My dance associations in what I may call my “early middle” period led me into excursions far afield from that form of dance expression which is to me the most completely satisfying form of theatrical experience.
For the sake of the record, let us set the date of this period as 1930. Surely there have been few in the history of the dance whose approach to the medium was so foreign to and so different from the classical ballet, where lie my deepest interests and my chief delight, than that Teutonic priestess, Mary Wigman.
When I brought Wigman to America, shortly after the Great Crash, she was no longer young. She had been born in Germany, in 1886, and could hardly have been called a “baby ballerina.” Originally a pupil of Emile Jacques Dalcroze, the father of Eurhythmics, whose pupils in a “demonstration” had kindled Wigman’s interest in the dance, she did not remain long with him. Dalcroze himself, at this stage, apparently had little interest in dancing. However, he established certain methods which proved of interest to certain gifted dancers. The Dalcroze basis was musical, and his chief function was to foster a feeling for music in his pupils. Music frustrated, handicapped, restricted her, Wigman felt. Individualist that she was, she left her teacher in order to work out her own dance destiny. There followed a period of some uncertainty on her part, and, for a time, she became a pupil of the Hungarian teacher, Rudolf von Laban, who laid down in pre-war Germany the foundations for modern dance. Unlike Isadora Duncan, Laban had no aversion to ballet. As a matter of fact, he liked much of it, was influenced by it; was impressed by the Diaghileff Ballet, was friendly with Diaghileff, and became an intimate of Michel Fokine. His later violent reaction from ballet was certainly not based on lack of knowledge of it.
At the Laban school, Wigman collaborated with him, and having a streak of choreographic genius, was able to put some of Laban’s theories into practical form. However, Mary Wigman’s forceful personality was greater than any school and, in 1919, she broke away from Laban, and formed a school of her own. She abandoned what were to her the restricting influences of formal music, as Isadora had abandoned clothing restrictions. A dancer of tremendous power, like Isadora she had an overwhelming personality. Again, like Isadora, all this had a tendency to make her pupils only pale imitations of herself. Wigman’s public career, a secondary matter with her, actually began in Dresden, in 1918, with her Seven Dances of Life. Dresden was her temple. Here the Teutonic Priestess of the Dance presided over her personal religion of movement. German girls were joined by Americans. The disciples grew in number and spread out through Germany like proselyting missionaries. Wigman groups radiated the gospel until one found schools and factories and societies turning out en masse for “demonstrations” of the Wigman method. I have said that Wigman found music a deterrent to her method.
On the other hand, one of the most important features of her “school” was a serious, thorough, Germanic research into the question of what she felt was the proper musical accompaniment for dance. Her pupils learned to devise their own rhythmic accompaniment. In her show pieces, at any rate, Wigman’s technique was to have the music for the dance composed simultaneously with the creation of the dance movements—certainly a new type of collaboration.
In addition to forming a “schule,” where great emphasis was laid on “spannungen,” perhaps best explained as tensions and relaxations, she also created a philosophical cult in that strange hot-house that was pre-war Germany, with an intellectualized approach to sex.
I had known about her and her work long before I signed a contract with her for the 1930-1931 season. Pavlova had talked to me about her and had aroused my curiosity and interest; but I was unable to imagine what might be America’s reaction to her. I was turning the idea over in my mind, when there appeared at my office,—in those days in West Forty-second Street, overlooking Bryant Park,—a young and earnest enthusiast to plead her case. His name was John Martin.
In an earlier chapter I have pointed out the low estate of dance criticism of that period. In its wisdom, the New York Times had, shortly before the period of which I now write, taken tentative steps to correct this deficiency by creating a dance department on the paper, with John Martin engaged to report the dance. Martin’s earnest and special pleading on behalf of Mary Wigman moved me and, as always, eager to experiment and present something new and fresh, I decided to cast the die.
The effect of my first announcement of her coming was a bit disconcerting. The first to react were the devotees. There was a fanaticism about them that was disturbing. It is one thing to have a handful of vociferous idolaters, and quite another to be able to fill houses with paying customers night after night.
When I met Wigman at the pier on her arrival in New York, I greeted a middle-aged muscular Amazon, a rather stuffy appearing Teutonic Amazon, wearing a beaver coat of dubious age, and a hat that had seen better days. But what struck me more forcibly than the plainness of her apparel was the woman herself. She greeted me with a warm smile; her gray eyes were large, frank, and widely set; and from beneath the venerable and rather battered hat, fell a shock of thick, wavy brown hair. She spoke softly, deeply, in a completely unaccented English with a British intonation.