The Body of the People: East German Dance since 1945

Introduction: Spectacles Between Utopia and Ostalgie

3 Introduction Spectacles Between Utopia and Ostalgie The Waning Archive The archivist deposited a pile of binders, untouched in decades, on the wobbly table.1 I sat surrounded by official memos and unofficial correspondences relating to the bygone era of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), in particular to the mass dance events that took place from 1954 until the fall of the Berlin Wall. There were very few colorful programs of official events. Instead, most of the materials were old-fashioned Thermofax and carbon copies— letters, reports, internal memos, proposals—held together by strings. When I opened the binders, the bureaucratic scent of East Germany wafted up at me. The archive at the Sportmuseum Leipzig had been struggling to survive since the dissolution of East Germany in 1990; renovations of its temporary quarters were being undertaken to ensure at least the security of its collection.2 As I sat in a cold and drafty hallway, a construction worker opened the door repeatedly, pushing a wheelbarrow in and out to dump old bricks. Each time the door opened, I flung my arms over the flimsy copies to prevent them from flying away, physically protecting the dingy remnants of my expired country of origin. I felt I was not only saving them from the January gusts. I was protecting these papers from time, from the waning institution of the archive that stored them, from public neglect, erasure, and nostalgia, and from my own conflicted academic and personal stance toward them. The more I lay atop those papers, involuntarily pressing my body against their cushiony, fading surfaces, the more I felt doubt about having to engage with these banal relics of the country in which I grew up. The material only confirmed what I had already discovered about other state-sponsored dances 4 Introduction and about movement culture generally in East Germany. Yes, East German choreographers reinvented a tradition after World War II by tapping into selected areas of German dance, such as movement choirs, folk vocabulary, and Soviet and German mass movements.3 These invented traditions were meant to validate East Germany as a progressive successor of German culture and to create a socialist national identification distinct from the West by updating movement traditions in relation to socialist corporeal ideals. That was especially true for the mass events that I was researching at the Sportmuseum’s archive. Through choreography, the idealized East German body—a body that was clearly gendered and joyfully optimistic yet seriously dutiful, developing in its technical abilities over time—was invented, confirmed, and reinforced as rhythmically collective, healthy, and ready for the task of building a new country. Leipzig became the center for these socialist mass choreographies by hosting all eight Turn- und Sportfest (German sports and gymnastics festivals), organized by the government. The opening ceremony, which included more than ten thousand participants and was staged in the newly erected central stadium, eventually became the signature event for all these festivals. The movements of participants’ bodies on a stadium lawn typically expanded into the bleachers, thereby involving the audience. The general population also participated through choreographic routines that had been promoted throughout the country years before the mass events took place in Leipzig.4 In bringing people together on such a large scale, these mass events corporeally generated a sense of national identity, which Benedict Anderson has labeled an “imagined community.”5 According to Anderson, through their collective imagination, the people of a group perceive themselves as a nation, even though they lack the close interaction normally necessary to constitute a group. Choreographed mass movements can also effectively substitute for such direct interactions, because they allow a kinesthetic empathy in the observing citizen.6 This was especially true in East Germany, since the citizens were already familiar with the choreography through their participation in nationwide routines. As a result, mass choreographies became a powerful corporeal constituent of East German national identity as well as a means of affirming it. Yet, more than twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, all that is left of these once-powerful choreographies are flimsy and dusty carbon copies in a waning archival institution. The state of these archival holdings is indicative of the lack of historization of East German dance. I have been working on East German dance history for nearly twenty years. I have tracked down material in unlit and unheated warehouses and private collections, interviewed reluctant subjects, and followed archives that, threatened with closure, have been moved [3...