Helmut Rudolph (dancer)

Helmut Rudolph (born July 31, 1908 in Berlin-Schöneberg ; died 1999 in Munich ) was a German dancer, draftsman and costume designer.

Life

After leaving school in 1922, he attended the school for merchants in the state vocational school for young people in Berlin for 2 years until September 1924. This was followed by four years of training as a tailor in Berlin until 1928. This was followed by training in drawing and painting at the fashion drawing school in Berlin until September 1930. From October 1930 to January 1931 he had a trial position at the city theater in Beuthen , Upper Silesia, as a costume designer . From February to June 1931 he studied drawing at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna . From July 1931 he worked as an employee of an advertising agency in Berlin and attended evening classes in group dances with Lotte Wernicke, a master student of Mary Wigman . Then he decided to train as a dancer and learned from August 1934 to June 1937 modern expressive dance according to the Mary Wigman method. From August 1938 he got a solo engagement for the opera in Breslau . In December 1940 he was called to the Wehrmacht, where he had to go to Norway as a gunner and was taken prisoner by the French at the end of the war. He was released on June 26, 1948.

From August 1948 he was hired as a solo dancer for the theater in Rostock and had to take over the ballet direction after six months. From August 1949 he went to the State Theater in Schwerin as a solo dancer, where he had the greatest success as a mask seller at Romeo and Juliet . From June 1951 a contract as a solo dancer at the Leipzig Opera House followed . In August 1952 he was accepted as an aspirant of the Academy of the Arts in East Berlin. From August 1953 he started his own business as a dancer and graphic artist. In the fall of 1959 he made a trip to China, where the children's book Little Yang was written. It was printed in 1962 by Altberliner Verlag.

After his sister's death in December 1963 in West Berlin and the subsequent liquidation of his apartment, he stayed in the West. Since 1964 he lived in Munich, where many drawings and art prints were created in collaboration with the Bavarian State Opera and Heinz Bosl . In 1999 Helmut Rudolph died in Munich.

His works have been included in the German Dance Archive in Cologne .

Exhibitions

• 1983 Dansmuseet in Stockholm "Dances" watercolors exhibition
• 1983 German Museum in Munich Congress Hall Folklore Guest performances Watercolors exhibition
• 1991 Dance of the Nations. Exhibition in the State Museum of Ethnology , Munich
• 1993/1994 exhibition at the Deutsches Theatermuseum , Munich

Publications

• Little Yang . Drawings by Rudolph. Text by Alfred Könner based on an idea by Rudolph. 1962.
• Ballet soloists. 1973.
• Dances: 6 watercolors. 1981.
• Dances of the peoples. 1991.
• Dance graphics. 1998 (contains a short biography).

Movie

• The spoiled prince. Cartoon. First broadcast in 1966.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Helmut Rudolph: Dance graphics. Munich 1998.