From Dance to Movement
From Dance to Movement
Eurhythmics, Expressionism, and Literature
Keeping Nietzsche's ideas in play, this chapter considers the way in which the study of dance as an exclusive category is transformed into a more inclusive examination of ‘movement’. The chapter explores a range of forms from physical health practices to performance dance and looks at ‘movement’ as an expression of modernity, contributing representations of the liberated body in a variety of dance and literary contexts in Europe in the early twentieth century. The chapter examines the influence of Greek dance, Ausdruckstanz (expressionism), as a major phenomenon of modern European dance and introduces a variety of practices and styles within this umbrella term, including Eurhythmics, Nacktkultur, and Tanztheater. The discussion examines how writers like D. H. Lawrence, Samuel Beckett, and Upton Sinclair presented a literary interpretation of these new forms, and how choreographers including Rudolf Laban, Mary Wigman, Oskar Schlemmer, Kurt Jooss, and Pina Bausch transformed literary text and drama into danced explorations of self and community, both in Europe, and through the transmission of their explorations of space and time in Britain and the USA, up to the work of Merce Cunningham.
Keywords: Dionysian, expressionism, Eurhythmics, identity, community
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