Alice Kaluza

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Alice Kaluza (2008)

Alice Kaluza , born as Alice Walther , (* December 23, 1920 in Frankfurt am Main ; † October 31, 2017 ) was a German dancer , ballet master and choreographer .

Life

Alice Kaluza grew up in Frankfurt am Main and attended elementary school there . Access to secondary education was her in the era of National Socialism denied for political reasons, as the mother KPD - city council and the father unionists were. At the age of 14 she began her training as a dancer at Dr. Hoch's Conservatory in Frankfurt. At the age of 17 she got her first engagement as a solo dancer in Trier . In parallel, she took acting classes . In Trier, Saarbrücken , Magdeburg and Mönchengladbach she danced and played drama , opera and operetta .

In 1947 she founded the “Tanzbühne” in Frankfurt and went on tour with this ensemble through Germany and Switzerland, and also worked as a choreographer and director at the Hessische Landesbühne and the Frankfurt Theater am Zoo. In 1954 she was engaged as a ballet master at the Berlin State Opera (GDR) and invited to the Opera Națională Bucureşti for a guest performance with her cycle “Mensch in der Zeit” . After differences with cultural officials in East Berlin, she returned to Frankfurt in the same year and founded a training center for dance and drama. She also worked as a director and choreographer for the Städtische Bühnen Frankfurt and the Fritz-Rémond -Theater in the Zoo.

As a dancer, she turned away from both classical ballet and expressive dance , as practiced by Mary Wigman and Gret Palucca . Kaluza defined dance as an intellectual process. Thinking must precede every movement. At the end of her career as a solo dancer, she published the “NN Dance” manifesto in Vienna in 1960, in which she summarized her theoretical concept as follows: “The movement and step forms of the new dance are not tied to a system. ... An essential element of the new dance is the "non-movement". … The New Dance is an uncomfortable confrontation. ”In 2004 she updated her theses; since then she has spoken of "philosophical dance": "The spiritual situation shapes dance: dance is to be understood as an abstract reflection on social situations."

In 1963 she moved to Bad Homburg vor der Höhe with her state-recognized college for dance and drama, the “Studio Kaluza” . There she and her students put on new productions with their own choreographies every year. Musicals written by her with children such as “Ten Little Niggers” (1971) and “Philifax” (1973) were broadcast on TV ( ARD ), while pieces critical of society and time with the chamber dance group such as “Hommage an Goya” (1978), “Banality des Lebens ”(1992) or“ Le train du temps ”(2001) met with positive press coverage.

On September 30, 2008, Kaluza, 87 years old, closed her dance studio. She died on October 31, 2017.

Award

In 2007 Alice Kaluza was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany .

Publications

  • Alice Kaluza: Manifesto of the NN dance . Vienna, 1960.
  • Alice Kaluza: About the movement of the NN dance . o. O., 1960.

literature

  • Max Bense: Draft of a Rhine landscape . Berlin, 1962.
  • Micaela Di Sora: Dance in Elementary School Classes - Meaningfulness and Effect of Human Movement from the Perspective of Education. Housework for primary school teachers. Frankfurt, 1999.
  • Silke Eichstädt: The dancer Alice Kaluza in comparison with Gret Palucca . On the development of dance in West and East Germany after 1945. Master's thesis at the University of Frankfurt 2002.
  • Robert Fleck: Avant-garde in Vienna . Vienna, 1982.
  • Barbara Reichenbach, Hermann Heiss: A Documentation . Mainz, 1975. ISBN 3-7957-1572-5
  • Günther Scherf: Movement makes sense, and dance is an uncomfortable confrontation . In: Frankfurter Rundschau, August 4, 1995
  • Günther Scherf: Dance the truth . In: Frankfurter Rundschau, February 10, 2004.
  • Bad Homburg City Archives: Recording of a conversation with Alice Kaluza, held on October 30, November 1 and November 20, 2006 in Bad Homburg.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Excerpt from their publications - see "Publications"
  2. ↑ Scherf, Günther: Dance the truth. In: Frankfurter Rundschau, February 10, 2004.
  3. ↑ https://www.trauer-rheinmain.de/trauerbeispiel/alice-kaluza/51657146
personal data
SURNAME Kaluza, Alice
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Walther, Alice (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German dancer, ballet master and choreographer
DATE OF BIRTH December 23, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH October 31, 2017