UDC: 793.322.071.2 Магазиновић М.
     793.322(4)"19"
     793.322(497.11)"19"
COBISS.SR-ID 258618124

Received: April 3, 2017
Reviewed: May 2, 2017
Accepted: May 24, 2017

#8 Maga Magazinovic The Main Concepts Of Modern Dance

Miloš MarijanNational Theatre, Belgrade, Serbia

Citation: Marijan, Milos. 2018. "Maga Magazinovic: The Main Concepts of Modern Dance." Accelerando: Belgrade Journal of Music and Dance 3:8

Abstract

Marija Maga Magazinovic (Užice,1882- Belgrade, 1968), a choreographer, dancer, modern dance theorist, philosopher, feminist, librarian and journalist, was the founder of modern dance in Serbia. In her efforts to introduce modern dance, Magazinovic demanded emancipation of art, “pure” dance, a beauty of simple movements, which had no need for story, scenography, costume, even music, nothing but naked dancer’s body. Maga, who graduated philosophy at the Belgrade University in 1904, and was a journalist by vocation, working as the first woman journalist in the daily newspaper “Politica” as a columnist, also fought for women’s rights and emancipation. By bringing modern artistic view into the patriarchal Serbian society, she contributed to the social and cultural development, and to the understanding and adopting of the modern dance at the very time when it was developed and brought on stage in the West. Stemmed from the schools of Max Reinhardt and ballet school of Isadora Duncan, she brought their views and pedagogical methods to Serbia when she returned from Berlin and Munich to Belgrade, where she opened the first school of modern dance in 1910. She was the first to advocate for the necessity of female education, particularly of engaging girls in doing rhythmic gymnastics and dance as a form of bodily and spiritual education. Given that Marija Maga Magazinovic was the first who opened the door for the progress and changes in the fields of dance and women’s rights by bringing concepts of those movements, in which she directly participated, to Serbia, these concepts had to be explained. Therefore, the main goal of the paper is to examine these concepts, such as modern dance, rhythmic gymnastic, body culture, Ausdruckstanz, expressionism, and women emancipation, which is crucial if we want to understand early period of modern dance development, and to understand Magazinovic’s efforts and achievements and her place and historical significance for Serbian, and Yugoslav region.

Keywords:

modern dance, rhythmic gymnastic, body culture, Ausdruckstanz, expressionism, women emancipation, Maga Magazinovic

Introduction

Historical Background

Dance and ballet tradition in the beginning of the 20th century in Serbia

In the early 20th century the first educated dancers in Serbia were Russian émigrés, who arrived as refugees after the October Revolution and began work on the foundation of a ballet ensemble at the National Theater in Belgrade (Kosik 2017). The history of ballet in Serbia bears unique features, contrary to other European countries and the United States of America, namely, modern dance was established in Serbia before the classical ballet.

Maga Magazinovic, a student of Max Reinhardt and Elizabeth and Isadora Duncan, established her school in 1910, eleven years before the official foundation of the ballet ensemble in the Belgrade National Theater (Mosusova 2012). Her school was established under the name of The School for Declamation, Aesthetic Gymnastics and Foreign Languages, and in 1914, after a year spent in Dalcroze School in Hellerau, Germany, where she was studying method of Emile Jacques-Dalcroze, in the school of Minetta Wegmann, changed the name to The School for Rhythmic and Plastics of Maga Magazinovic.

Modern Dance: An expression of Life

Modern dance arose in 1900 as a protest against the old society and the artistic stagnation of classical ballet which was perceived as the superficial entertainment, austere, mechanical, tightly held in fixed and conventional forms. The new dance was freer, natural, and less rule-governed, showed more spirit and emotion, and less virtuosity. It was both individual and artistic creation, improvisational, uninhibited, and provocative.

Modern dance was influenced strongly by the expressionistic visual arts. As an non-verbal art it has a strong affinity to visual arts and music, which became particularly intense at the turn of the century. This could be seen in the works of Gustave Moreau, Arnold Böcklin, Edvard Munch, Degas, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec, who were fascinated with the images of dancers, cabarets, musical halls, circuses, with the floating movements and changing lightining effects. Auguste Rodin conceived sculpture as a kind of continuous motion in space and was a keen observer of Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller and Vaslav Nijinsky (Martin 1982, 11-55).

Dancers have always had a close collaboration with composers, and at the time when modern dance was developing composers viewed writing for modern dance choreographies as a way to create scores that emphasized mood and atmosphere over dramatic development. An interest in authentic folk and ethnic dances provided inspiration for new rhythmic patterns and tonalities. Early modern dancers regularly commissioned scores from major composers of the period. Debussy, Ravel, Milhaud, Tcherepnine and Stravinsky among others embraced writing for dancers as an important part of their repertory.

Playwrights incorporated dance into their work. Scenes of social dance were often used for satiric or ironic purposes; the medieval dance of death was used to express more modern themes; dance was also used to express symbolic, impulsive actions that break through societal constraints. Dance was not limited any more to an interlude or several scenes but was rather an integral to the structure of the work, with the words being used primarily for their rhythmic and musical quality, and dialogues and actions being eclipsed by music and choreography.

Moreover, in several works, spoken text was shiffted away completely with the dance scenarios and pantomimes. Concepts of abstract, stylized acting, as opposed to realism and the domination of words, influenced by the works and theories of Isadora Duncan and Emile Jacque-Dalcroze, were accepted in modern theater, in the works of Gordon Craig and Adolphe Appia, for example. For the theatre and dance artists the most important was to solve the problem of how to visualize and reveal inner life and spiritual states, which drove to new experiments in staging and choreography.

Modern dance flourished until the World War II, when it disappeared almost completely in Central Europe. The main concepts of modern dance were: modernism, vitalism, expressionism, and avant-garde. The main features of modern dance were: naturalness, breathing, tension/relaxation, floor contact, weight of dance movement, experiments with music, body and physicality. Many solo dance evenings were held by the individual’s claims to create and present their own choreographic works.

A key protagonist was Isadora Duncan (1877 - 1927), who initiated new, natural, barefoot dance, and was striving for the body, mind and spirit united in the art. Being free-spirited to the core from her early childhood, and avoiding the restraints of convention, Duncan became the mother of Modern Dance and a pioneering feminist. Duncan opposed to the Romantic ideal of the ballerina, to the unnatural twisting of the body, to the mechanical imposition of ballet steps, and squeezing of the feet into painful pointe shoes, and developed a style in which she used wave motions and circular forms to demonstrate her philosophy that movement emanated from within, like rays from the sun, and emphasized the idea of “connected thought-provoking,” or communication with socializing intent between a performer and the audience, thus discarding the Victorian notion of a dancer as an object at witch to look.

The dancer of the future will dance, not in the form of nymph, nor fairy, nor coquette, but in the form of woman in its greatest and purest expression. She will realize the mission of woman’s body and the holiest of all its parts. She will dance the changing life of nature, showing how each part is transformed into the other. From all parts of her body shall shine radiant intelligence, bringing to the world the message of the thoughts and aspirations of thousands of women. She shall dance the freedom of woman. (Thoughts of Isadora Duncan, quoted in Daly 1992.)

Duncan’s own philosophy was in part laid by the teachings of singing teacher François Delsarte, who proposed a system for connecting movement within the body. She was also influenced by Hellenic aesthetics, Wagner’s theories of Gesamtkunstwerk (total art work), and Walt Whitman’s transcendentalism.

With her sister Elizabeth she opened a free boarding school for 20 students, “a school of free dance”, in Villa Grunewald in Berlin in 1905, where she thought her students the free, expressive, natural dancing movements, completely opposed to artificial, determined classical ballet movements. She was searching for improvisation in her dancing to music by Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Strauss, Liszt, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Gluck, Wagner, and Franck. (Improvisation in a sense of a continuum of moving moments in choreographic imagination and performance).

From the mystery of the Parthenon, the frescoes, the Greek vases, and the Tanagras came my dance – not Greek, not Antique, but in reality the expression of my soul moved to harmony by beauty (Duncan’s words quoted in Magriel 1947).

She avoided classical ballet technique as something opposed to the anatomy and physiological function of muscular structure of the human body. In her lecture “The dance of the future”, Isadora presented her ideas. She assumed dance as the expression of life, of the imagination and spirit, not of the body. Through her dance she was worshiping truth, beauty and freedom. The text “The dance of the future” became the manifesto of modern dance.

The text circulated widely in various languages, and is still considered the manifesto of modern dance as well as of the women’s liberation. (Raftis 2017)

She also avoided illusionist effects and realistic scenography for the stylized simplified scene, that sought to find a visual metaphor, distill the image and evoke a mood, often with the grey-blue curtains and the horizon behind the bush somewhere at the side when she danced her variations in Grecian-draped dresses which influenced fashion as well as signaled a loosening of social conventions. She was searching for the inspiration in ancient Greek and Egyptian art, together with Olga Desmond. (Her Greek dance style inspired the work of Leon Bakst whom she met in 1905. Therefore, the Ballets Russes was not the first to link the new dance with new forms of scenic design, but there were both Loie Fuller and Isadora Duncan, American dancers, who had made it before.) She wanted to be remembered as a legend, and did not allow her performances to be filmed, but in 1927 she wrote her memoirs “My Life” (Duncan 1955).

Maga Magazinovic and Central European Expressionist Dance

Isadora Duncan and Ausdruckstanz

Maga Magazinovic (1882-1968), a professor of philosophy, German and Serbian languages, librarian, journalist, choreographer, dancer, modern dance theorist, dance historian, was the founder of Serbian modern dance. In the Serbian center she transferred impacts of Central European Expressionist Dance, particularly of Isadora Duncan and Ausdruckstanz.

After she had seen the performance of the famous Canadian modern dancer Maud Allan (1883-1956) in 1907 at the Belgrade National Theater, and being fascinated with her dancing, Maga started to learn modern dance and developed interest for Eurhythmics after she had met Rudolf Steiner, a mystic and philosopher, in 1909 in Munch. In 1909 she enrolled at School of the famous Max Reinhardt (1873-1943) in Berlin, and attended ballet classes with Charlotte Schnitter, the director of Berlin Opera House. In addition, she enrolled at Duncans’ School of free dance in Berlin, which was at the time under the direction of Isadora’s sister Elizabeth Duncan (1874-1948).

Maga was influenced by Isidora Duncan’s concept of dance, and broke away ballet vocabulary, technique virtuosity, and stiff tutus for free, natural movements, and loose-flowing, transparent, white, Grecian tunics ( Romanou 2009). Like her famous idol, she argued that the natural language of the soul was the movement of the body, and strove for simple and semi-improvisational movements, for the beauty of simple movements, finding inspiration in the natural world, while her dancing communicated not a story but her own highly individual, expressionist response to the music. She wanted to dance like Isadora:

no longer at war with spirituality and intelligence, but joining them in a glorious harmony.

Furthermore, she insisted that dancer ought to be the choreographer, which was the idea of the new modern dance, where each expressionist dancer was at the same time a choreographer of his/her work creating his/her own distinct style in rejection of classical ballet vocabulary. In addition, modern dance rejected the representational value of movement, by representing it in a purely formalized mode, thus opened it up to new meaning.

Maga Magazinovic was also influenced by another Ausdruckstanz representative, Gertrud Bodenwieser (pseudonim of the Jewish dancer Gertrud Bondi, 1890-1959). Getrude Bodenwieser was described as “a driving force towards the New” (Warren and Warren 2013, 19). Bodenwieser expressive dance, “Bodenwieser style”, which was reffered to as specifically Viennese, which she brought to Australia when she escaped from Nacism, had specific features: the close connection between dance and music, and fluidity of movement as reminiscent of the Sezessionist movement. In addition, in her dancing she expressed visionary content by sculptural forms and tableaux vivants.

The new dance (...) wishes to embrace all the human feelings, not only harmony, lightness, and charm but also passionate desire, immense fervor, lust, domination, fear and frustration, dissonance and uproar. The new dance does not content itself with being enchanting and entertaining only; it wishes to be stirring, exciting and thought-provoking. (Getrude Bodenwieser, The New Dance quoted in Cuckson 1970, 79)

For Gertrude, as she was called, dance and music were inextricably intertwined, which differentiated her from Rudolf Laban for whom Absolute Dance meant a liberation from the requirements of music:

Dance becomes an ‘absolute art,’ for it is there that ‘knowledge of things stops, only experience is law; there begins dance. (Mary Wigman, 1986. “Das Tanzerlebnis,” in Mary Wigman-Ein Vermachtnis, ed. Walter Sorell. Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel/Heinrichshofen, quoted in Manning and Ruprecht 2012, 196)

Bodenwieser’s most significant works were dance dramas, large group ensemble works with clearly defined themes and narrative structures. She strongly influenced the creation of national choreodrama developed by Maga Magazinovic and Smiljana Mandukic on the Serbian scene. Magazinovic was the first who stylized Serbian folk dance in contemporary expressionistic style, in her dance-dramas: “Jelisavka, the Obilics’ mother”, “Pray of Kosovo girl”, and “The Death of the Jugovics’ mother”.

The hypothesis is that choreodrama has changed attitude towards dance, the attitude towards drama, and towards the female body. (...) The results show that in Serbia mainly female artists of great individuality and education dealt with choreodrama and they were only partly written about in our literature concerning the relationship of gender and choreodrama process of creation, selection of content, and affirmation in the public area: Maga Magazinovic, Smiljana Mandukic, Nada Kokotovic, and Sanja Vukicevic. 1. With their personal artistic and pedagogical functioning, our four women artists have contributed to spreading the knowledge about dance in Serbia in general, especially the new understanding of the liberated body (and not only in dance); 2. Their contribution is reflected in the total emancipation of women (in their profession, family, etc.); 3. Now it is known that the struggle for women’s equality in society was led simultaneously with the affirmation of the modern dance and choreodrama in Serbia. (Obradovic Ljubinkovic 2016)

Given that Magazinovic was developing in the orbit of the Central European Expressionist Dance, the main representatives of which were Isidora Duncan, François Delsarte, Emile Jacques Dalcroze and Rudolf von Laban, in her approach to dance she also aimed at liberating movement of its representational value by establishing meaning through subjective mode of expression. Upon analyzing Magazinovic’s work, the author argues that it was concerned with identity and with engaging the present time through individualized displays of emotional intensity and episodes of shock. It had the power:

to amplify difference and free the body from pervasive, constraining pressures for unity of identity and a common destiny. (Servos 2008)

Maga Magazinovic And Women Emancipation In Serbia In The Beginning Of The 20th Century

In the time when woman has not yet been emancipated, Maga Magazinovic was a feminist who fought for the equality of possibilities, namely for women to be allowed to graduate from the University, not only to attend the lectures. She graduated from the Belgrade University, School of Philosophy with distinction in 1904, and also enrolled at the School of Law, as the first woman who was enrolled at the University with the right to pass the exams and obtain a diploma of graduation. Also, she pointed out the importance of gymnastic education for everyone, especially young girls.

Alternative experimental arts school for women began to open as early as 1910 for example. Expressionist dancer Maga Magazinovic started a school for rhythmics and gymnastics in Belgrade. (Novakov 2011).

Moreover, Magazinovic established a dance group consisted of female dancers exclusively. She also insisted that dancer ought to be the choreographer, which was the idea of the new modern dance, and further on, this idea in the context of female dancer meaning that the woman is not the dancing object, object of male desire, and male choreographer’s ideas, but the author of her dance.

In the classical ballet, with its mechanical basis of language, movement and performance, the image of the prima ballerina was the image of moving, weightless, machine-like doll, as referenced by Heinrich von Kleist’s Über das Marionettenthater, or was Olimpia from E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandman. Both texts engage metaphors of dance by referencing a doll, to indicate how its language relies on a mechanical means to narrate and on formalization of movement. Like a marionette, the ballerina was controlled by her ballet master, each of her movement was choreographed and scripted, and individuality and subjective expression were shifted away for the sake of preserving historical narrative.

Expressionist dance radically challenged this idea of female dancer as a puppet or doll, the dancing object, as having been the consequence of patriarchal structure and its hierarchical power, by rejecting the image of a doll figure in order to liberate movement from the sterile conventions of classical dance.

The dancer should express her deep feelings and experiences through movements, but the emphasis was on the interpersonal relationships and the dynamics of the group. Dance became the form of integrated “pure shapes”, stylized, daily movements full of rhythmical and plastic sense, that expressed nothing else but themselves.

This form had the beginning, the development, the climax and the end. Body functioned as the screen on which was projected the whole spectrum of meanings, from the universal femininity, and the integration of the body and the earth, the erotics in the transcendental, to the projections of evils, hater, death, and anti-femininity. Those were complex pictures, representing radical versions of emancipation intertwining with the ideas of biological determinism.

Only with the onset of modern dance, when women took over the responsibility both for the creation and execution of choreographies were they able to evade the dominant male discourse of dance and implement their own aesthetics ideas. (Kolb 2009, 34)

With this emphasis on responding to new forms of femininity:

modern dance was construed as a counter movement to academic ballet, both in terms of its step repertory and its underlying ideology. (Idem., 2)

Consequently, this course established new social relationships as well as new audience. New dance was the answer to the changed role and woman’s identity in the West Europe and America in the early 20th century, and the agent, the initiator of that changed role and identity in the other countries, such as Serbia. Furthermore, this new view of dance and its status allowed for the girls from middle class to participate in the dance groups and became ballerinas. In the previous time predominantly the girls from the working class were training for ballerinas.

Rhythmic Gymnastics And “Freier Tanz”

Maga Magazinovic, a student of Max Reinhardt’s and Isadora and Elizabeth Duncan’s school in Berlin, after her return in Serbia from Germany, established the first dance school in Serbia in 1910, eleven years before the official foundation of the ballet ensemble in the Belgrade National Theater. Her school was established first under the name of The School for Declamation, Aesthetic Gymnastics and Foreign Languages. Afterwards, and after 1912/13 semester spent in Hellerau, Germany, where she was studying method of Emile Jacques-Dalcroze, she renamed her school to The School for Rhythmic and Plastics of Maga Magazinovic.

The development of modern dance both in the United States and Europe was preceded by the rhythmic gymnastic schools (Partsch-Bergsohn 1997, 13). These schools offered an alternative dance form, emphasized the study of rhythm and movement, and were predominantly attended by young female dancers who were not interested in studying classical ballet.

After completing their training in rhythmic gymnastics, students went on to pursue their own directions in modern dance and develop their personalized dance methods and styles. Three major gymnastic schools at the time were led by Francois Delsarte, Emile Jacques-Dalcroze and Rudolf Laban.

First educator who developed “a system for coding bodily expression and a concept for harmonic gymnastics” was a French musician Francois Delsarte (1811-1871). In his method, or as it was called “Delsarte system”, he attempted to connect the inner emotional experience with a set of certain patterns of expression, which encompassed gestures, voice examination, movement dynamics, and other elements of the human body. His work was of a great inspiration for Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Rudolf Laban and F. Mathias Alexander, among others. He never wrote a book abut his method (Oxford Reference).

Emile Jacques-Dalcroze (1869-1950) was a Swiss composer and musician who developed Eurhythmics in his school in Dresden-Hellerau that was established in 1910. Eurhythmics is the understanding of the structure and rhythms of music kinetically, by the use of movement. Dalcroze employed the tactical, metrical and rational element of rhythm to sustain a highly structured relationship between the body and music. In addition, Dalcroze collaborated with mystic and reformer Rudolph Steiner, a founder of antroposophy.

The third, and most influential school, was that of Rudolf Laban, a Hungarian, who developed theory based on metaphysical ideas. He ran the school in Ascona, in Monte Verità, Switzerland. He studied Dalcroze method but rejected the structural approach of Dalcroze rhythmic gymnastics in favor of improvisational movement that was characteristic of his non-narrative open-form movement expression, “free dance.” He developed a system of Eukinetics and the concept of “movement choirs”, which enabled the individual to:

speak in his/her own voice, to contribute to a greater whole, and that allowed group access to the larger concerns of the human condition. (Bradley 2009, 13)

The movement choirs were amateur groups, everyday people who came to the training programs to address growing concerns about the human being within the state, the role of spirituality within religion, and the role of the psyche within the forces at play in the 1920s. Adult students took classes that explored expanding and condensing, individual and group consciousness, breath and story, space (Choreutics [Space Harmony, M.M]) and expressivity (Eukinetics) (Ibid.).

These were dance-dramas:

based on improvisational impulses, musical theory, and visual design structures the form of which was spontaneous, participatory and performative. (Idem., 16)

The choric principle harmonized the relationship between the individual and the group formation. He established the Dionysian concept of expression that transcended order, law and structure through ecstatic and ritualistic acts that encouraged the disintegration of the old “conditioned self” which allowed the production of an “individuated self”, that was connected to the higher cosmic spheres of consciousness and nature. The Dionysian component of Ausdruckstanz was defined by its emphasis on ecstasy, mysticism, ritual, and nature.

This theory emphasized that if body remains in harmony with its natural rhythm, the self is moving in harmony with the cosmos. Body and mind, subject and object, self and world were united in the body’s restored natural alignment with the cosmos. Transformation into movement of the invisible forces gave life to creative experiences. The dancer is a medium for it, and dance functions as a trance, as an expression of ecstasy, emotional impulses, that creates forms of movement as a consequence. Dance became a search for a truthful experience. Dance should not represent any more, dance should be. As Laban’s student Mary Wigman used to say, “we do not dance histories, we dance feelings”.

Body Culture – Körperschönheit

The rhythmic gymnastic education was closely related to the philosophy of Körperschönheit. The core elements of this philosophy were totality, harmonic rhythm, and physical beauty. In the modern, industrialized, mechanized era, the body was forced to repress its natural sense of rhythm, and it was the must for humans to restore this loss, to regain an open relationship with the body through uninhibited emotional and physical expression.

Through subjective expressions and individuality the latent primal energies and psychological complexities that were stored in the body became activated, which inhibited external forces to be imposed upon the self. The modern notion of moving from the inside out was in accordance with the social reform aspects of Ausdruckstanz. Accordingly, expressionist dance was the means to promote individual rather than social identity. It encouraged the individual to find his/her unique, personal style, and to reveal highly distinct personalities by experimenting with unconventional forms of movement.

Expressionism And Ausdruckstanz

Stylistic Innovations and Conceptual Problems

The artistic movements Expressionism and Ausdruckstanz were enhanced by the climate of experimentation that was flourishing during the height of avant-garde in painting, literature, film and dance. They were exploring new and imaginative possibilities of individuality and subjectivity. This experimental atmosphere provided dancers Rudolph Laban and Mary Wigman the artistic liberty to pursue unconventional dance styles, through movements, gestures, and naturalist credos, which ultimately established the foundation for Ausdruckstanz, or ‘New Dance’ or ‘New German Dance’. The Ausdruckstanz was the realization of this revolutionary spirit, and was recognized as a significant form of artistic expression.

Ausdruckstanz or ‘New Dance’ or ‘New German Dance’ presented new angles, poses, and arrangements of movement patterns that emphasized individuality, self-expression, mystery, and nature. It liberated the body from point shoes and tight corsets by establishing a free and open style that rejected the imitation of ballet narratives, staged productions, and rigid, linear, harmonious compositions. Ausdruckstanz revealed a new dimension of physical expression that included gestures, props, masks, and mythical ideas to present an ‘other-worldly’, eccentric, and unique style of movement. (van Helden 2012, 8)

Furthermore, the importance of subjective and emotional expression led to refusal of theatrical and social conventions. Consequently, Ausdruckstanz functioning as a power that liberated the individual from alienating conditions and social pressures that obstructed the innate sources of creativity in individual.

Ausdruckstanz began from its break with Renaissance court ballet, about 1908, and lasted up to its transmission into Tanztheater and contemporary styles of postmodern dance in 1936. The term Ausdruckstanz was coined in 1928, and referred to the German modern dance. It brought new forms of expression as indicated by stylistic innovations and conceptual problems.

Expressionists focused on bringing the internal and primal elements of the personality to the surface. They depicted different forms of psychological conditions, and were compelled by the developments of Freudian and Jungian concepts of unconsciousness and attraction of experimental modes of self-exploration. Central theme of their work was mysticism.

Expressionist choreographers improvised using images and symbols, allowing the movements to flow and emerge organically. For them dance became a means for expression of subjective experiences and feelings through movements. To accomplish this task the rigid structures, tightly-fitted costumes, pointe shoes, historical narratives and stagnant forms repeated by traditional styles of classical ballet were changed by more mechanical and formal concepts of movement, more natural movements and free, flowing costumes.

However, since this technical style relied on the concept of spatialization as derived from theatrical convention, this movement failed to radically disrupt the representational value of dance. The representational value of movement was radically rejected by the establishment of contemporary dance in the late 1950s. The tendency towards ideological or content oriented claims was negated when the object of dance became dance itself.

Two concepts were of the main importance in transmission from classical into modern dance: the notion of temporality and the notion of representation. In modern dance emerged different experience of temporality: the presence of movement was seen through its immediacy and rhythmic configuration, and the form does not predicate itself upon an ideological content.

The concentration on individuality through symbolic and transcendent forms marked the beginning of a radically different understanding of movement, which challenged the Gesamtkunstwerk notion of theatrical performance by questioning its traditional practice and concept of representational art.

Ausdruckstanz became a fascinating art form during the avant-garde because of its ability to present expressive gestures directly in the moment. This relationship between immediacy and presence of experience also coincided with the interest to explore subjectivity. Personal identity was displayed through emotional gesture and expressive movements in dance, which allowed modern concepts and ideas to be presented through a live medium (van Helden op. cit., 6).

It must be pointed out that Ausdruckstanz was not a uniform movement, but rather a complex one, examined ambivalent choreographic tendencies which had major dissimilarities in terms of movement styles, aesthetic tastes, personalities, as well as divers social backgrounds. Divers motifs were explores in the works of different choreographers/dancers, from abstract and symbolic, as was in the Mary Wigman’s works, to grotesque, provocative and socially critical, as in the case of Valeska Gert. Modern dance styles were developing in various directions, based on the choreographer’s perception of:

where the movement impulse originated, and how it was to be developed logicall. (Don McDonagh, International Dictionary of Modern Dance, VII, quoted in van Helden op. cit., 35)

Dance, Symbolist Theater And Literature

When exploring modern dance it is a must to tell about its relationship with symbolist theater and literature of the time, and to emphasized mutual influences. Early modern dance and movement development challenged realistic theater conventions, and influenced development in literary avant-garde movements. Writers who represented a literary interpretation of these new forms were: D. H. Lawrence, Samuel Beckett, and Upton Sinclair. Embodied Texts (Fleischer 2007) gives an outline of the relationship between symbolist theater and early modern dance in Europe from 1890s up to 1930s.

Early modern dancers were redifining how the body could be expressive: no longer servants to traditional technique or the hierarchy of a ballet company, these dancers expressed a personal vision, often deriving movement directly from the experience of their own bodies. While early conventions had typed the performer into a limited number of dance roles, the authority and vision of early modern dancers demonstrated that the dancer‘s image could be invented anew. For playwrights, dance provided a way of extending language into „inexpressible realms, and the non-referential nature of interpreting dance movement became analogous to the creative process. (Idem., Preface)

This launched the experiments towards the theatre of non-verbal expression. D‘Annunzio was fascinated with the presence of the body on stage, and the ability of an actor, Eleonora Duse, „to physicalize a compelling sense of inner life“ (Ibid.). Hofmannsthal studied gestures and the expressivity of the body in his experiments in the theatre and non-verbal forms of dance, pantomime and music. He tried to create a new connection between feelings and words, body and spirit, to find „wordless gestures,“ a level of communication that went beyond words. In his essay on Eleonora Duse, he wrote that the actress „offers up the entire demonic strength of her body“ (Fleischer op. cit., 95).

Hofmannsthal admired dancers Isadora Duncan, whom he met in 1904, through her husband Gordon Craig, Maud Allan, whose „Vision of Salomé“ he had seen in Vienna in 1903, and Ruth St. Denis, who most inspired him during that period. He found that her movements did not illustrate nor elucidate, they were not „pretending to be ethnographic or sensational“, but were simply there for the sake of its beauty. He found her „imbued with a spiritual quality that was neither ‚sentimental nor allegorical‘“ (Hugo von Hofmannsthal, „Her Extraordinary Immediacy,“ translated by David Berger, Dance Magazine, September 1968, 38, quoted in Fleischer op.cit., 109 ).

He collaborated with the Austrian dancer Grete Wiesenthal (1885-1970), who was the exponent of the Vienna Secession period, with her natural, strongly defined lines, her „spherical technique,“ and her insisting in the unity of movement and music through a truer dance.

She also proved that there was in the ballet a thinking and creative dancer, not only marionet, for which she was admired by Gustav Mahler, at the time director of the Vienna Opera. She found inspiration not in folklore, gymnastics or from studying poses and pictures like her contemporaries, but sought for the unconscious, „the turning inward of the new expression dance“, that challenged her to develop a dance language from her own „ecstacy and musicality“ (Grete Wiesenthal, „Unsere Tanze,“ quoted in Fleischer op.cit., 122). Through her lines and gestures she wanted to reveal her spiritual and psychic states, which was similar to Hofmannsthal‘s wish to express subjective feeling through external form.

Between 1909 and 1911 Hofmannsthal and Wiesenthal closely collaborated on two pantomimes, Amor and Psyche and Das fremde Mādchen, where they made extensive use of expressive rhythm. They both wrote essays on the art of gesture and pantomime during this period, for public lectures and for newspapers, and were excited by this new rhythmic play, „new pantomime.“ These experiments drove to the establishment of Dance theater (Tanztheater) that was established by Kurt Joos in the 1930s. It has been developed since 1970s, when it took a postmodern direction through the work of Pina Bausch.

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Conclusion

The emergence of modern dance also led to the proliferation of dance literature (and vice versa) (see Kolb, op. cit.). Maga Magazinovic, in Serbian environment, strove to develop knowledge on modern dance through her articles and public lectures, and her published books, to mention the most important: Body Culture as Education and Art (1932), Exercises and Studies in Contemporary Gymnastics, Plastics, Rhythmic, and Ballet (1932), History of Dance (1951). In addition, she wrote a book A Textbook of Rhythmics to be published by Prosveta but it has not been realized so far. In 2000, her autobiography My Life was published after her death.

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References

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