Everything Dances
Book: “Alles tanzt” issued by Andrea Amort
Published in 2019 by Vienna’s Austrian Theater Museum and Berlin’s Hatje Cantz
This big, weighty volume (almost 380 pages, 10.7 x 8.5 x 1.7 inches) has a German text with English summaries. In addition to the summaries, its plentiful and plush illustrations are proving to be of interest to those who do not read German. The book served as catalog for the exhibit “Cosmos of Vienna Dance Modernism”. As a self-contained item, “Alles tanzt/(Everything dances)” tackles many aspects of modernism in addition to dance and does so from the late 19th Century to nearly today. There are 3 forewords, 29 chapters and 4 addenda. The main chapters are divided into 3 sections: the structure or anatomy of the modernist scene (Part 1), the rupture of that scene (Part 2) and aftermaths (Part 3). Topics in addition to dance that are especially explored by the book’s diverse authors include women’s emancipation, psychology and psychoanalysis, and the political landscape.
Undoubtedly the book’s title was suggested to Amort by a passage in Leopold Wolfgang Rochowanski’s 1923 “The Dancing Center-of-Gravity”: “All is dance, all – beginning with stepping over poor pavement ….”. Vienna became a center for dance experimentation at the very beginning of the 20th Century. It attracted dance and gymnastics modernists from elsewhere, individuals such as Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Gertrude Barrison and Ellinor Tordis. Vienna had its own Grete Wiesenthal and her sisters Elsa, Berta and, later, Marta. America’s Dr. Beth Mensendieck lived there and worked there. Schools that taught Delsarte expression and Dalcroze rhythm and pliant Duncanism opened at the very beginning of the 20th Century. Laban came to shape motion choirs. Vienna’s homegrown modernists in the 1910s, ‘20s and early ‘30s included Hanna Berger, Fred Berk, Gertrud Bodenwieser, Gisa Geert, Hilde Holger, Andrei Jerschik, Gertrud Kraus, Maria Ley, Stella Mann, Margalit Ornstein, Litz Pisk, Hedi Pope, Olga Suschitzky, Jan Veen, Cilli Wang and Otto Werberg. Very prominent was Rosalia Chladek, born in Brno. Not infrequently ballet dancers such as Tilly Losch and Hedy Pfundmayr also did modern dance and quite a few moderns had some classical training. On occasion, Vienna’s classical ballet company at the Operahouse danced choreography by one of the modern dancers, although its resident ballet dancers were not pleased when modernist Sascha Leontiev was appointed their director. Viennese dancers began to tour the world.
Modernism’s budding and blossoming in Vienna came to a halt in the 1930s. The Hapsburg emperors had been tolerant of modernism. The Austrofascist governments that followed World War 1 were much less so and then the joining of Austria to Nazi Germany in 1938 sent modernists into hiding, into exile and to death camps. After the end of World War2, the revival of some of Vienna’s modernist past was difficult. In dance, neoclassicism was preferred but books like “Alles tanzt” show that something of the avant garde remains.
Amort has authored several of the chapters. Other writers include Deborah Holmes (she calls her contribution “The New Woman”), Gunhild Oberzaucher-Schueller (“The Body”), Arno Bohler (“Philosophy – Friedrich Nietzsche”), Brigitte Dalinger
(“Judaism”), Monika Faber (“Photography”), Alfred Oberszaucher (“Reconstruction”), Gerhard Brunner (“Classic and Modern”), Doris Uhlich (“The Free Scene Today”) and there are quite a few more. Amort’s documentation is thorough; even mentioned is Zdenka Podhajsky (my late friend, the Brno-born futurist dancer who was accused by Vienna’s Soviet occupiers after World War 2 of being an “arts spy” for the West). On the Internet, I found a price of $57.47 or 35 euros at Amazon. However, during one of my searches, I saw a note about an additional $66 shipping charge. That note disappeared. The book’s poundage is given as 3.4 lbs but I’m not sure whether that is for the paperback or hard-back edition. I have the hard-back and it is heavy to lift.
