A noted German dancer and choreographer reveals the personal states of mind and soul that accompanied the creation of her major works

Mary Wigman's groundbreaking choreography and inspired performing in Germany during the 1910s and 1920s brought modern dance into dialogue with modern painting, theatre and film. This collection of vivid letters are a treasury of information about art, politics and the friendships of women.

Mary Wigman, Martha Graham & Merce Cunningham are key choreographers of the 20th & 21st centuries, whose rhythmic innovations challenge established norms of energy usage in their socio-cultural contexts, enabling their contemporaries to engage differently with dominant economies of energy.

Two traditionally divided strains of American dance, Modern Dance and Negro Dance, are linked through photographs, reviews, film, and oral history, resulting in a unique view of the history of American dance.

The Nazis burned books and banned much modern art. However, few people know the fascinating story of German modern dance, which was the great exception. Modern expressive dance found favor with the regime and especially with the infamous Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda. How modern artists collaborated with Nazism reveals an important aspect of modernism, uncovers the bizarre bureaucracy which controlled culture and tells the histories of great figures who became enthusiastic Nazis and lied about it later. The book offers three perspectives: the dancer Lilian Karina writes her very vivid personal story of dancing in interwar Germany; the dance historian Marion Kant gives a systematic account of the interaction of modern dance and the totalitarian state, and a documentary appendix provides a glimpse into the twisted reality created by Nazi racism, pedantic bureaucrats and artistic ambition.

The Routledge Companion to Performance Practitioners collects the outstanding biographical and production overviews of key theatre practitioners first featured in the popular Routledge Performance Practitioners series of guidebooks. Each of the chapters is written by an expert on a particular figure, from Stanislavsky and Brecht to Laban and Decroux, and places their work in its social and historical context. Summaries and analyses of their key productions indicate how each practitioner's theoretical approaches to performance and the performer were manifested in practice. All 22 practitioners from the original series are represented, with this volume covering those born before the end of the First World War. This is the definitive first step for students, scholars and practitioners hoping to acquaint themselves with the leading names in performance, or deepen their knowledge of these seminal figures.

Susan Manning is a professor of English, theater, and performance studies at Northwestern University and the author of Ecstasy and the Demon: The Dances of Mary Wigman. Book jacket.

This is the story of three passionate choreographers and their colleagues who created European modern dance in the twentieth century despite the storms of war and oppression. It begins with Rudolf Laban, innovator and guiding force, and continues with the careers of his two most gifted and influential students, Mary Wigman and Kurt Jooss. Included are others who made significant contributions: Hanya Holm, Sigurd Leeder, Gret Palucca, Berthe Trumpy, Vera Skoronel, Yvonne Georgi and Harold Kreutzberg. The first book to weave together the connections among these extraordinary artists, The Makers of Modern Dance in Germany contains interviews, personal recollections and translations from German publications - all of which have never appeared before. Illustrated with archival photographs.

Translations from German of articles published in Schrifttanz, late '20s and early '30s, accompanied by new editorial material.