The Body of the People: East German Dance since 1945

3. Resistive Motions in the East: Rechoreographing Opposition (1980s)

85 3 Resistive Motions in the East Rechoreographing Opposition (1980s) There it was—that blank stare, that look, the erasure. I had encountered it many times before; it was, in fact, an all-too familiar experience. We were all sitting around a conference table, international scholars sharing our work and giving comments on each other’s writing. One European scholar mentioned a recent reconstruction of Mary Wigman’s choreographies by the Ecuadorian dancer Fabián Barba. Barba devotedly reconstructed Wigman’s work, including dances from the cycle Swinging Landscapes, even performing it at Hellerau, where Wigman began her dance training with Jaques-Dalcroze. The dancer effectively embodied Wigman’s angular style of moving with its strong lines and powerful movement initiations. Even Barba’s male body did not interfere with his loyal reconstruction; rather he managed to emphasize Wigman’s unique approach to femininity and gender.1 The scholar referred to Barba’s performance as a specific approach to reconstruction, one that restaged the original.2 To point to a contrasting approach, another scholar mentioned Martin Nachbar’s reconstruction of Dore Hoyer’s Afectos Humanos (Human Affec­ tions), in which Nachbar brought out his own struggle with Hoyer’s choreography through a lecture-performance.3 As these two scholars started to argue the pros and cons of each approach, it became clear that only a few of the non-European academics in the room had heard of either work. Several knew nothing about Dore Hoyer or about Nachbar’s performances. In response to the flurry of questions, a very established dance scholar from West Germany began to explain Nachbar’s 2006 reconstruction of Hoyer’s work. She described how Nachbar made his inability to dance the Ausdruckstanz vocabulary—and thus to faithfully reconstruct the dances—a part of the final performance. Nachbar was trained in release-based techniques and was not 86 Resistive Motions in the East able to perform the strong shapes and lines of Hoyer’s distinct vocabulary. The scholar welcomed Nachbar’s approach as contributing to a productive discourse on reconstruction. Yet in her celebration of Nachbar’s aesthetic and dance theoretical accomplishments, she was unaware that a political problematization of German contemporary dance history in relation to modernism and Ausdrucks­ tanz was missing from her account and his reconstruction. The West German scholar went on to discuss the history of the original choreography and explained that there was an earlier reconstruction in 1988 by Susanne Linke, a Wigman pupil working in West Germany.4 I waited, hoping that she would eventually mention Arila Siegert’s reconstruction of Afectos Humanos that same year in East Germany.5 But she didn’t. I finally addressed her, saying: “Well, it is kind of interesting and important for a discussion of reconstruction and historization of Hoyer’s work that there was also a reconstruction by Siegert.” A blank stare ensued. It was finally broken when the West German scholar said that she hadn’t mentioned Siegert’s work because Nachbar was only referencing Linke’s reconstruction. “That is exactly my point,” I said. I am not sure she understood. Or to be more precise, I am sure she didn’t grasp the politics of my insistence. This chapter attempts to make my point clear by insisting on the politics of such diverse concepts as reconstruction, choreography, and pedestrian performance and examining them as embodied resistance in East German dance. These concepts are central to dance studies and have been explored in relation to aesthetic concerns, yet their political dimension has not always been at the forefront of our field’s discourse. By reading reconstruction, choreography, and pedestrian performance as resistive acts against cultural indoctrination, I repoliticize each concept and contribute to producing a more balanced debate. I provide three unique case studies of East German movement culture, which went mostly unnoticed by, or at least are no longer part of, the official unified German discourse on dance and movement. Each of these examples of East German movement demonstrate a resistance to the socialist state in which they were performed and to the movement culture they reference. However, they are very distinct in their approach. Central to Siegert’s reconstructive and institutional resistance is her distinct engagement with Ausdruckstanz and the founding of her own dance company. Looking at Siegert’s work, I highlight how dancers and choreographers in East Germany began to work more openly with modernism, which had been repressed by the demand the artists adhere to socialist realism...