Daisy Spies

Daisy Spies (1930). Photo by Karl Schrecker

Daisy Margarete Spies (born December 7, ^jul. / 20th December  1905 ^greg. In Moscow , † 4. September 2000 in Berlin ) was a German dancer and choreographer.

Daisy Spies was born as the child of a German merchant family in Moscow and grew up in the midst of her four older siblings, who were almost all artists. In her parents' house she had already experienced a variety of artistic impressions through concert evenings by important musicians such as Alexander Scriabin and Sergei Rachmaninov and through visits to the large art collections of Shchukin and Morozov . Her brother Walter Spies , the well-known Bali painter and musician, had inspired her to dance and recommended her as a student of Toni Freeden and Mary Wigman . She later became a choreographer and dance teacher herself at the Wigmann School and the Academy of Arts in Berlin and Hamburg. She worked as a ballet director and choreographer in Weimar, Leipzig, at the German State Opera in Berlin, in the Berlin Friedrichstadtpalast , at the Hamburg Operettenhaus and in the Landestheater Linz .

Daisy Spies already attracted considerable attention in the early twenties as a partner of Harald Kreutzberg , in Donaueschingen she appeared in Oscar Schlemmer's Triadic Ballet at the Festival of New Music in 1926 . She began her brilliant career in 1924 at the Berlin State Opera , where she became the youngest prima ballerina under Max Terpis and Rudolf von Laban . From 1931 she went on a European tour with the troupe “The Six from the State Opera” and the “Gamajun Ballet” by Victor Gsovsky. In 1934, together with her partner and later husband, the ballet master Rudolf Kölling and her brother the conductor Leo Spies, she took over the direction of the ballet at the Charlottenburg Opera as first solo dancer and ballet master. With her own chamber dance group in half of Europe and in the old winter garden , she became a legend of Berlin ballet life.

Originally from the German expressive dance team Mary Wigmans and Rudolf von Labans, Daisy Spies got to know classical Russian ballet with Victor Gsovsky . Her style thus became a modern variant of classical ballet, which was primarily committed to the scene and theater. Her own most successful ballets include Der Stralauer Fischzug by Adolf Glaßbrenner and Theodor Hosemann , which she brought out together with Leo Spies for the 1936 Olympics and the 1937 Berlin anniversary , as well as The Right of the Lord with music by Victor Bruns at the German State Opera in 1953.

After Mary Wigman , Valeska Gert , Gret Palucca and Tatjana Gsovsky , Daisy Spies was the last representative of the great age of German artistic dance in the twenties.

She is buried in the Dorotheenstadt Cemetery in Berlin, next to her brother Leo. She bequeathed her dance artistic estate to the German Dance Archive in Cologne.

literature

• Rosemarie Köhler: They lived as they wanted. Berlin cemetery walks to grave sites of extraordinary women. Orlanda, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-936937-39-7

Web links

• Page on Daisy Spies at the German Dance Archive Cologne .
• Daisy Spies died , reported on coram publico, September 5, 2000