Mary Wigman
- Author: Newhall, Mary Anne Santos
Mary Wigman
- Author: Newhall, Mary Anne Santos
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About
This book considers dancer, teacher, and choreographer Mary Wigman, a leading innovator in Expressionist dance whose radical explorations of movement and dance theory are credited with expanding the scope of dance as a theatrical art. Now reissued, this book combines:
- a full account of Wigman's life and work
- an analysis of her key ideas
- detailed discussion of her aesthetic theories, including the use of space as an "invisible partner" and the transcendent nature of performance
- a commentary on her key works, including Hexentanz and The Seven Dances of Life
- an extensive collection of practical exercises designed to provide an understanding of Wigman's choreographic principles and her uniquely immersive approach to dance.
As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners are unbeatable value for today's student.
Contents
- MARY WIGMAN: A LIFE IN DANCE
- Prologue: why Mary Wigman? Introduction
- Childhood
- The beginning of a life in dance Dalcroze and the garden city of Hellerau Return to ritual on the mountain of truth Dancing Dada
- The crisis year
- The gilded and tarnished twenties The First Dancers' Congress
- The Second Dancers' Congress The Third Dancers' Congress Coming to the United States Der Weg (The Path)
- Returning to the new Germany Dancing in Dresden, 1933-1942 Leaving Dresden
- To Berlin
- MARY WIGMAN'S WRITINGS ON THE DANCE: A PHILOSOPHY EMBODIED
- Introduction
- The Language of Dance Philosophical context Why a new dance?
- Primitively modern
- Spannung and Entspannung Space
- Time, music, rhythm
- The Mary Wigman Book
- What did Wigman mean by ecstasy and form? Apollonian and Dionysian
- Ideas on composition and the choreographic theme
- Who has inherited the emotive dance lineage of Mary Wigman?
- MARY WIGMAN AS CHOREOGRAPHER: CHOOSING THE FOCUS
- Solo as signature: Hexentanz The mask as doorway Hexentanz: a description Group dance
- The Seven Dances of Life (1921) Choric dance
- Totenmal (1930) Final solo concert
- PRACTICAL EXERCISES
- Class at the Mary Wigman School Discovering the eloquent body
- Wigman movement qualities in practice What makes the dance?
- Space
- Dance as language
- Speaking beyond the individual body
- Composition: improvisation and developing a theme
- One final theme
