Triadic ballet

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The Triadic Ballet. Poster for an unrealized performance in Hanover, February 19-26, 1924, designed by Oskar Schlemmer.
choreography

The Triadic Ballet is an experimental ballet by Oskar Schlemmer . It was created from 1912 in Stuttgart in collaboration with the dancers Albert Burger and Elsa Hötzel, had a partial performance there on December 17, 1916 and its world premiere on September 30, 1922.

History of origin

Some erroneous assumptions about the Triadic Ballet have found widespread use, in particular it is often wrongly said that Oskar Schlemmer is the sole creator, further that the ballet was created at the Bauhaus in Weimar in the early 1920s and - after its premiere in Stuttgart in 1922 - in 1923 "At the Bauhaus" had been performed.

In fact, the story of its genesis begins in Stuttgart in 1912, and it was never performed “at the Bauhaus” (although it was in the context of the Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar in 1923, albeit in the theater). Since 1963, the Stuttgart dance historian Helmut Günther has made a significant contribution to the rediscovery of the Triadic Ballet , who, on the basis of the documents, has repeatedly referred to the years of joint work on the initially alone by the Royal Court Opera dancers Albert Burger (1884-1970) and his wife Elsa Hötzel ( 1886–1966) referring to the outgoing idea and search for a new, modern ballet.

Figurines of the Triadic Ballet in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
Reproduced figurines of the Triadic Ballet

Burger and Hötzel were inspired by a five-month training leave in the "Rhythmic Educational Institute" of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze in Hellerau in 1912. In the same year, Burger was able to win Oskar Schlemmer for the modern visual art design among the painters he addressed, from which this long-term collaboration emerged in the ballet project, in which Schlemmer's participation took an ever greater part. The third partner in the triad of dance, visual arts and music was initially not found, as Burger asked Arnold Schönberg ("Your music, which I know from the concert here, seemed to me to be the only suitable one for my ideas") was unsuccessful.

In 1916 Schlemmer received leave from the front during his military service, and so he and the Burgers were able to perform three of the dances that had been created so far (to music by Enrico Bossi ) for a charity evening of his regiment in Stuttgart . However, these dances were obviously changed significantly until the first performance of the Triadic Ballet in Stuttgart in 1922. Oskar Schlemmer himself danced alongside the dancers as the third dancer under the pseudonym Walter Schoppe .

After the premiere in 1922, there were significant differences of opinion between the Burgers and Schlemmer. The Burgers “feel cheated of their share in the intellectual authorship of the ballet. They are of the opinion that Schlemmer's contribution, besides the design of the costumes and decorations, consisted in the invention of dance ideas, but not in the dance design in general ascribed to him on the program sheet [he designed]. "The costumes were the property of the Burgers, who had paid for the production. After a legal dispute, a contractual agreement was reached on June 14, 1923, according to which Schlemmer received the six costumes he had worn and both sides the right to add the missing costumes and the right to perform the Triadic Ballet independently, with the Burgers were obliged to name Schlemmer for the costume designs. The burgers, however, have exercised their right only sporadically in 1923 and 1924 use, no longer adds the missing costumes (as opposed to Schlemmer) and the Triadic Ballet is not listed as a whole independently.

The Triadic Ballet. Program leaflet for the world premiere, Stuttgart September 30, 1922 (p. 3). Graphic design: Oskar Schlemmer.

Characteristic

Schlemmer dealt with the corresponding relationship between figure and space. Since he found the fixation of movements in sculptural works restrictive, he chose dance as a representational alternative. The Triadic Ballet consists of room dance , form dance and gesture dance . Three dancers (one female and two male dancers) dance twelve dances in a total of eighteen costumes. Also, there arise, however, regardless of the Triadic Ballet and contrary to this on the run by Schlemmer Bauhaus stage works such as metal stamping , glass dance , hoop dance and scenery dance .

Triadic is derived from the Greek triad , and describes the multilayered, threefold order that underlies these dances:

  • the choreographic complex costume - movement - music
  • the physical attributes of space - form - color
  • the three spatial dimensions height - width - depth
  • the three basic geometric shapes: circle - square - triangle
  • the basic colors red - yellow - blue

Actors are three characters.

An entry in Schlemmer's diary from September 1922 reads:

“(...) The triadic ballet, which flirts with the cheerful without falling into the grotesque, touches the conventional without courting its lows, ultimately strives to dematerialize the body without rehabilitating itself occultly, should show the beginnings, out of it could develop a German ballet that would be so anchored in style and character to assert itself against perhaps admirable but alien analogies (Swedish, Russian ballet). "

- Oskar Schlemmer

The Triadic Ballet is primarily characterized by the design of its characters and the costumes and is unique. The simple, clear design using geometric shapes corresponds to his formal language known from his studies and pictures. The abstraction of the human body in no way denies it, but rather exaggerates and accentuates its general properties, its geometry. The costumes also give the characters individuality and create peculiarities that offer both formal enjoyment and humor.

“ By the way, a gate is slowly being opened to the theater at the Bauhaus too . Schreyer moved in through one thing, poet and painter at the same time, but in the 'sacred'. I would also have the dance and the comic , which I like to confess, that is, without envy. "

The figurines have titles such as “spiral” or “wire figure”. Some of the costumes of the Triadic Ballet have been preserved and can be seen in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart . Essential texts on the theory, in addition also by his wife Tut Schlemmer as the costume designer, were compiled in a somewhat remote location in 1998 in a teacher-student booklet. In addition, since autumn 2009 several original costumes have been exhibited on loan at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.

Performances

  • December 7, 1916 in Stuttgart (Stadtgarten), partial world premiere
  • September 30, 1922 in Stuttgart (Württ. Landestheater, Kleines Haus), world premiere
  • July 2, 1923 in Stuttgart (Württ. Landestheater), repeated in December 1923
  • August 16, 1923 in Weimar (German National Theater)
  • 25. u. August 26, 1923 in Dresden ( Annual German Labor Exhibition )
  • 25. u. July 26, 1926 for the Donaueschingen Chamber Music Days in Donaueschingen
  • 15-18 August 1926 in Frankfurt am Main (large Frankfurt bridge revue, festival hall) (greatly changed)
  • from September 16, 1926 for almost three months within the revue "Wieder Metropol" in Berlin (Metropoltheater) (Choreography: Katharina Devillier)
  • July 4, 1932 in Paris (Concours de Chorégraphie, Thèâtre des Champs Elysées)

Reconstructions, etc. a .:

  • 1970 in Munich (by Margarete Hasting)
  • 1977 in West Berlin ( Academy of Arts , by Gerhard Bohner )
  • 2014 in Munich (Bavarian State Ballet, Juniorcompany II, Reithalle) and Berlin (Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg) (new production of the reconstruction of the new choreographic version by Gerhard Bohner by Ivan Liška and Colleen Scott, funded by TANZFONDS ERBE, an initiative of the German Federal Cultural Foundation) . Danced by the Bavarian Junior Ballet Munich since 2018 with numerous guest performances at home and abroad.
  • 2015/17 in Düsseldorf by the Theater der Klänge , staging: Jörg Udo Lensing . Choreography: Jacqueline Fischer. Premiere in the Forum Free Theater and tanzhaus nrw , as well as in Dortmund, Theater im Depot , and several guest performances.
  • 14./16. June 2019 Krefeld, open air performances of the 'Theater der Klänge' on Willy-Göldenbach-Platz as part of bauhaus100
  • June 20, 2019 in Darmstadt (Staatstheater Darmstadt) as part of the BAUWHAT? Festival

music

Initially, the dances were performed to music by Mario Tarenghi , Enrico Bossi , Debussy , Haydn , Mozart , Domenico Paradies , Baldassare Galuppi and Handel . In Donaueschingen, a new composition by Paul Hindemith for mechanical organ was used, performed by Hermann Scherchen . The choreographically very different from the Triadic Ballet performances in Frankfurt and Berlin had accompanying music by Bruno Hartl and Salvino Bertuch. For the choreographic competition in Paris in 1932 Schlemmer used a dance suite by Alois Pachernegg based on old masters with the title German Baroque . - Margarete Hasting (1970) and Gerhard Bohner (1977) worked with specially composed music by Erich Ferstl and Hans-Joachim Hespos, respectively .

The 2014/15 Düsseldorf new staging of the Theater der Klänge commissioned the composer Thomas Wansing with a new composition for a small ensemble ( piano , cello , drums ), a cast that Schlemmer used in a similar form in his performances.

photography

Only a few photos exist from the time of the earliest performances. A series of famous scenes and Individual shots of the dances and figures were taken in 1926 by the photographer Karl Grill (1889–1966) in Donaueschingen. In 1927 Ernst Schneider took group photos “Complete overview” for the “Hermann Scherchen director's book” in Berlin on the basis of the metropolitan performance.

See also

literature

  • Oskar Schlemmer , László Moholy-Nagy , Farkas Molnár : The stage in the Bauhaus . Bauhaus Books , Volume 4, Munich 1925
  • Dirk Scheper: Oskar Schlemmer - The Triadic Ballet and the Bauhaus Stage. University of Vienna, Vienna 1970 (Phil. Diss.).
  • Academy of the Arts (Ed.): Oskar Schlemmer - The triadic ballet . Berlin 1977.
  • Helmut Günther: The body as a meaningful reality - origin, meaning and meaning of the “Triadic Ballet” . In: Ballet 1978 - Chronicle and balance sheet of the ballet year . Friedrich Verlag, Seelze near Hanover 1979, p. 29-33 .
  • Dirk Scheper, Oskar Schlemmer: Oskar Schlemmer - the Triadic Ballet and the Bauhaus Stage . Akad. Der Künste, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-88331-955-4 .
  • Oskar Schlemmer: idealist of form: letters, diaries, writings; 1912-1943 . Ed .: Andreas Hüneke. 1st edition. tape 1312 . Reclam, Leipzig 1990, ISBN 3-379-00473-1 .
  • Peter Beye , Gunther Thiem: The State Gallery Stuttgart, Graphic Collection . Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-7757-0346-2 (English).
  • Oskar and Tut Schlemmer: OS work biography with excerpts from letters and original texts . In: State Institute for Education & Teaching Stuttgart (Hrsg.): Life data and personal testimonials . Villingen-Schwenningen 1998 (Examples: Art in the Persecution. Degenerate Art (Exhibition) 1937 in Munich. Supplement.). in this:
    • OS: costumes? With the parts:
      • Tut Schlemmer: The Costumes
      • OS Why ballet? and misunderstandings . Pp. 68-70
    • OS: man and fictional character. Pp. 71–74 with several illus.
    • dsb .: Analysis of a picture and other things. Pp. 74–78 with several illus.
  • Norbert Stück: the abstract ones. Schlemmer and Bohner. The Triadic Ballet . Academy of Arts, Berlin 2019. ISBN 978-3-88331-231-6 . A hundred year history of performance with description of the costumes.
  • Friederike Zimmermann: man and art figure. Oskar Schlemmer's intermedia program . Phil.Diss. 2nd Edition. Freiburg i.Br. 2014, ISBN 978-3-7930-9767-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. u. a. Scheper 1988, e.g. BS 389.
  2. ↑ See e.g. B .: Helmut Günther: The triadic legend - Oskar Schlemmer's ballet was not a Bauhaus creation . In: Stuttgarter Zeitung . Stuttgart January 14, 1978.
  3. ↑ Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, quoted from: Frank-Manuel Peter: Raum - Form - Farbe. Albert Burger and the Triadic Ballet . In: dance drama. Magazine . No. 4 , January 1, 1988, pp. 9–12, here p. 9 (booklet for Oskar Schlemmer's 100th birthday).
  4. ↑ a b c d Karin von Maur: Oskar Schlemmer: d. Painter, d. Wall designer, d. Sculptor, d. Draftsman, d. Graphic artist, d. Stage designer, d. Teacher . Catalog for the exhibition d. State Gallery Stuttgart, d. in Württemberg. Kunstverein Stuttgart took place from August 11 to September 18, 1977. Prestel, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7913-0588-3 , pp. 214 ff .
  5. ↑ Scheper 1988, p. 57 and note 111/112 (Schlemmer's letters to Otto Meyer-Amden).
  6. ↑ Everything according to Scheper 1988, pp. 56–58.
  7. ↑ Diary entry, September 1922, in: Briefe. Diaries. Fonts.
  8. ^ From a letter from Schlemmer to Otto Meyer-Amden, March 13, 1922; from letters. Diaries. Writings , see literature
  9. ^ Trias - press reviews. In: theaterderklaenge.de. Accessed February 11, 2019 (German).
  10. ↑ u. a. in Scheper 1988, pp. 38, 39, 41, 43, 46.
  11. ↑ Theaterblog.org ( Memento from March 9, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ^ Jeannine Fiedler, Peter Feierabend: Bauhaus . In: Jeannine Fiedler, Ute Ackermann (Ed.): Director's booklet Hermann Scherchen . Könemann, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-89508-600-2 .