Domesticating the Vamp: Jazz and the Dance Melodrama in Weimar Cinema

A symbol of the modern woman who could work outside the home, vote for the first time, and dress and move in ways that questioned traditional femininity, the Weimar New Woman was a mass-media projection that corresponded only partially to the reality of women in the 1920s (Grossman). In the research dedicated to the New Woman, several recent investigations stand out in terms of their nuanced approaches to the interconnectedness of concepts of modernity, class, and gender, approaches revealing that during the 1920s women created a public sphere in which they were no longer simply objects of male voyeurism but also active subjects who shaped their urban environments. Patrice Petro's work explores women's representation in Weimar's popular illustrated magazines and melodramatic films and demonstrates the emergence of a female spectatorship drawn to images that questioned traditional gender representations. Richard McCormick analyzes Weimar's crisis of gender identities, both male and female, and points out the emancipatory impact of the blurring of traditional identity categories. In scrutinizing the New Woman's multifaceted movement in the modern urban space, Anke Gleber exposes the problematic correlation between the representation of femininity and women's actual presence in the metropolis. Suggesting a more fluid relationship between the New Woman as a media-created icon and women of the time, Mila Ganeva examines female self-presentation through fashion and contends that women were not only actively involved in the creation of their own modern image, but that they used films, particularly the fashion farce, as a source for practical fashion advice.

What these studies have in common is the critical acknowledgement of women's sexual, social, and representational mobility. Against this background of women's freedom of movement during the 1920s there are a growing number of inquiries into the New Woman's physical body movement manifested through gymnastics and various forms of dance. Scholars have explored the eurhythmical dances of Rudolf Laban, Mary Wigman, and Isadora Duncan (Toepfer); the nude dances of Anita Berber (Fischer); Weimar revues (Lehne); and the synchronized kick-line dances of girl troupes (Jelavich). Striking in the scholarly work on dance in the Weimar period, however, is the limited investigation of jazz dances. Jazz dances or, as they were often called at the time, modern social dances (moderne Gesellschaftstänze) are dances such as the onestep, foxtrot, Charleston, shimmy, and black bottom. The fact that these dances originated in America and were performed to jazz music automatically placed them in the dualistic discourse surrounding jazz and Americanism typical for the period. This discourse alternated concepts of modernity, technology, and rationality on the one hand with views of primitivism and uncontrollable sexuality on the other hand (Jelavich; Nenno; Weiner). In this dualistic paradigm, jazz dances were seen as a source that reenergized the body, increased its agility and mobility, and thus made it more modern. Simultaneously, the rotating hip and shoulder movements and the lifted arms and legs in modern social dances were criticized as lascivious and primitive (Schär).

Among the few works dedicated to jazz dances in Weimar Germany, Christian Schär's research is noteworthy because it provides a sociological study of modern social dances. He examines the discourse on jazz dances as it emerged in dance manuals and journalism as well as the two professional organizations for dance instructors the Allgemeiner Deutscher Tanzlehrer-Verband (ADTV) and the Reichsverband zur Pflege des Gesellschaftstanzes (RPG) and particularly the latter's efforts to standardize jazz dances. Because of its wide scope, Schär's examination touches only briefly on writings on jazz dance by Harry Graf Kessler and Carl Zuckmayer, for example, but it does not address any representations of modern social dances in art, literature, or film. Susan Funkenstein's exploration of Otto Dix's paintings Metropolis and To Beauty is unique for Weimar jazz dance research because by investigating feminine and masculine constructions of gender through social dancing, in particular the Charleston, the author reveals the intertextual and intermedial connections between visual art and modern social dances.

This article extends discussions of jazz dance to the medium...