Kurt Jooss

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Kurt Jooss (1971)
with the Het Nationale Ballet

Kurt Jooss (born January 12, 1901 in Wasseralfingen ; † May 22, 1979 in Heilbronn ) was a German dancer , choreographer and dance teacher who had a significant influence on German dance theater . He was a co-founder of the Folkwang School for Music, Dance and Speaking and the founder of the experimental Folkwang dance studio .

Life

Memorial plaque for Kurt Jooss in Bayreuth

Kurt Jooss was the son of a manor and brewery owner, whose ancestors in turn worked as shepherds and farmers in the Heidenheim an der Brenz area . His mother came from a long-established family from Aalen . He attended secondary school in Aalen until he graduated from high school. Instead of being interested in taking over his father's estate, he chose artistic training and attended the Württemberg Conservatory for Music in Stuttgart from 1919 to 1920 (piano and theory). At the same time he studied singing with Helga Lindberg and Rudolf Gmeiner from 1919 to 1921, and acting with Emmy Remolt-Jessen from 1920 to 1921 . From 1920 to 1922 he took dance lessons from Rudolf von Laban and finally assisted him for two years in Hamburg. After that, Jooss worked as a ballet master and director at the Stadttheater in Münster . In 1925 Jooss and Sigurd Leeder joined   an artist group and opened a new dance school, Westphalian Academy for movement, language and music . From 1926 Jooss and Leeder studied classical ballet in Paris with the Russian ballerina Lubov Egorova.

In 1927 Jooss moved the Westphalian Academy to Essen as part of the newly founded Folkwang School for Music, Dance and Speaking . In 1928 he founded the Folkwang-Tanztheater-Experimentalstudio there , which in the 1930s was considered the “cradle of German expressive dance” and was a pioneer of dance theater. This later became the Folkwang Dance Studio .

In 1930 Jooss became the ballet director at the Essen Opera House. Jooss became world-famous as the choreographer of Der Grüne Tisch , an expressionist , dance-like representation of negotiations about war and death, and was awarded first prize at the International Choreographic Competition in Paris in 1932 . The photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch took the most impressive photographs of the dance work Der Grüne Tisch at the dress rehearsal in the Folkwang Museum around 1931. Kurt Jooss continued the disbanded ballet company of the Essen Opera House under the name of ballets Jooss . In 1933 he emigrated because he refused to continue working in Germany without his Jewish employees . From 1934 to 1940 he and his company ran a dance school at the reform pedagogical Dartington Hall School in Devon in southern England . He accepted British citizenship. The dance company made guest appearances in Europe and New York City with great success, but did not appear in Germany. In 1947, Jooss dissolved his group in England and worked for a year as a guest teacher and choreographer at the Chilean State Ballet in Santiago de Chile .

From 1949 Jooss taught again at the Folkwang School. The company gave its first performance in Germany after the end of the Second World War in the newly founded Folkwang Dance Theater , but had to stop its work in 1953 due to lack of money. The city of Essen no longer wanted to subsidize dance. In 1961, grants made it possible for Jooss to set up master classes from which the Folkwang Ballet emerged . Guest choreographers were Antony Tudor , Jean Cébron , Lucas Hoving and Gigi Caciuleanu. When the Folkwang School expanded into a university in 1963, Jooss was appointed professor of choreography and director of the dance institute.

In the post-war period, a conservative taste prevailed on the stages of the Federal Republic, with classical ballet dominating the dance performances. As a result, Jooss increasingly fell into the aesthetic offside. In 1968 Jooss resigned prematurely from the management of the dance department at the Folkwangschule, as he was forbidden to make further arrangements before the contract expired. The Folkwang Ballet was continued by his former student Pina Bausch . Jooss then worked abroad again, especially in Scandinavia. Kurt Jooss died on May 22, 1979 after a traffic accident in a Heilbronn hospital. In 1985 the city of Essen organized a dance festival in his honor with pieces by his students and descendants from the Folkwang School such as Pina Bausch, Susanne Linke , Reinhild Hoffmann and Marilen Breuker.

Kurt Jooss was married to Aino, b. Right to live. Her stage name was Siimola, named after the Estonian ancestral home of her family. In 1971 his wife died. The marriage had two daughters, Anna Maria Markard-Jooss and Christina Barbara. Anna Markard also worked as a choreographer and dance teacher.

Kurt Jooss' estate is kept in the German Dance Archive in Cologne . A bundle of original photographs by Renger-Patzsch is in the Albert Renger-Patzsch archive of the Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation / Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.

Works

In addition to Der Grüne Tisch , his most famous works include: Großstadt (music by Alexandre Tansman ), Pavane on the death of an infanta (music by Maurice Ravel ), Ein Ball in Alt-Wien (music: Joseph Lanner , court ball dances , arrangement: FA Cohen) and The Prodigal Son (music by Fritz A. Cohen ). A catalog of works with 75 choreographies, 45 theater and music theater productions as well as a dance and acting role directory with 52 entries can be found in Stöckemann (2001), pp. 443–461.

Awards and honors

  • 1932: First prize at the Concours international de chorégraphie en souvenir de Jean Borlin from the Archives Internationales de la Danse on July 3 in Paris.
  • 1977: German Critics' Prize for Dance
  • The city of Essen named a street after Jooss.
  • 2014: Following the initiative of Marlene Hebach, a former student of Kurt Jooss, shortly before his grave site at the Bergfriedhof in Essen-Fischlaken was closed at the beginning of 2014, the city of Essen decided to convert the grave into a grave of honor .

Kurt Jooss Prize

The award, endowed with 10,000 euros, has been advertised internationally by the Anna and Hermann Markard Foundation and the City of Essen since 2001 and is awarded every three years to choreographers who are not yet established. 2001 award winners: Annelise Soglio and Torsten Konrad (Germany) with the choreography "States"; Samir Akika (Algeria / Germany) with the choreography "Lilja". 2004 prize winners: LaborGras: Renate Graziadei and Arthur Stäldi (Switzerland) with the choreography "Story-NoStory"; Johannes Wieland (USA / Germany) with the choreography "Shift". 2007 prize winners: Nicola Mascia and Matan Zamir "Matanicola" (Italy / Israel) with their choreography "Under". In 2010 the award was given to the Belarusian born dancer Arkadi Zaides who works in Israel . In 2013 the Kurt Jooss Prize was divided among the choreographers Maura Morales (Cuba / Germany), Chikako Kaido (Japan / Germany) and Wu Kang Chen / Su Wei Chia (Taiwan). The 2019 prize went to Folkwang graduate Chun Zhang, born in Shanghai, for her choreography “Being far away from”.

Movies

  • Jooss was filmed in 1923 in Zyklop , Grotesker Zweianz and a group scene at the Laban dance stage and acted as a dancer on the dance stage in the three-man dance and the living image in the film Paths to Strength and Beauty (1925).
  • The Green Table was recorded several times:
    • 1963 - Director: Truck Branss , Production: WDR , Performance: Folkwang Ballet
    • 1966 - Director: Peter Wright, Production: BBC , Performance: Folkwang-Ballett
    • 1977 - Director: Birgit Cullberg , Production: Sveriges Radio , Performance: Cullberg-Baletten
    • 1979 - Director: Motoko Sakaguchi, Production: NHK , Performance: Star Dancers Ballet
    • 1982 - Director: Emile Ardolino , Production: EBC, Performance: Joffrey Ballet
    • 2000 - Director: Thomas Grimm , Production: RM Arts, WTTW, WDR, Performance: Joffrey Ballet of Chicago.
  • The second homecoming of Kurt Jooss. Essen remembers the Folkwang tradition . Script and direction: Jochen Schmidt , production: WDR, 1985.
  • Thoughts about love, power and death. The choreographer Kurt Jooss. Script and direction: Ulrich Tegeder, production: Inter Nationes , 1985.
  • Kurt Jooss - dance as a commitment. Documentary, Germany, 2001, 58:40 min., Script and direction: Annette von Wangenheim, production: WDR , television Cologne, first broadcast: January 14, 2001.
  • Three ballets by Kurt Jooss. Recording of three performances, Germany, 2004, min., Director: Annette von Wangenheim, production: WDR, first broadcast: September 29, 2004, summary ( memento of October 14, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) by WDR.
    Two current productions of “ Pavane on the Death of an Infanta” to music by Maurice Ravel and “Großstadt” (2004) and “Ein Ball in Alt-Wien” by ballets Jooss (1935) with Jooss as cameraman.

Literature (selection)

Primary literature

Approx. Stöckemann (2001), p. 435f, lists 23 texts by Kurt Jooss.

Secondary literature

Monographs

  • Andy Adamson, Clare Lidbury (Eds.): The Jooss Conference: 60 years of The Green Table. University of Birmingham , 1994, ISBN 0-7044-1418-X .
  • AV Coton: The New Ballet. Kurt Jooss and his work. Denis Dobson, London 1946. (layout and typography by John Heartfield )
  • Clare Lidbury (Ed.): 'Big City'. Kurt Jooss. Dance Books, London 2000, ISBN 1-85273-078-1 .
  • Anna and Hermann Markard: Jooss. Documentation. Ballett-Bühnen-Verlag, Cologne 1985, ISBN 3-922224-06-7 . (Documentation on the occasion of the festival "Folkwang 85" Essen with exhibition. In addition to other photos, nine panels based on photographs by Albert Renger-Patzsch were published)
  • Patricia Stöckemann: Something completely new has to be created now. Kurt Jooss and the dance theater. Edited by the German Dance Archive Cologne . K. Kieser, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-935456-02-6 . ( Review in: Oper & Tanz , June 2002)
  • Suzanne K. Walther (Ed.): The Dance Theater of Kurt Jooss. (= Choreography and Dance. III: 2). Harwood Academic Publishers, Chur 1993, ISBN 3-7186-5448-2 .
  • Suzanne K. Walther: Dance of Death. Kurt Jooss and the Weimar Years. Harwood Academic Publishers, Chur 1994. (Reprint: Routledge, New York 2009, ISBN 978-3-7186-5532-8 )
  • Jane Winearls: Modern Dance. The Jooss-Leeder Method. London 1958.

Essays

  • Clare Lidbury: "Kurt Jooss and Sigurd Leeder. Refugees, Battle and Aftermath". In: German-Speaking Exiles in the Performing Arts in Britain after 1933. Amsterdam / New York 2013, ISBN 978-90-420-3651-2 , pp. 207-224.
  • Laura Maris: Jooss' 'The Green Table': Musical Forms and Devices as Choreographic Tools. In: Dance Chronicle. XIX: 2, 1996, pp. 151-169.
  • Anna Markard: Jooss the Teacher. His Pedagogical Aims and the Development of the Choreographical Principles of Harmony. In: Choreography and Dance. III: 3, 1993, pp. 45-51.
  • Jochen Schmidt : Kurt Jooss and his grandchildren. The dance theater at the Essen festival "Folkwang '85". In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . April 22, 1985.
  • Marcia B. Siegel: 'The Green Table' - Sources of a Classic. In: Dance Research Journal. XXI: 1, 1989, pp. 15-21.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Kurt Jooss Prize 2007, call for applications ( memento from June 25, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ a b c d e Kurt Jooss , In: Internationales Biographisches Archiv. 29/1979, July 9, 1979, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
  3. ↑ Sigurd Leeder . In: Andreas Kotte (Ed.): Theater Lexikon der Schweiz . Volume 2, Chronos, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-0340-0715-9 , p. 1092 f.
  4. ^ Folkwang dance studio - history
  5. ↑ a b c Jochen Schmidt : Kurt Jooss and his grandchildren. The dance theater at the Essen festival "Folkwang '85". In: FAZ . April 22, 1985.
  6. ^ Jean Cébron (Fr). In: pact-zollverein.de. accessed on March 25, 2015.
  7. ↑ Time mosaic . In: The time . No. 23, June 1, 1979, obituary. (The beginning and end of the text are not part of the article.)
  8. ^ Norbert Servos: Dance Theater in Essen. Folkwang '85. In: The time . April 26, 1985.
  9. ↑ Marieluise Jeitschko: Big gestures at the "Green Table". In: WamS . March 25, 2001.
  10. ^ Sabine Moseler-Worm: An honor grave for Kurt Jooss. In: The West . January 3, 2014, accessed March 25, 2015.
  11. ↑ All in dance color. Kurt Jooss Prize to Arkadi Zaides. In: FAZ . July 5, 2010, p. 30.
  12. ↑ Kurt Jooss Prize 2013. In summer 2013 the Kurt Jooss Prize will be awarded for the fifth time. In: tanznetz.de. June 13, 2013.
    Bernd Aulich: Kurt Jooss Prize. The jury does not make a clear vote. In: Stimberg newspaper . July 14, 2013.
  13. ↑ Kurt Jooss Prize 2019 goes to Chun Zhang , folkwang-uni.de, accessed June 18, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Jooss, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German dancer, choreographer and dance teacher
DATE OF BIRTH January 12, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Wasseralfingen
DATE OF DEATH May 22, 1979
Place of death Heilbronn