Mary Wigman

Mary Anne Santos Newhall is Professor Emerita of Dance at the University of New Mexico, where she also served as Associate Dean for Research in the College of Fine Arts. She is also Research Director for the American Dance Legacy Initiative at Brown University.

• MARY WIGMAN: A LIFE IN DANCE Prologue: why Mary Wigman? IntroductionChildhoodThe beginning of a life in dance Dalcroze and the garden city of Hellerau Return to ritual on the mountain of truth Dancing DadaThe crisis yearThe gilded and tarnished twenties The First Dancers’ CongressThe Second Dancers’ Congress The Third Dancers’ Congress Coming to the United States Der Weg (The Path)Returning to the new Germany Dancing in Dresden, 1933–1942 Leaving DresdenTo BerlinMARY WIGMAN’S WRITINGS ON THE DANCE: A PHILOSOPHY EMBODIEDIntroductionThe Language of Dance Philosophical context Why a new dance?Primitively modernSpannung and Entspannung SpaceTime, music, rhythmThe Mary Wigman BookWhat did Wigman mean by ecstasy and form? Apollonian and DionysianIdeas on composition and the choreographic themeWho has inherited the emotive dance lineage of Mary Wigman? MARY WIGMAN AS CHOREOGRAPHER: CHOOSING THE FOCUS Solo as signature: Hexentanz The mask as doorway Hexentanz: a description Group danceThe Seven Dances of Life (1921) Choric danceTotenmal (1930) Final solo concert PRACTICAL EXERCISES Class at the Mary Wigman School Discovering the eloquent bodyWigman movement qualities in practice What makes the dance?SpaceDance as languageSpeaking beyond the individual bodyComposition: improvisation and developing a themeOne final theme