Alexander Sacharoff
In inserting this portrait of the dancer and choreographer Alexander Sacharoff, the intensity of his stare remained undiminished, even when I made the picture much smaller. It's a compelling image. I wanted to know more about him.It’s hard to break free of the eye contact, even at a distance of 111 years. He demands to be seen. He wants his difference to be recognised.
Sacharoff's solo performances challenged notions of art history, dance and gender. Perhaps they were an early form of voguing, as his choreography involved a series of poses. Sacharoff was avant garde and daring, yet seems defy expectations in every way. He avoided many of the hazards of life in the first half of the C20th. I was pleased to see he lived a very long life. He had a successful career, in partnership with his wife Clotilde, and their costumes, wigs, books and papers have ended up in archives around Europe and in the US.
Sacharoff had trained as a painter in Paris and had visited many of the famous museums in France and Germany. He recommended that students study the art of the past, then forget it. The writer Francesca Dytor argues that his performances embodied rather than reproduced the past. She notes how some contemporary critics were troubled by ‘this double transgression, of both the human-artwork boundary, and the boundary of the sexes.’ Others were transfixed by him.
‘It was like a conjuring magic spell that evoked sensations as if a statue or an icon-like image of immaterial beauty had been awakened to life.’
Sacharoff cited the Greeks in praise of the adolescent body. They had regarded the ephebe, the young male, as the ideal body, both as a lover and as an epitome of beauty. Sacharoff’s androgyny was not so misogynistic . He wanted to explore and combine the possibility of both sexes.
Sacharoff was born in Mariupol, Russia, on 13 May 1886. His family were Jewish. After studying art in Paris he moved to Munich in 1905. He became close friends with other Russian artists who were living there, such as Kandinsky, Jawlensky and von Werefkin. He found his calling as a dancer within this group. He collaborated with Kandinsky and the composer Thomas von Hartman on a synaesthetic work of art… watercolours were transformed to sounds then to dance… Many of these artists went on to form Die Blaue Reiter group.
He married the German dancer Clotilde von der Planitz in 1919. She was also well connected in the art milieu being friends with sculptors and painters. One sculptor, George Kolbe, called her the ‘foremost female dancer in Germany’. Born in Munich, the daughter of a German general, from the lower nobility, Clotilde had trained as a ballet dancer. She gave her first performance in 1910 and was an instant success, starring in a production by Max Reinhardt. Rilke was among her admirers. By 1913 she was dancing with Sacharoff. She liked to cross dress too.
They lived in Switzerland during WW1, Paris between the wars, and toured China, Japan, North and South America. They were in Spain when WW2 started. They moved to Argentina until it ended. Then they toured Italy and eventually set up a dance school in Rome. They remained together until his death in 1963. Clotilde had to sell much of their collection of art and costumes in order to survive, but ensured that these ended up in archives. Despite this, they seem to have faded from dance history to some extent, unlike other modernist dancers such as Mary Wigman.
Sacharoff's solo performances challenged notions of art history, dance and gender. Perhaps they were an early form of voguing, as his choreography involved a series of poses. Sacharoff was avant garde and daring, yet seems defy expectations in every way. He avoided many of the hazards of life in the first half of the C20th. I was pleased to see he lived a very long life. He had a successful career, in partnership with his wife Clotilde, and their costumes, wigs, books and papers have ended up in archives around Europe and in the US.
Sacharoff had trained as a painter in Paris and had visited many of the famous museums in France and Germany. He recommended that students study the art of the past, then forget it. The writer Francesca Dytor argues that his performances embodied rather than reproduced the past. She notes how some contemporary critics were troubled by ‘this double transgression, of both the human-artwork boundary, and the boundary of the sexes.’ Others were transfixed by him.
‘It was like a conjuring magic spell that evoked sensations as if a statue or an icon-like image of immaterial beauty had been awakened to life.’
Sacharoff cited the Greeks in praise of the adolescent body. They had regarded the ephebe, the young male, as the ideal body, both as a lover and as an epitome of beauty. Sacharoff’s androgyny was not so misogynistic . He wanted to explore and combine the possibility of both sexes.
Sacharoff was born in Mariupol, Russia, on 13 May 1886. His family were Jewish. After studying art in Paris he moved to Munich in 1905. He became close friends with other Russian artists who were living there, such as Kandinsky, Jawlensky and von Werefkin. He found his calling as a dancer within this group. He collaborated with Kandinsky and the composer Thomas von Hartman on a synaesthetic work of art… watercolours were transformed to sounds then to dance… Many of these artists went on to form Die Blaue Reiter group.
He married the German dancer Clotilde von der Planitz in 1919. She was also well connected in the art milieu being friends with sculptors and painters. One sculptor, George Kolbe, called her the ‘foremost female dancer in Germany’. Born in Munich, the daughter of a German general, from the lower nobility, Clotilde had trained as a ballet dancer. She gave her first performance in 1910 and was an instant success, starring in a production by Max Reinhardt. Rilke was among her admirers. By 1913 she was dancing with Sacharoff. She liked to cross dress too.
They lived in Switzerland during WW1, Paris between the wars, and toured China, Japan, North and South America. They were in Spain when WW2 started. They moved to Argentina until it ended. Then they toured Italy and eventually set up a dance school in Rome. They remained together until his death in 1963. Clotilde had to sell much of their collection of art and costumes in order to survive, but ensured that these ended up in archives. Despite this, they seem to have faded from dance history to some extent, unlike other modernist dancers such as Mary Wigman.
Mary Wigman
I recognised the dancer in this portrait immediately. It’s Mary Wigman. It was her hands, which artist Julie Wolfthorn has given a sinister life of their own. They impel the body into movement, not vice versa. I recognise the choreography too. Wigman’s Hexentanz, Witches Dance, once seen, is never forgotten. It remains one of the most challenging works to watch …. the dancer as in thrall to ecstatic and occult forces… MOMA[1]
Germany has a tradition of witch art, going back to the C15. The German painter Hans Baldung, nicknamed Grien (1484-1545), popularised the iconography of monstrous women stirring their cauldrons and dancing naked at the sabbat. The new technology of printing enabled such images to be widely circulated. Elements of pornography and transgression made them popular. Witches were believed to be in league with the Devil. Such art enabled them to be both condemned and celebrated.
Wigman’s choreography and performance weaves ancient and modern into a potent ritual. Her witch refuses to be an object for the male gaze. Wigman wore a mask and cloak that concealed her body and face, putting all the focus on her hands and feet. The painter doesn’t show her feet. The whole image seems to be bursting into flames. Wigman’s witch is more global, less Christian, but there are still echoes of hell fire. If anything, she is more terrifying than anything by Grien or Durer. She is alive, dynamic, pounding the stage and casting her spell upon the audience.
Created in 1914, when she was still a student of Laban, Hexentanz went through many variations before being filmed in 1926. This is the film that can be watched on YouTube today. Sadly, a final section, where she leapt into the air, isn’t preserved.
MOMA credit Wigman with being one of the originators of free dance. She rarely used scenery, didn’t follow any structure and didn’t start her choreography with a piece of music. New work was developed through improvisation. She was influenced by many different traditions, from Kabuki theatre to tribal dance, often using masks and world music in her choreography. Sadly, she her appreciation of other cultures was detached from any political awareness. Her witch’s magic was stolen.
Wigman ran her dance school from 1920 to 1942. Unlike many German artists and creatives, she stayed in Germany under Nazi rule, continued to run her company and her school. She obeyed the Nazi decree to fire all Jews. Even so, her company was closed in 1937 after Goebbels decreed that all dance "must be cheerful and show beautiful female bodies and have nothing to do with philosophy." According to Judith Mackrell, in the Guardian, Wigman was protected by a relationship with a prominent arms manufacturer, whose death, also in 1942, left her unprotected. Her school was closed[2].
It’s significant that this portrait is by Julie Wolfthorn[3], (1864-1944) a successful Jewish artist and activist who died in Theresienstadt concentration camp, along with her sister Luisa. Luisa was a linguist who’d translated texts from Scandinavian languages, French and English. Their last message survives, written on a postcard sent to a friend: “Don’t forget us!” There is now a street named after her in Berlin. Born Julie Wolf, in the town of Thorn in Prussia, she studied art in Paris as women weren’t allowed to enrol in German art schools. She’s best known for her many portraits of Berlin celebrities and cultural figures. She was the co-founder of the German Secession and campaigned for women to be admitted to the Prussian Academy of Arts.
Mary Wigman faded from history for some years, her reputation tarnished by her compliance with the Nazis. Now her place in dance history is being restored. She’s still a troubling figure. Expressionist dance, as a movement, was short lived. Its influence lived on through theatre and cinema.
Hexentanz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk7Ie3rbcSQ
[1] https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/inventingabstraction/?work=238
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/may/22/mary-wigman-german-modern-dance-pioneer
[3] www.artnet.com/artists/julie-wolfthorn
Anita Berber Dances of Vice, Horror and Ecstasy
I think you can tell that this woman is a dancer. Her body seems to vibrate with energy. She’s a scarlet woman, in a world enflamed. This is the notorious Anita Berber who’s mainly remembered for dancing nude, her prodigious consumption of cocaine and for her transgressive lifestyle.
She’s the dancer in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, where she reveals herself as the biblical scarlet woman, riding on the back of a seven headed beast. In this portrait Otto Dix conveys the mythic intensity, but grounded in the contemporary world of Weimar Berlin. The red dress accentuates her body and her sexuality. The red becomes the red light district she frequented. Some commentators point out that she looks older and less beautiful than she appears in all her photos. They miss the fact that she is a performer, even here.
Her face is a white, painted mask, with its tiny cupid lips and darkly shadowed eyes. (Dix’s wife said she took an hour to put on her make up, downing a bottle of cognac in the process.) The high neck emphasises her face and the intensity of her gaze. Yet her mind is elsewhere, in some private , less demanding world.
Berber liked the portrait. She asked for updates on its progress and wanted a photo of it to use in her publicity. It was painted in 1925, when Dix was an established artist. It featured next to his self portrait in an exhibition in Mannheim.
Berber was born in Leipzig on 10 June 1899. Her father was a violinist, her mother performed in cabaret, including the Black Cats in Paris and Berlin. This sounds like a fiction, but seems to be true. They divorced when she was four. In 1913 she went to study at the Dalcroze School, near Dresden. Famed for its system of rhythmic gymnastics and musicality, it had only opened in 1910. Dancer and choreographer Mary Wigman, artist and Designer Paul Thevenet and many others studied there. Dalcroze made the body central to all learning. Berber was to subvert beliefs in the body in transgressive ways.
Berber stayed at the Dalcroze school for only one year before moving to Berlin where she studied ballet with Rita Saccheto, a pupil of Loe Fuller, for two years. She gave her first performance at the age of 16.
Berber achieved fame from an early age. She appeared in Berlin’s most famous theatres as well as small clubs and cabarets. In 1919 she was featured in a series of erotic lithographs by the well known artist Charlotte Berend-Corinth. In 1920 she appeared in Sound and Smoke, a political review by Max Reinhardt. She modelled in popular women’s magazines and appeared in 26 films. Half were ‘sex education’ films, produced by Richard Ostwald, but she also had roles in more mainstream film, including a small part in the Expressionist classic Dr Mabuse The Gambler.
She’s the dancer in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, where she reveals herself as the biblical scarlet woman, riding on the back of a seven headed beast. In this portrait Otto Dix conveys the mythic intensity, but grounded in the contemporary world of Weimar Berlin. The red dress accentuates her body and her sexuality. The red becomes the red light district she frequented. Some commentators point out that she looks older and less beautiful than she appears in all her photos. They miss the fact that she is a performer, even here.
Her face is a white, painted mask, with its tiny cupid lips and darkly shadowed eyes. (Dix’s wife said she took an hour to put on her make up, downing a bottle of cognac in the process.) The high neck emphasises her face and the intensity of her gaze. Yet her mind is elsewhere, in some private , less demanding world.
Berber liked the portrait. She asked for updates on its progress and wanted a photo of it to use in her publicity. It was painted in 1925, when Dix was an established artist. It featured next to his self portrait in an exhibition in Mannheim.
Berber was born in Leipzig on 10 June 1899. Her father was a violinist, her mother performed in cabaret, including the Black Cats in Paris and Berlin. This sounds like a fiction, but seems to be true. They divorced when she was four. In 1913 she went to study at the Dalcroze School, near Dresden. Famed for its system of rhythmic gymnastics and musicality, it had only opened in 1910. Dancer and choreographer Mary Wigman, artist and Designer Paul Thevenet and many others studied there. Dalcroze made the body central to all learning. Berber was to subvert beliefs in the body in transgressive ways.
Berber stayed at the Dalcroze school for only one year before moving to Berlin where she studied ballet with Rita Saccheto, a pupil of Loe Fuller, for two years. She gave her first performance at the age of 16.
Berber achieved fame from an early age. She appeared in Berlin’s most famous theatres as well as small clubs and cabarets. In 1919 she was featured in a series of erotic lithographs by the well known artist Charlotte Berend-Corinth. In 1920 she appeared in Sound and Smoke, a political review by Max Reinhardt. She modelled in popular women’s magazines and appeared in 26 films. Half were ‘sex education’ films, produced by Richard Ostwald, but she also had roles in more mainstream film, including a small part in the Expressionist classic Dr Mabuse The Gambler.