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Movement Frozen in Time - An Exhibition of Dance Images

ln thè view of thè grande dame of American modern dance, Martha Graham, dance can only be collected in other media. Alongside film and video, dance photography is the most important means of recording it. Its images are frozen movement, sculptures of human posture and light. Like theatre photography, it uses stage lighting. Like photojournalism, it concéntrales on thè motionless moment within a movement. It has many features in common with fashion photography.

A history of German dance photography

When the technique of dance photography was developed, expressive dance dominated stages and discussions in Germany. Beyond classica! ballet and in direct proximity to the reform movement of Jugendstil and Early Modernism, expressive dance featured expressive poses, increasing nakedness and sporting leaps. Great portrait artists, such as Hugo Erfurth and Erna Lendvai-Dircksen, devoted series of pictures to famous dancers such as Mary Wigman and Gret Palucca.

In the 19205, dance photography was an integral pari of photographic Modernism, from the Dadaist Raoul Hausmann to Bauhaus, which had its own ballet, to thè young fashion photographers Nina and Carry Hess, Yva and Sasha Stone and the Binder Atelier in Berlin, which used dance images in designing the title pages of the big magazines. The first specialists, Charlotte Rudolph and Hans Robertson, established themselves at thè end of the 19205, and their dance pictures are tobe found in all dancers'bequests.

Good dance photographs

Good dance photographs bring out dancers' characteristic style. They capture thè key moment of a figure or a jump, composing bodies in light and shade. In the 1 9605, the classic, very sharp black-and-white photography of the middle generation of dance photographers, such as Siegfried Enkelmann and Joachim Giesel, gave way to experiments in colour with light and blurred moving forms, for example in the work of Walter Boje and Dieter Blum. Recent years bave seen a return to more austere poses under calculated light; dance photography, too, is subject to fashions and changes.

A travelling exhibition

One of the most important collections of dance photography is the Tanzarchiv (German Dance Archive) in Cologne, which is run by the SK Culture Foundation. Its main stock comprises dancers' bequests and collections, but increasingly, there are also large collections of works by famous photographers. Photographs make upan integrai pari of the whole exhibition at the dance museum; in addition, large temporary exhibitions are organised, devoted to individuai photographers or styles. It is however not just a means of presenting the history of dance photography, there is also a travelling exhibition organised by the Tanzarchiv and Goethe-Institut. It is called Angehaltene Zeit - ( Movement Frozen in Time). An exhibition of dance images. Its focus is on the more modern trend towards the visualising of dance and movement. It goes without saying that the first among equalsofthe peopletaking pari is of coursethe photographerGertWeigelt (* 1943) who in the meantime has become the undisputed doyen of German dance photography.

Young dance photography

The recent dance photography scene is not very large, but it is very varied. Many middle-generation dance photographers, such as Matthias Zoelle and Georg Schreiber, have settled in the Ruhr area, because modern dance is particularly promoted there. In their pictures, they once again concentrate more strongly on the choreography and the ensemble than on the individuai pose - a generai trend in modern dance. For these photographers, the difference between colour and black and white is less significant; they focus on the staging, putting dance photography at the Service of dance once more.

Younger generation photographers who are being presented in theTanzarchiv's travelling exhibition hail in faci from a different realm offine arts - the domain of Installation and performance; a realm however in which graphic artists usually feel more at home than dance specialists. The one thing they all have in common is the way they see the individuai dancers, their bodies and the details. This not only applies to the elaborate Images of Gert Weigelt, but also to the work of Agnès Noltenius (* 1961) and Dominik Mentzos (* 1964).