Bund für freie Bewegung · 1928
Category: dance, Tanz, danse, danza, dansa, tansii
Tänzerinnen in Die schöne Frau
Tänzerin Maja Lex (1906 ─ 1986)
In Munich, Maja Lex was first a student member but soon, together with Gunild Keetmann and the founders Dorothee Günther and Carl Orff, belonged to the leading teaching staff of the Günther-Schule, a forward-looking school with a trebly diversified training concept of integrative musical and movement education. War events disrupted this unique constellation of artistic and educational personalities.
Maja Lex developed a new movement and dance education of a timeless pedagogic and artistic value. She liberated herself from the formalized practice/exercise/training and introduced instead the varied movements of rhythmic-dynamic, spatial and formal variation. Structured improvisation, similar to musical improvisation, was established as a definite component of the teaching lesson.
As a solo dancer and choreographer of Tanzgruppe Günther, Maja Lex was a pioneer of the New German Dance (Neuer Deutscher Tanz) in the 1930s. She created a specific dancing style of a ‘thrilling rhythmic intensity’, a definite feeling for form and a high technical dancing discipline. Music and dance became elements of equal value, not least because of the use of rhythm instruments for the dance and for the orchestra of Günther-Schule, where dancers and musicians changed roles. The director of the orchestra was Gunild Keetmann. Maja Lex’s dances belong to the absolute dance. / quoted from Elementarer Tanz
From 1927, Maja Lex performed her own choreographies. As a soloist and choreographer of the Tanzgruppe Günther-München (lead by Dorothee Günther), she made her decisive breakthrough in 1930 with the “Barbarian Suite” in collaboration with the musical director of the group, the composer Gunild Keetman. Numerous guest performances and awards at home and abroad followed until the school was forcibly closed in 1944 and finally destroyed in 1945.
Maja Lex, who had been very ill since the beginning of the 1940s, moved to Rome in 1948 and lived there together with Dorothee Günther in the house of her mutual friend Myriam Blanc. At the beginning of the 1950s Maja Lex resumed her artistic-pedagogical work and taught at the German Sport University Cologne at the invitation of Liselott Diem. From the mid-1950s until 1976, she taught the main training subject “Elementary Dance” as a senior lecturer. The concept of elementary dance was further developed by her and later in collaboration with her successor Graziela Padilla at the German Sports University Cologne. / quoted from queer places
Günther-Orff Schule · 1924
In Munich, Maja Lex was first a student member but soon, together with Gunild Keetmann and the founders Dorothee Günther and Carl Orff, belonged to the leading teaching staff of the Günther-Schule, a forward-looking school with a trebly diversified training concept of integrative musical and movement education. War events disrupted this unique constellation of artistic and educational personalities.
Maja Lex developed a new movement and dance education of a timeless pedagogic and artistic value. She liberated herself from the formalized practice/exercise/training and introduced instead the varied movements of rhythmic-dynamic, spatial and formal variation. Structured improvisation, similar to musical improvisation, was established as a definite component of the teaching lesson.
As a solo dancer and choreographer of Tanzgruppe Günther, Maja Lex was a pioneer of the New German Dance (Neuer Deutscher Tanz) in the 1930s. She created a specific dancing style of a ‘thrilling rhythmic intensity’, a definite feeling for form and a high technical dancing discipline. Music and dance became elements of equal value, not least because of the use of rhythm instruments for the dance and for the orchestra of Günther-Schule, where dancers and musicians changed roles. The director of the orchestra was Gunild Keetmann. Maja Lex’s dances belong to the absolute dance. / quoted from Elementarer Tanz
From 1927, Maja Lex performed her own choreographies. As a soloist and choreographer of the Tanzgruppe Günther-München (lead by Dorothee Günther), she made her decisive breakthrough in 1930 with the “Barbarian Suite” in collaboration with the musical director of the group, the composer Gunild Keetman. Numerous guest performances and awards at home and abroad followed until the school was forcibly closed in 1944 and finally destroyed in 1945.
Maja Lex, who had been very ill since the beginning of the 1940s, moved to Rome in 1948 and lived there together with Dorothee Günther in the house of her mutual friend Myriam Blanc. At the beginning of the 1950s Maja Lex resumed her artistic-pedagogical work and taught at the German Sport University Cologne at the invitation of Liselott Diem. From the mid-1950s until 1976, she taught the main training subject “Elementary Dance” as a senior lecturer. The concept of elementary dance was further developed by her and later in collaboration with her successor Graziela Padilla at the German Sports University Cologne. / quoted from queer places
These photographs of various sizes, most circa 7,5 x 11 cm, [inserted in window slits] belongs to a bound in paper album with cord binding. The album included various teaching and dance scenes of the “Günther Schule”, Munich, 1924.
The Günther School was founded on the initiative of Dorothea Günther and Carl Orff. The school quickly became known and subsequently expanded. It existed from 1924-1944, with an extensive teaching program, such as gymnastics, rhythmic dance and physical education, modern artistic dance, singing, anatomy, pedagogy, psychology, drawing and much more. [quoted from : Bassenge Auktion 121]
Elsa Krüger by Max Pollak
Two dancers in a sand dune
For Colored Girls · 1976-77
‘For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf’ is a 1976 work by Ntozake Shange. It consists of a series of poetic monologues to be accompanied by dance movements and music, a form which Shange coined the word choreopoem to describe. It tells the stories of seven women who have suffered oppression in a racist and sexist society.
As a choreopoem, the piece is a series of 20 separate poems choreographed to music that weaves interconnected stories of love, empowerment, struggle and loss into a complex representation of sisterhood. The cast consists of seven nameless African-American women only identified by the colors they are assigned. They are the lady in red, lady in orange, lady in yellow, lady in green, lady in blue, lady in brown, and lady in purple. Subjects from rape, abandonment, abortion and domestic violence are tackled.
Shange originally wrote the monologues as separate poems in 1974. Her writing style is idiosyncratic and she often uses vernacular language, unique structure, and unorthodox punctuation to emphasize syncopation. Shange wanted to write ‘For colored girls…‘ in a way that mimicked how real women speak so she could draw her readers’ focus to the experience of reading and listening.
In December 1974, Shange performed the first incarnation of her choreopoem with four other artists at a women’s bar outside Berkeley, California. After moving to New York City, she continued work on for colored girls…, which went on to open at the Booth Theatre in 1976, becoming the second play by a black woman to reach Broadway. quoted from wikipedia entry
For Colored Girls chronicles the experiences of seven black women through monologue and dance, confronting topics of sexism, rape, and domestic violence. The play has long been considered a benchmark for black female writers and inspired a book, film, and Tony Award-nominated Broadway play.
Written for seven characters, For Colored Girls is a group of 20 poems on the power of Black women to survive in the face of despair and pain. The show ran for seven months Off-Broadway in New York City before beginning a two-year run on Broadway. It was subsequently produced throughout the United States, broadcast on television, and in 2010 adapted into a feature film titled For Colored Girls. [text: Britannica]
Harlem showgirls by Elcha studio
La Jana by Geiringer & Horovitz
A Duncan dancer by Genthe
un regard oblique 