Amint Freising

Amint Freising (* 1826 ; † January 19, 1905 ) was a dancer in the Royal Ballet in Berlin, a dance teacher , owner of a dance teaching institute and chairman of the Academy of Dance Teaching in Berlin. In a manuscript from his possession, there are records of stage and social dances from the second half of the 19th century.

Life

Because of the scarce sources, it is difficult to trace Amint Freising's résumé in detail. An overview of his biography can be found in the handbook on the royal Prussian court and state . Accordingly, Amint Freising worked from 1848 to 1864/66 as a figurant for the ballet troupe of the Royal Theater in Berlin. For the period from 1867 to 1872 (at least in the Berlin State Archives ) there are no court schemes. In the court schemata that were again available from 1873 and 1875, however, there are no more details of the figurants of the ballet troupe of the Royal Drama. Amint Freising is now mentioned as a university dance teacher in the court scheme of 1873. In the court scheme of 1875 there are no details of the ballet troupe or the university dance teachers. From the court schemes it can be seen that Freising was a figurant of the Royal Ballet from 1848 to 1864/66. From 1873 at the latest he was a university dance teacher. From 1844 to 1890 he directed a dance teaching institute in Berlin (Freising 1892, p. X).

The “Latest Season Dance Album” is dedicated to its patron Paul Taglioni . The recordings of choreographies from the repertoire of the royal ballet may have been made for his dance class institute. In the guideline (1892, p. XV) Freising writes that Paul Taglioni "had his own way of writing when he was studying his ballets, namely through different-colored drawings for the choir dances and by naming the steps for the solo dances." of importance, since no choreographic recordings are known of Paul Taglioni.

Friedrich Albert Zorn (1820–1905) presented Freising with the manuscript for his Grammar of Dance Art (Leipzig 1887) in 1885 . Although Zorn had not incorporated the improvements and corrections suggested by Freising, this work was published with a dedication to Freising. The book shows Freising's activity in 1887, after which he was already a retired member of the Royal Ballet at that time, but still active as a royal university dance teacher and chairman of the Academy of Dance Teaching in Berlin. In the Grammar of Dance Art (pp. 152 and 169) Zorn also mentions Freising's dance album .

In 1904, Freising donated an extensive collection of dance literature from his personal holdings to the Lipperheide Costume Library.

Amint Freising died in 1905 at the age of 78 or 79. He was buried in Cemetery I of the Jerusalem and New Churches in front of the Hallesches Tor . The grave has not been preserved.

Fonts

From Freising there are some printed works as well as handwritten choreographic recordings for both stage and ballroom dancing. Works or copies of the works of Amint Freisig can be found among others. a. in the Lipperheidesche Costume Library in Berlin, in the Leipzig Dance Archive and in the Friderica Derra de Moroda Dance Archives of the Paris-Lodron University in Salzburg .

• Ball album , [Berlin] 1854.
• Latest season dance album. Instructions for a better understanding of the ball order along with a collection of the latest and most popular dances. 6th edition, Berlin [1857], 79 pp. [Copy in the library of the Salzburg Museum?]
• Deutsche Quadrille,… dessin chorographique… , Berlin 1861 (title and 13 pages) (Berlin, Lipperheidesche Kostümbibliothek, Sig. Lipp Ua 74 kl)
• Dance Commando booklet. Contre-danse Quadrille à la Cour - The Lancers Quadrille allemande - Les Variétés Parisiennes. Berlin 1876.
• The dance. Edited from older writings of the author. Berlin 1882, 56 pp.
• Latest season dance album. Instructions for a better understanding of the ball order along with a collection of the latest and most popular dances. 12th edition, Berlin 1885, 112 p. [Münster University Library, KAPS 66-18]
• Tour , Berlin 1890, 3 p. With ill.
• Guide for dance lessons combined with instructions for training the body , Berlin 1892, 210 pp.
• Dance shorthand. Appendix to the guide , Berlin 1892 (Lipperheide Ua 93)
• Guide for dance lessons combined with instructions for training the body based on the French dance school ... as well as a dance shorthand (stenochoreography), 2nd edition , Berlin 1894, 210, 46 pp.

From his possession

A particularly interesting and extensive manuscript (173 pages) from Freising's possession is in the Lipperheidesche Costume Library (Lipp OZ-97) in Berlin.

• Chorèographie of various dances - quadrilles and corps de ballets by Berlin composers , Berlin 1858 (manuscript, 162 pages); Supplements (pp. 163-173).

This is a kind of notebook, which contains numerous graphic recordings of individual dance numbers of the Corps de ballet from the Berlin ballet repertoire from approx. 1834 to after 1852 and which probably came into Freising's possession in 1858 ("20. Horni 1858"). Recordings of choreographies for theater dance alternate with descriptions of ballroom dances such as minuet, quadrille, polka, Tyrolienne, etc. a.

This notebook, which was in Freising's possession, gives us one of the rare glimpses of ballet choreographies from the first half of the 19th century. The choreographers named for the ballets are Étienne Lauchery , François Michel Hoguet , Fanny Elssler (together with Hoguet), Paul Taglioni and his father Filippo Taglioni . The choreographies include a description of a version of the Redova Polka from the ballet “ La Vivandière ” by Arthur Saint-Léon, which was adapted for ballroom dancing . The recordings of three dance numbers from Paul Taglioni's ballet “The pirate” are particularly interesting. In addition to ballet choreographies and ballroom dances, there are also recordings of dance interludes in operas, such as a minuet to Giacomo Meyerbeer's “The Huguenots”.

In the dance descriptions of ballroom dances, it is not always clear whether these dance descriptions were only designed for the ballroom or possibly also for the stage.

Content (in progress)
1. Finale from the fairies (Ch: FM Hoguet; M: H. Schmidt), p. 1

literature

• Derra de Moroda, Friderica: The dance library: a catalog , ed. by Sibylle Dahms and Lotte Roth-Wölfle, Munich: Wölfle, 1982.
• Malkiewicz, Michael: “Choreographic notations for Paul Taglioni's ballet 'Der Seeräuber'”, in: Die Tonkunst , January 2008, pp. 34–45.
• Malkiewicz, Michael: "Danza aulica / teatrale / popolare? Una notazione coreografica della 'Radova from Postillon and [nd] Sutler'", in: Ornella Di Tondo / Imamculata Giannuzzi / Sergio Torsello (eds.), Corpi danzanti. Culture, tradizioni, identità. Atti delle giornate di studio in memoria di Giorgio Di Lecce, Salento: Besa, 2009, pp. 177–191.
• Petermann, Kurt: Dance Bibliography , Leipzig 1966.
• Russell, Tilden and Bourassa, Dominique: The Menuet de la Cour , OLMS, 2007 pp. 123-130.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende: Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 213.