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Dancer, teacher and choreographer, she was a leading innovator in expressionist dance. Her radical explorations of movement and dance theory are credited with expanding the scope of dance as a theatrical art in her native Germany and beyond. Mary Wigman (18861973)

Like the Expressionist painters, Wigman and the practitioners of Ausdruckstanz were fully conscious of the visible world, but chose to look within and explore and present the mind, spirit and imagination.

Ausdruckstanz sought to produce a finished product that unsettled the viewer while finding a performance mode that took the dancer and her audience to the realm of transcendence and ritual.

THE CRISIS YEARIn 1918, Wigman would have her own year of crisis, mental breakdown and self-analysis. The confusion and dissolution at wars end brought defeat, deprivation and desperation to the general population of Germany. Wigman experienced these and also was faced with difficulties in her personal life. In her writing, she refers to this period as a terrible, wonderful year. She danced alone and created a new series of solos. She also wrote the poetic sketches that were to become her group work The Seven Dances of Life in 1921.

DANCING IN DRESDEN, 19331942Wigman had depended on public grants to support her dance groups, so changes in educational policies and public attitudes affected her school as well. Long merged, the studies ofGymnastik and artistic Tanz were officially separated by 1930. During the long absences for her international tours from 1930 to 1933, the city of Dresden was beset with rising unemployment and severe cuts in public welfare, school maintenance and other public services.

TO BERLINIn 1942, Wigman began a working relationship and friendship with composer Kurt Schwaen. Later, in June 1949, Schwaen and his wife helped Wigman gain an invitation to relocate to the Wilmersdorf district of West Berlin. The magistrate of Wilmersdorf offered to support her school for one year, after which she was expected to take over financial responsibility. And international students were again coming to her, many from the United States. In many ways Wigman had become an outsider within the German nation to which she had dedicated her life and her art. She did continue to stage dance works during her final decades in Berlin. At the Berlin Wigman School it was Hoyer, not Wigman,who becamethe dancing model for students such as Brigitta Herrmann who were still drawn to the profound nature of Ausdruckstanz. And Hoyer was the soloist for Mary Wigmans last great choreographic effort on the concert stage, The Rite of Spring (1957). Once again, Schicksal und Opfer Fate and Sacrifice became the themes of Wigmans choreography as they had anchored the guiding philosophy of her life.

her aesthetic theories, including the use of space as an invisible partner and the transcendent nature of performance a commentary on her key works, Hexentanz and The Seven Dances of Life

Now we will focus on the 1926 solo HexentanzFor each choreographer, one work can be seen as bearing a unique signature through time. This work should be done when the artists technical and artistic identity has fully matured. It may not necessarily be the final work. In fact, most likely the choreographer will move onward to further develop artistic ideas and values and impart them to others.

Made in 1914, the original Hexentanz was the first dance she created while a student of Rudolf von Laban. What she described as her deepest stirrings were realized in dance form, opening the floodgates of artistic expression and pointing a clear direction toward what to do with her life. The social expectations of marriage and identity of Hausfrau were banished as she saw her role as dancer solidify.

By the time she made the second version of the Hexentanz in 1926, Wigman had been operating her own school, had toured as a solo artist and established her own dance company. Through her teaching, she solidified her approach to dance technique while gaining confidence in her artistic identity through successful performances.

In her role as creator and performer of the Hexentanz, Wigman was able to fulfill her desire for metamorphosis through performance. By dancing the Hexentanz, she could realize her search for the Dasein and erleben: the full coming into being or existence that she felt was the heart of the new dance. But she also recognized that the power, the magnificence of all creative art lie in knowing how to force chaos into form. Yet, she worked well aware that the original creative urge was neither weakened nor blocked in the process of molding and shaping.

I believe that Witch Dance was the only one among my solo dances which did not make me shake with stage fright before every performance. How I loved it, this growing into the excitement of its expressive world, how intensely I tried in each performance to feel myself back into the original creative condition of Witch Dance and to fulfill its stirring form by returning to the very point where it all began!

(Wigman 1966: 42)

Recomanded biography: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evinVxM6S_MMary Wigman in the 1926 HexentanzWhy should a dancer use a mask? Always when his creative urge causes a split process in him, when his imagination reveals the image of an apparently alien figure which compels the dancer to a certain kind of metamorphosis. The mask never can and never ought to be an interesting addition or decoration. It must be an essential part of the dance figure, born in a world of visions and transported as if by magic into reality. The mask extinguishes the human being as a person and makes him submit to the fictive figure of the dance.

(Wigman 1973: 124)