Mass Gymnastics: A Playlist

My essay in Theatre Journal’s March 2019 issue analyzes gymnastic displays of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Czechoslovaks and Germans through the lens of mass performance. The essay argues that gymnastic training and performance techniques parallel shifts in the socio-political conception of the people in the age of mass politics. I demonstrate how small groups of dispersed people seeking unity through synchronized movement end up forming units of power ultimately adopted and adapted by totalitarian political leaders.

The essay draws on research for my upcoming book, Mass Performance: Systems and Citizens. The book creates a category of thought for mass performance, which I define as a thousand or more people performing the same activity at the same time. I focus on how the power of synchronized mass movement has been recognized and systematized by ruling powers in the era of nationalization.

German and Czechoslovak gymnastic movements, called the Turners and the Sokols, respectively, serve as paradigmatic examples of a vast modern phenomenon that, while largely forgotten today, was wildly popular from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Thousands of citizens would train for months or years to perform physical and vocal actions together, in synchrony, on a field for sequences that lasted an average of twenty minutes. The following images and videos provide further contexts for the mass gymnastics craze, and hopefully help to convey—however distantly and inadequately—their contagious dynamism. [End Page E-1]

1. German Mass Gymnastics, 1811–1945

LINKS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVM6voEWKiw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7u5Knj5Uj4

https://www.vintag.es/2013/01/1938-reich-party-congress-third-reichs.html

National Socialist Gymnastic Festival. Stuttgart, 1933.

Germany developed mass gymnastics from Jahn’s Turnverein (1811) on through the National Socialist displays of the 1930s and 40s. Looked at alongside images of mass gymnastic displays such as those of the Sokols, the lines of influence are clear, in both technique and type. One distinct feature of mass performance in totalitarian regimes is the focus on a single leader appreciating the performance, something not emphasized in pre-totalitarian displays of Czechoslovak or Turner mass gymnastics. [End Page E-2]

2. Sokol Slets in Czechoslovakia, 1882–1948

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylDm0C-iHqo

Sokol Slet. Masaryk Stadium. Prague, 1938

Sokol Slets (mass displays) contained many different elements, including parades, dances, performances of regional dances, and, of course, mass gymnastic routines. A certain inexactness of movement and playfulness among the performers can be seen in videos of Sokols, qualities that disappear in the later communist-led Spartakiads. [End Page E-3]

3. Mass Gymnastics in the Soviet Union, c.1928–91

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSZ2RW4etFA

Collage of footage from a mass physical culture display, Leningrad, c.1948.

Mass gymnastics spread to the Soviet Union, first inspired by the Czechoslovak gymnastics, then adopted into the Soviet Union’s own mass performance system. In this footage, Stalin and Beria can be seen watching the display. [End Page E-4]

4. Spartakiads in communist Czechoslovakia, 1955–90

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrwmFNK9tLg

Six thousand girls and boys perform in a sequence at the Spartakiad. Strahov Stadium, Prague, 1955.

Spartakiads developed challenging routines for children, which became a staple of all subsequent mass gymnastic performances. [End Page E-5]

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCK1wpg8ao8

The “Fireworks” sequence of the communist Spartakiad, 1980. Strahov Stadium. Prague, 1980.

Thousands of young men throw themselves from the top of human pyramids, so that, from the stands, their combined leaps resemble the dynamic and dangerous bursts of a fireworks display. This sequence was in fact perilous, and confidential reports detailing that year’s injuries (concussions, broken bones, spinal fractures, damage to inner ears) circulated among officials after the Spartakiad. [End Page E-6]

5. Mass Performance in North Korea

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd3H9X-Yl2k