Jean Weidt

Jean Weidt , actually Hans Weidt , (born October 7, 1904 in Hamburg , † August 29, 1988 in Rangsdorf ) was a German dancer and choreographer .

Life

Beginnings in Hamburg

Weidt, born in Hamburg-Barmbek , grew up in poor circumstances and left home at the age of sixteen to pursue his passion for dance. The autodidact worked as a gardener and as a coal trimmer in the port of Hamburg to generate money for setting up his dance groups. From 1925 to 1928 he performed with his first dance groups in the Hamburg Curiohaus and at the Kammerspiele with his pieces Call , The Worker and Dance with the Red Flag . He first gained fame at the Hamburg State Opera with the play The Juggler and the Bell Game and attracted attention from Gustaf Gründgens as well as from Klaus Mann and Mary Wigman .

Weidt saw himself as a political dancer. In October 1923 he took part in the Hamburg uprising and recognized, according to his own statement, that he belonged to the workers, he wanted to dance the themes of the working class and for the workers. It was “not so much about Expressionism or another aesthetic program, but rather we represented a kind of agitprop art , that is, political propaganda, which had to be just as convincing artistically. Our goal was to find a new and appropriate form for this previously reviled content. "

Success in Berlin

With his company Die Rote Tänzer he moved to Berlin in 1929 and organized socially critical dance evenings there. Erwin Piscator , the artistic director of the Berlin Renaissance Theater , engaged Weidt and, from 1931, staged the play Tai Yang awakens by Friedrich Wolf with him at the Wallner Theater . The set was created by the young John Heartfield .

Recognizing the current danger of growing fascism , Weidt decided in 1931 to become a member of the KPD. A close cooperation with Troupe 31 developed around Gustav von Wangenheim , Ludwig Renn , Hans Rodenberg , John Heartfield and Arthur Pieck . Socially critical works such as Die Mausefalle , Passion eines Menschen , Die Ehe and others emerged. Weidt was the central protagonist of the political theater of the Weimar Republic , because his choreographies dealt with the issues of the working class. He warned early and again and again about the burgeoning fascism in Germany and Europe and created the choreography “Potsdam”. The dancers appear with oversized masks that symbolize Hitler and his accomplices. The message was clear and the Gestapo took action.

Immediately after the Nazis' seizure of power , Weidt was arrested in Berlin, his practice and living space in Prenzlauer Berg and almost all dance masks, sculptural works, especially by the artist Richard Steffen , were destroyed. He was imprisoned in Charlottenburg prison for several weeks and was mistreated and beaten. The director Karlheinz Martin was finally able to obtain his release.

emigration

In May 1933 he emigrated to France via Moscow and worked in Paris , Moscow and Prague until the end of the Second World War . In Paris he met Jean Gabin , Maurice Chevalier , Pablo Picasso , whom he sat several times as a nude model, and Josephine Baker . He became known with his group Ballets Weidt , founded in 1933 , with whom he created the choreography Under the Bridges of Paris , L'été aux champs and Sur la grande route , among others . The programs for Weidt illustrated, among others, Jean Cocteau . The young Louis Armstrong got his first engagements in France from Jean Weidt and toured Europe with Weidts Compagnie from 1933 to 1936.

In 1938 Weidt founded Le Ballets 38 in Paris . Until the occupation of France in World War II, he and his company were considered the "undisputed number 1" (source of the quote: Andreas Weidt, his son) on the modern French dance scene. Jean Weidt played the leading role in the French hit film The Sorcerer's Apprentice . The German director Max Reichmann directed it . In his dance work he was supported by the French dance couple Dominique and Francoise Dupuy. The Dupuys performed with choreographies by Jean Weidt into the 21st century and toured all over Europe.

After the occupation of France and his temporary internment in Algeria, Jean Weidt volunteered for the British Army and took an active part in the fight against fascism.

In 1947, Jean Weidt received first prize in the second “International Choreographic Competition / Concours international de chorégraphie” in Copenhagen for his choreography The Cell / La Cellule .

Return to Berlin

After his return from emigration, he directed the newly founded Dramatic Ballet of the Volksbühne Berlin from 1948 . After stops in Schwerin , Hamburg and Chemnitz and the invention of the "Störtebeker Festival" in 1954 in collaboration with Hanns Eisler , Prof. Walter Felsenstein appointed him to the Komische Oper Berlin in 1966 . There the young choreographer Tom Schilling was just building a new type of dance company and named it Tanztheater der Komische Oper Berlin . At the same time, Jean Weidt created the group of young dancers with 40 young amateur dancers , which he led until his death in 1988.

At a very old age, Jean Weidt developed the event series Hour of Dance . All top companies in the GDR took part. It became the most successful post-war production for Jean Weidt. In 1988 the German director Petra Weisenburger created the documentary: Jean Weidt - Dancing for a Better Life .

Weidt was married to the painter and graphic artist Ursula Wendorff-Weidt . Son Andreas comes from this marriage. Jean Weidt's estate is kept in the Leipzig Dance Archive and the German Dance Archive in Cologne . In 1988 Jean Weidt was made an honorary citizen of his last hometown, Rangsdorf .

Posthumous honors

In 2005, the City of Hamburg honored Jean Weidt as part of the Lakoon Festival at Kampnagel , the venue for contemporary performing arts in a former machine factory, with the performance of two of his choreographies Vielles Gens, Vieux Fers and Ball der Entrechteten . Special credit goes to the Colombian artist Alvaro Restrepo . He won the Compagnie Dupuy from France for this performance .

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of his death, the private curators Nina Rücker and Michael Wiedemann dedicated the exhibition Image and Movement to Weidt's life and work (patron of the Governing Mayor of Berlin Klaus Wowereit ). For the first time, original props, masks and posters by the dancer, the original film The Sorcerer's Apprentice , and watercolors by his wife Ursula Wendorff-Weidt were shown from Andreas Weidt's estate . The traveling exhibition was shown nationwide from 2008 to 2010.

In 2010, an exhibition cabinet was dedicated to the dancer and choreographer as part of the exhibition Dance of the 1920s in Hamburg . The exhibition venue was the auditorium of the University of Fine Arts, Hamburg. This is where Weidt found his first make-up artist working as a nude model. (The chapter "Landing and stranding in the publication" Heaven for Time. The Culture of the Twenties in Hamburg "is dedicated to the dancer's time in Hamburg.)

From October 17, 2010 to January 30, 2011, the GEDOK Brandenburg (Association of Artists and Art Funders eV) honored the entire family of artists for the first time with the exhibition "DIE WEIDTS" in Rangsdorf : Jean Weidt (dancer and choreographer), Ursula Wendorff-Weidt ( Painter and graphic artist), Andreas Weidt (ceramist) and Michael Weidt (photographer).

In 2016 Nele Lipp remembered in Hamburg with the exhibition Weidt tanzt! as well as the new production of the play La Cellule / Diezelle to the son of the city, which was awarded first prize in the Concours International de la Danse in Stockholm, which was awarded the first prize in 1947 . At the same time, the films The Face of a Dancer by Lothar Grossmann (1974) and L'apprenti sorcier (The Sorcerer's Apprentice, 1993) by Max Reichmann and Jean Cocteau , in which Weidt danced the sorcerer's apprentice, were shown in a retrospective at Hamburg's Metropolis Kino .

literature

• Nele Lipp: Jean Weidt. A life as a dancer 1904–1988. Idealist and surrealist of the European dance scene , Athena-Verlag, Oberhausen 2016, ISBN 978-3-89896-659-7 .
• Yvonne Hardt: Political Bodies. Expressive dance, choreographies of protest and the working-class culture movement in the Weimar Republic . Münster 2004, pp. 140–171.
• Bernd Köllinger: Tanztheater , Henschelverlag, Berlin 1983.
• Nele Lipp: dance - sculpture - space. Ein Lexikon , Marl 2006, ISBN 3-924790-73-6 .
• Nele Lipp: 'Landing and stranding' - artistic dance . In: Dirk Hempel , Friederike Weimar: Heaven on time. The culture of the 1920s in Hamburg . Neumünster 2010, pp. 108–114.
• Uwe Naumann, Nele Lipp (eds.): Klaus Mann: The broken mirrors. A dance pantomime. Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-936609-47-9 .
• Jean Weidt: The Red Dancer. Henschelverlag, Berlin 1968. (autobiography)
• Jean Weidt, Marion Reinisch: On the big road. Series dialog. Henschelverlag, Berlin 1984.
• Jean Weidt, Weltbühne No. 8 / VIII, February 23, 1953.

Movies

• 1933: Max Reichmann: The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Cinema film, France
• 1974: Lothar Grossmann: face of a dancer - Jean Weidt , DDR television
• 1981: May I say Petrushka to you?
• 1988: Petra Weisenburger: Jean Weidt: Dancing for a better life. Documentary, DFF / SWF Baden-Baden, Tape 208 German Dance Archive Cologne.

Web links

• Page about Jean Weidt at the German Dance Archive Cologne .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Marion Reinisch (Ed.): On the big road. Jean Weidt's memories. Henschelverlag, Berlin 1984, p. 17.
2. ↑ Homepage arte.tv: “Dance of the Old People” - Dominique and Françoise Dupuy  ( page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed April 16, 2010.