From Totenmal to Trend: Wigman, Holm, and Theatricality in Modern Dance

In the development of modern dance, Mary Wigman and her student Hanya Holm are among those most instrumental in establishing this new art form during the first decades of the twentieth century. Their most outstanding achievements took very different approaches from each other in both style and content. In Germany, Wigman was one of the leading voices for Ausdruckstanz, championing absoluter Tanz, dance alone as a form of expression.¹ She enjoyed international renown from her first solo concerts in 1919 until 1933, when her alignment with National Socialism made her a controversial figure. Holm emigrated to the United States in 1931, prior to this shift in Wigman’s work in which she maintained many of the choreographic processes and conventions she learned working under Wigman.

Holm’s work developed differently than it had under the direction of her longtime mentor, but it was a natural result of experiences she had gained both with Wigman and with the American modern dance movement. By examining Wigman’s Totenmal: Dramatisch-chorische Vision für Wort Tanz Licht (Dramatic Choric Vision for Word Dance Light)² (1930) and Holm’s Trend (1937), this article considers how Holm incorporated elements from Wigman’s work into the dances she was creating in the context of the Bennington School of the Dance.³ In doing so, I demonstrate which aspects of Holm’s works, including strong group choreography, lighting design, and thematic elements, all effectively synthesized, are in part a result of what she learned under Wigman. I also show why Trend succeeded as a production, whereas by all accounts, Totenmal failed. Finally, I explain how the different environments in which they were created contributed to the very different interpretations of these works.

The connections between German and American modern dance has been laid out by, among others, Susan Manning (2006), Isa Partsch-Bergsohn (1994), Mary Anne Santos Newhall (2009), and Claudia Gitelman (1996, 2003). Wigman wrote about Totenmal both at the time of the production (1930) as well as later (1966, 89–106). It was well recorded by critics in both Germany and the United States, the vast majority of whom viewed it, as a synthesis of word, dance, and light, to be a failure (Muckermann 1930; Richter 1930; Martin 1930). Wigman’s notation of the dance, along with her notes, was published in 1987, and a short film clip (Das Totenmal 1930) is also extant, as are dozens of photos of the production, which are part of the Mary Wigman collection at the Academy of Arts Berlin. Historical studies on Totenmal focus both on production and ideological aspects, and Manning (2006) and Partsch-Bergsohn (1994) recount details of the dance.

Research on the ideological and political implications of Totenmal has been conducted by Hedwig Müller (1986a, 1986b), who states that Wigman “took little notice of the political events in Germany” when she created Totenmal (1986b, 157). Manning (2006) contextualizes the dance into Wigman’s work both before and after she began aligning it with Nazi ideology in 1933, and Ramsay Burt (1998) explains how mass spectacle and modern dance were used by the Nazis for ideological purposes. Marion Kant (2011) casts Wigman in the role of appealing to the right-leaning middle class, placing her work in a nationalistic light. In Hitler’s Dancers: German Modern Dance and the Third Reich, Kant and Lillian Karina challenge the biographies of the great figures of German dance, including Wigman, for omitting details of their ready collaboration with the Nazis (2003, 85). More recently, Kate Elswit (2014) examines Totenmal from the perspective of the contemporary spectator, demonstrating that, at the time of its initial performance, while audiences were confused by the superficial anti-war theme, neither they nor the creators realized the political implications of the work described in retrospect by historians. Manning (2006), for example, lays out a clear and convincing argument of how Totenmal served as a kind of prototype fascist theater, explaining how the method of presentation of the themes contributed to the destructive political...