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Kurt Jooss (12th January 1901, Wasseralfingen, Germany - 22nd May 1979, Hellbronn, West Germany) was a famous ballet dancer and choreographer mixing classical ballet with theatre. he is also widely regarded as the founder of Dance Theatre, Expressionist Dance or Tanztheatre. Jooss is noted for establishing several dance companies, including most notably, the Folkwang Tanztheatre in Essen.
In 1933 Jooss was forced to flee Germany when the Nazis asked him to dismiss the Jews from his company and he refused. Jooss, Leeder, Cohen and other members of the company took refuge in Holland before resettling in England. After touring in Europe and America, Jooss and Leeder opened a school at Dartington Hall in Devon
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' (1932), had won first prize at an international competetion for new choreography in paris in 1932. It was a strong anti-war statement, and was made a year before Adolf Hitler became the chancellor of Germany.
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. He retired in 1968 and died 11 years later in 1979 from injuries sustained from an automobile accident.
Jooss and Fritz (Frederick) 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 Westfallsche Akademie fur Bewegung, Sprache and Musik. Jooss and Leeder went to Paris in 1926 to study Classical ballet with Russian ballerina Lubv Egorova.
From a young age Jooss was interested in singing, drama and visual arts. He also played the piano and was a keen photographer. he began his career in the 1920's and from 1920 to 1924 studied under Rudolf Laban. Jooss used narratives and modern theatre styles to make performable pieces of Dance Theatre. Within a year of leaving Laban, Jooss took the opportunity to establish his own dance company called Die Neue Tanzbuhne. It was here Jooss met Fritz A. Cohen, the Jewish composer who worked with Jooss on many of his famous pieces.
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 dance' developing in Central Europe since 1917. Its main exponents include Rudolf Laban, Kurt Jooss, and Mary Wigman. The term reappears in critical reviews in the 1980s to identify the work of primarily German choreographers who were students of Jooss (such as Pina Bausch and Reinhild Hoffmann) and Wigman (Susanne Linke). The development of the form and its concepts was influenced by Bertolt Brecht and Max Reinhardt, and the cultural ferment of the Weimar Republic.
Tanztheater is more than a mere ‘blend’ of dance and dramatic elements. Both Birringer (1986) and Schlicher (1987) argue that the particular artistic and historical context of post-war Germany informed the genesis of Tanztheater.
The predominant form of dance in the Germany of the Twenties was designated expressionist dance.
Its most important representatives were Rudolf von Laban and Mary Wigman. Both possessed an understanding of dance that was a philosophy of life, that explained dance as a metaphysical experience.
Out of expressionist dance came not a dance technique as out of American (USA) modern dance, but rather a system of movement. The designation „expressionist dance“ was forbidden under the National Socialist regime, and the non-classical direction of dance was designated "German dance“.
In the 1920s and 1930s, modern dance began to be developed in the United States and Germany. The American dancers Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey, the German dancer Mary Wigman, and others broke away from traditional ballet to create their own expressive movement styles and to choreograph dances that were more closely related to actual human life. Ballets also reflected this move toward realism. In 1932 the German choreographer Kurt Jooss created The Green Table, an antiwar ballet. Antony Tudor developed the psychological ballet, which revealed the inner being of the characters. Modern dance also eventually extended the movement vocabulary of ballet, particularly in the use of the torso and in movements done lying or sitting on the floor.
The Folkwang Tanzstudio (FTS) can look back on more than 80 varied years of company history. The company’s prototype the „Folkwang-Tanztheater-Experimentalstudio“ was founded by Kurt Jooss in 1928. In the thirties it was regarded as the 'cradle' of German Expressive Dance and was to pave the way for German Dance throughout the world.
In September 1930 Kurt Jooss was entitled the Ballet Director of the Opera in Essen. The „Folkwang-Tanztheater-Studio“ became the permanent Dance Ensemble at the Opera house. It toured under the name „Folkwang Tanzbühne“. 1932 Kurt Jooss wins the first price in the international choreography competition in Paris with his legendary choreography „The Green Table“ and wins his worldwide fame.