Re-reading Mary Wigman’s Hexentanz II (1926): the influence of the non-Western ‘Other’ on movement practice in early modern ‘German’ dance

Wigman's Witches: Reformism, Orientalism, Nazism

“…Yet, it is the work's oriental dimension that I shall focus on in this article, as it seems particularly significant both in aesthetic and political terms. With its reference to Eastern forms and themes, the piece exemplifies a more general trend in Wigman's work that has been remarked on by researchers such as Burt (1998, 179-181) and Tsitsou and Weir (2013), and is manifest in an array of titles such as Persian Song (1916/17) and Four Dances to Oriental Motifs (1920).…”

“…But as a number of scholars including Marchand (2009), Polaschegg (2009), and Wiedemann (2012b) have noted, it is not so applicable to Germany whose history was significantly different, having only entered the race for the colonies at a much later stage (Marchand 2009, 432). I would therefore suggest that as a German artist Wigman was unlikely to have been influenced by colonialist perspectives, and contend (in opposition to Tsitsou and Weir 2013) that a Saidian interpretation of the piece fails to account for its specific German context.…”

Forced Secularization and Postmodern Discourses within Contemporary Performance: Weaponizing Multicultural Rhetoric to Ratify Asymmetries among Dance Practitioners

“…2 Recent scholarship highlights how much modern dance was actually inspired by, copied from, and/or ascribed to indigenous and folk dances. Dance scholars have explored the links between Martha Graham and Native American cultures; 3 the associations of Ruth St. Denis and Loie Fuller with Indian dances; 4 Mary Wigman's orientalist exoticization of "primitive" cultures; 5 and Ted Shawn, José Limon, and Lester Horton's uses in their work of cultural material from First Nations people across the Americas. 6 All of these cases reveal the role of traditional and indigenous cultures in feeding modern dance, which failed to acknowledge its debt, let alone consult or compensate them.…”