Günter Hess (choreographer)

Günter Hess (born February 11, 1903 in Berlin ; † March 18, 1979 there ) was a German dancer , choreographer , director and dance teacher .

life and work

Günter Hess received his dance training from April 1920 in the ballet studio of Hanns Storck, the first soloist from the Charell ballet. He later trained with Max Terpis in Berlin, at the Hamburg Labanschule and at the Novikoff School in London. On January 15, 1921 he made his debut with the first solo dance evening. In 1924 he danced Joseph in Joseph's Legende by Richard Strauss at the Leipzig Opera in the choreography by Heinrich Kröller. In the 1920s and 1930s you can find Günter Hess as a soloist and in duets a. a. with Lore Jentsch, with his student Lisa Kretschmar and with Ursula Deinert , as well as educators, movement choir leaders and others. a. at the AEG , as a dance director and ballet master at the stages in Osnabrück, Dessau, Hagen, Chemnitz and Wuppertal, as a guest choreographer at the Duisburg Opera, dance director at the Deutsche Tanzbühne in Berlin and at various festivals, as a dancer under Lizzie Maudrik at the Berlin State Opera and guest at various other theaters. In 1944, when he was a prisoner of war in Kiel, Germany, Hess founded a marine dance theater . From today's perspective, the most interesting are perhaps the 1927/28 season in Dessau, where he worked with Wassily Kandinsky on the pictures at an exhibition , and his time in Hagen. Hess danced here a. a. the knight in the scarecrows in the outfit of Oskar Schlemmer . The world premieres he brought out in Hagen included the facade ( Façade ) with music by William Walton in the first staged performance and the cycle to the music by Arthur Honegger , both with sets by Hein Heckroth .

Hess was an all-rounder and is mainly remembered from the decades after the Second World War, when he taught budding actors in movement and directing: from 1951 to 1968 at the Max Reinhardt School for Drama of the State of Berlin, and also at the Berlin school University of Music , at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and on numerous guest courses, e.g. B. in Oslo, Stockholm, Salzburg, Brussels or Essen-Werden. And in addition to countless school performances, Hess also appeared again and again after the war on well-known stages in a mixture of director and choreographer, e. B. 1949 at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg with the much acclaimed Am-stram-gram , as well as in film and television. His estate is in the German Dance Archive in Cologne .

Appreciation

Hess is of major importance in the history of the development of dance theater . Like Kurt Jooss , who was two years older than him, he wanted to establish modern dance in theaters. In contrast to Jooss, however, Hess was not concerned with knowing that dance should be integrated into the opera and drama business at the same time. Equal rights for the three branches. On the other hand, he significantly expanded the appearance of the dance division by including elements of drama and opera. Well-known dance and theater critics of the time, such as Artur Michel, found his performances in Hagen to be too little “dancing”. From this point of view, Hess and the Kammertanztheater Hagen appear more related to the Wuppertal dance theater than Jooss and his modern dance companies. Günter Hess primarily worked 'across borders'. After the Second World War, he mainly taught actors in movement. The fact that the movement has so much more of a role in acting in Germany than it used to be is not insignificant due to its merit. He also liked to involve the audience in his performances. Horst Koegler wrote in 1973: “And when there is a demand everywhere today to lead art out of its elitist isolation and to stimulate the creative initiatives of the public, he can rub his hands - because that is exactly what he has been doing in the field of movement has done for over fifty years. "

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cycle , also Cycle to Eternity , has the subtitle Symphonic Dance-Light-Abstraction by Karlheinz Gutheim and Günter Hess in the scenario . Günter Hess danced the role of 'human-mind', the role of 'human-matter' Aurel von Milloss .
2. ↑ AM: Dance premiered at the chamber Dance Theater Hagen. In: German Theater Service v. March 25, 1930.
3. ↑ Horst Koegler: Günter Hess on his seventieth birthday. In: Das Tanzarchiv , 20th vol. H. 9, February 1973, pp. 278f.

literature

• Frank-Manuel Peter : The language of dance theater. Günter Hess would be 90 years old. In: dance drama. No. 22/23, 1993, pp. 56-58.

Web links

• Biography and pictures from his estate