Kurt Jooss (12 January 1901 – 22 May 1979)
[Kurt Jooss]
Internationales Biographisches Archiv (July 1979). munzinger.de was a famous German ballet dancer and choreographer mixing
classical ballet
Classical ballet is any of the traditional, formal styles of ballet that exclusively employ classical ballet technique. It is known for its aesthetics and rigorous technique (such as pointe work, turnout of the legs, and high extensions), its ...
with theatre; he is also widely regarded as the founder of
Tanztheater
The German Tanztheater ("dance theatre") grew out of German Expressionist dance in Weimar Germany and 1920s Vienna. The term first appears around 1927 to identify a particular style of dance emerging from within the new forms of 'expressionist da ...
. Jooss is noted for establishing several dance companies, including most notably, the Folkwang Tanztheater, in
Essen
Essen (; Latin: ''Assindia'') is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and D ...
.
Life and career
Jooss was born in
Wasseralfingen, Germany. From an early age he was interested in singing, drama and visual arts, he also played the piano and was a keen photographer. He began his career in the 1920s and from 1920 to 1924 studied under and danced lead roles in the choreography of
Rudolf von Laban
Rudolf von Laban, also known as Rudolf Laban (German; also ''Rudolph von Laban'', hu, Lábán Rezső János Attila, Lábán Rudolf; 15 December 1879 – 1 July 1958), was an Austro-Hungarian, German and British dance artist, choreographer an ...
(who was a trained visual artist and developer of dance theory) and the movement named
Ausdruckstanz. Jooss used narratives and modern theatre styles to make performable works of Dance Theatre, further developing the work of Laban and his system of notation. Within a year of leaving Laban, Jooss took the opportunity to establish his own dance company called, Die Neue Tanzbühne. It was here Jooss met
Fritz Cohen, the Jewish composer who worked with Jooss on many of his famous pieces.
[
Jooss and Cohen shared the belief that choreography and musical composition should evolve together to give expression of the dramatic idea in unified style and form. In 1925 Jooss and Sigurd Leeder joined a group of artists and opened a new dance school called "Westfälische Akademie für Bewegung, Sprache und Musik". Jooss and Leeder went to ]Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
in 1926 to study classical ballet with Russian ballerina Lubov Egorova
Lubov Nikolayevna Yegorova (Любовь Николаевна Егорова; 8 August 1880 – 18 August 1972) was a Russian Empire ballerina who danced with the Imperial Ballet and the Ballets Russes.
Life and career
Lubov Yegorova was born in ...
.
In 1927 Jooss and Leeder's work '' Dance of Death'' was criticised for being too avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
; this resulted in the theatre of Münster
Münster (; nds, Mönster) is an independent city (''Kreisfreie Stadt'') in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region. It is also a state distr ...
changing personnel and programs. Because of this, many of Jooss's colleagues left. The same year Jooss moved the "Westfälische Akademie" to Essen, and it became the Folkwang Schule.
Jooss disliked plotless dances and preferred themes that addressed moral issues. Naturalistic movement, large-scale unison and characterisation were used by Jooss to address political concerns of the time. His most important choreographic work, ''The Green Table
''The Green Table'' is a ballet by the German choreographer Kurt Jooss. His most popular work, it depicts the futility of peace negotiations of the 1930s. It was the first work to be fully notated using kinetography Laban (Labanotation). It is in ...
'' (1932), had won first prize at an international competition for new choreography held by the Archives Internationales de la Danse in Paris in 1932. It was a strong anti-war statement, and was made a year before Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
became the chancellor of Germany. ''The Green Table'' is considered his most popular piece.
In 1933 Jooss was forced to flee Germany when the Nazis asked him to dismiss the Jews from his company and he refused. Jooss and Leeder (and doubtless Fritz Cohen and other members of his original company) took refuge in the Netherlands
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before resettling in England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
. After touring in Europe and America, Jooss and Leeder opened a school at Dartington Hall
Dartington Hall in Dartington, near Totnes, Devon, England, is an historic house and country estate of dating from medieval times. The group of late 14th century buildings are Grade I listed; described in Pevsner's Buildings of England as "on ...
in Devon
Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is ...
. A piece he choreographed at this time was a light-hearted one (in comparison to ''The Green Table'') named "Ball in Old Vienna (1932)".
In 1934, whilst in England Jooss added new works to his repertoire, including ''Pandora
In Greek mythology, Pandora (Greek: , derived from , ''pān'', i.e. "all" and , ''dōron'', i.e. "gift", thus "the all-endowed", "all-gifted" or "all-giving") was the first human woman created by Hephaestus on the instructions of Zeus. As Hes ...
'' (1944), contained disturbing images of human disaster
A disaster is a serious problem occurring over a short or long period of time that causes widespread human, material, economic or environmental loss which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources ...
and tragedy
Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy ...
, which was later interpreted by some as foretelling the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan a year later.
With his company, the Jooss Ballet went on world tours until his company disintegrated in 1947.
Jooss left England in 1949 to return to Essen, Germany. Jooss continued to teach and choreograph for 19 years. One of his students from this period was the choreographer Pina Bausch
Philippine "Pina" Bausch (27 July 1940 – 30 June 2009) was a German dancer and choreographer who was a significant contributor to a neo-expressionist dance tradition now known as . Bausch's approach was noted for a stylized blend of dance mov ...
.
He retired in 1968 and died in Heilbronn
Heilbronn () is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in northern Baden-Württemberg, Germany, surrounded by Heilbronn (district), Heilbronn District. With over 126,000 residents, it is the sixth-largest city in the state.
From the late Mid ...
, West Germany, 11 years later, aged 78, from injuries sustained in an automobile accident.
Kurt Jooss works are still performed today, especially ''The Green Table''. Anna Markard (Jooss' daughter) supervised companies that perform his works until her death, conserving authenticity of the author of Dance Theatre.
References
Further reading
* ''The New Ballet: Kurt Jooss and his work''. AV Coton, 1946.
* ''The Dance Theatre of Kurt Jooss''. Edited by Suzanne K. Walther. Routledge, ''Choreography and Dance Studies'', Volume 7, 1994,
** ''Kurt Jooss: The Evolution of an Artist'', Suzanne K. Walther
** ''The West German dance theatre'',
** ''Jooss the teacher'', Anna Markard
** ''Dance of Death: Kurt Jooss and the Weimar Years'', Suzanne K. Walther
* ''Kurt Jooss, The Green Table''. Anna Markard; edited by Ann Hutchinson Guest. Routledge,
*
''Kurt Jooss, The Green Table''. Anna Markard
* "The Some of the Parts: Prosthesis and Function in Bertolt Brecht, Oskar Schlemmer, and Kurt Jooss", Kate Elswit. ''Modern Drama'', Volume 51, Number 3, Fall 2008, pp. 389–410, University of Toronto Press
*
* "The Micropolitics of Exchange: Exile and Otherness after the Nation", Kate Elswit. ''The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Politics'', edited by Randy Martin, Rebekah Kowal, and Gerald Siegmund. Oxford University Press, 2017.
*
"The Micropolitics of Exchange: Exile and Otherness after the Nation", Kate Elswit
External links
Kurt Jooss’ Green Table Restaging and Dance Symposium in Taiwan, 2010
''The New York Times'',15 April 1992
– Exhibition at Gendell Gallery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Joss, Kurt
Ballet choreographers
German choreographers
German male ballet dancers
Modern dancers
1901 births
1979 deaths
Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom
German emigrants to England
Folkwang University of the Arts faculty
Road incident deaths in Germany
20th-century German ballet dancers