing color and black and
white shots as well as the theme of piles from Night and Fog (Alain Resnais,
1955)2 in the screendance. Körper occupies a dichotomous aesthetic—by engaging
with concentration camp-like treatment of human bodies and paradoxically
highlighting consensual experimentation with bodily materiality and building on
somatic practices.
the awestruck Wim Wenders decided to make a film with the
choreographer featuring her dances. After Bausch’s untimely
death in 2009, however, Wenders dedicated the film Pina to her.
I argue that their comparable aesthetics—focusing on the image
instead of a narrative—allow him to experiment with the filming
of dance. Wenders still consciously references Bausch’s Tanztheater
form but also enhances the viewer’s experience by using various
filmic techniques not easily possible on stage: first, Wenders
invokes a dancefilm lens using such techniques as gesture dance
and what I am calling voiceover vignettes. Second, he edits earlier
footage of Bausch and company into his own filming using match
cuts to allow the specter of Bausch to dance again with her
ensemble. These aesthetic methods, therefore, widen the scope
with which he and other filmmakers can conceptualize of the
dancing body in filmic space.
und Aufführungen des frühen modernen Tanzes um 1900 ihn dazu inspirierten,
seine Erfahrungen schriftlich zu dokumentieren. Auf Grund dieser Veranstaltungen
entwickelte er eine ästhetische Sicht, die er mit den Schriften Friedrich Nietzsches
und Henri de Régniers und deren Bestreben, die Welt ästhetisch neu
wahrzunehmen, verband. Dieser Aufsatz untersucht, wie die experimentellen Tänze
Loïe Fullers,Ruth St. Denis’und der Ballets Russes den Grafen mit vorher nie gesehenen
Tanzbewegungen konfrontierten, die die Entwicklung einer eigenen Tanzästhetik anregten.
Zentrale Elemente dieser Tanzästhetik sind Intellektualisierung, aber auch Erotisierung
des Tanzkörpers.Weiterhin ermöglichten es diese Entwicklungen Kessler, das
Ballet Josephslegende zu konzipieren und so die Beobachterperspektive mit der Perspektive
des Tanzschaffenden zu vertauschen.
develop audience emotion through an alternative narrative of Tonya Harding. However, scenes perpetually undermine the developed trust through contradictory testimony and the figure of Tonya calling the viewer her “attacker.” The film I, Tonya aggressively deals with larger social and political implications regarding domestic violence in lower socioeconomic households in the US, uncritical media consumption, and capitalist structures.
and choreography from television broadcasts of her competitive and show performances
between 1963 and 1970. My analysis shows that she aesthetically adhered to
prescriptions of SED ideology by following GDR dance styles, incorporating ballet and
folk- dance steps and exuding an embodied “Sovietness,” thus cultivating a large fan base
in the GDR and the Soviet Union. Th is success brought more interest to fi gure skating and
strengthened the image of East German skating against the capitalist West. Aft er 1969 her
performances began expressing Western features due to the infl uences of her continued
exposure to international travel, her Eislauf- Familie (ice- skating family), and access to
Western media, all of which allowed her to explore her own Eigensinn (personal agency).
I argue that her career carved out an alternative form of East German resistance while
working within the confi nes of the GDR.
2000)1—choreographed by Sasha Waltz and filmed by Jörg Jeshel and Brigitte
Kramer. While Waltz’s piece Dialoge 99, choreographed with the kinesthetic
experience of Berlin’s Jewish Museum, played a large role in shaping Körper’s
aesthetic, the filmmakers draw stylistically from juxtaposing color and black and
white shots as well as the theme of piles from Night and Fog (Alain Resnais,
1955)2 in the screendance. Körper occupies a dichotomous aesthetic—by engaging
with concentration camp-like treatment of human bodies and paradoxically
highlighting consensual experimentation with bodily materiality and building on
somatic practices.
the awestruck Wim Wenders decided to make a film with the
choreographer featuring her dances. After Bausch’s untimely
death in 2009, however, Wenders dedicated the film Pina to her.
I argue that their comparable aesthetics—focusing on the image
instead of a narrative—allow him to experiment with the filming
of dance. Wenders still consciously references Bausch’s Tanztheater
form but also enhances the viewer’s experience by using various
filmic techniques not easily possible on stage: first, Wenders
invokes a dancefilm lens using such techniques as gesture dance
and what I am calling voiceover vignettes. Second, he edits earlier
footage of Bausch and company into his own filming using match
cuts to allow the specter of Bausch to dance again with her
ensemble. These aesthetic methods, therefore, widen the scope
with which he and other filmmakers can conceptualize of the
dancing body in filmic space.
und Aufführungen des frühen modernen Tanzes um 1900 ihn dazu inspirierten,
seine Erfahrungen schriftlich zu dokumentieren. Auf Grund dieser Veranstaltungen
entwickelte er eine ästhetische Sicht, die er mit den Schriften Friedrich Nietzsches
und Henri de Régniers und deren Bestreben, die Welt ästhetisch neu
wahrzunehmen, verband. Dieser Aufsatz untersucht, wie die experimentellen Tänze
Loïe Fullers,Ruth St. Denis’und der Ballets Russes den Grafen mit vorher nie gesehenen
Tanzbewegungen konfrontierten, die die Entwicklung einer eigenen Tanzästhetik anregten.
Zentrale Elemente dieser Tanzästhetik sind Intellektualisierung, aber auch Erotisierung
des Tanzkörpers.Weiterhin ermöglichten es diese Entwicklungen Kessler, das
Ballet Josephslegende zu konzipieren und so die Beobachterperspektive mit der Perspektive
des Tanzschaffenden zu vertauschen.
Dancer and choreographer Gertrud Bodenwieser fled Austria in 1938, arriving in Australia in the following year. She brought European modern dance to her new homeland and established her own modernist movement form, which drew influence from her intersectional identities as a Jewish, Austrian, and Australian woman.
Drawing on cultural, literary, dance, performance, and queer studies, Dancing with the Modernist City analyzes an array of material from 1896 to 1914—essays, novels, short stories, poetry, newspaper articles, photographs, posters, drawings, and early film. It argues that these writers and artists created a genre called the metropolitan dance text, which depicts dancing figures not on a traditional stage, but with the streets, advertising pillars, theaters, cafes, squares, and hospitals of an urban setting. Breaking away from the historically male, heteronormative view, this posthumanist mode of writing highlights the visual and episodic unexpectedness of urban encounters. These literary depictions question traditional conceptualizations of space and performance by making the protagonist and the reader feel like they embody the dancer and the movement. In doing so, they upset conventional depictions of performance and urban spaces in ways paralleling modern dance.