BONN.- One thesis on the origins of dance is that it was initially a way of communicating. Whether developed from movements at work or as a reaction to natural phenomena, dance has always described human interactions.

Even in the earliest cultures, dance was an important part of rituals, ceremonies, festivals and entertainment. It may also have played a central role in the transmission of stories before they were recorded in writing. In many parts of the world, dancing is deeply rooted in the community and creates a sense of belonging.

The exhibition presents dance as a global form of representation and expression and tells multi-perspective stories of the interweaving of dance in its social functions and its role as an art form. In thematically organised chapters, it looks at the multitude of different manifestations and styles and illuminates dance as an essential part of our existence.

The central chapter Dancing Together, which presents dance as a collective experience and thematises its socio-cultural functions, develops into four major sections: Imagining Dances, Storytelling, On:Breaks and Show Time! They shed light on the ritual, spiritual, political, identity-forming and entertaining functions of dance, blurring the boundaries between everyday and high culture. The chapter Storrytelling presents classical ballet as a storyteller as well as the narrative dances of the African continent and various forms of dance theatre. Imagining Dances explores examples of spiritual and art-philosophical dance worlds and sheds light on the topic of appropriation and cultural transfer. Dancing as an expression of protest and resistance and as a counter-movement is the subject of the chapter On:Breaks and the section Show Time! illuminates the entertaining aspects.

Since dance rarely stands alone, the exhibition also looks at its many connections to other art forms. The exhibits range from dance representations in early cultures to modern visual arts and examples of contemporary dance.

In addition, the exhibition becomes a dance platform: videos and projections, but above all the live interventions and performances convey dance. Professional dancers rehearse and dance in the specially equipped dance hall in the East Gallery. The public is offered insights into choreographic processes as well as dance workshops and tutorials, but also tango and Lindy Hop evenings to join in.

Dance Worlds

The need and desire to dance is deeply rooted in us humans. Dancing has always inspired human interaction and has been part of rituals, ceremonies, festivals and entertainment in early cultures. To this day, dancing is part of social and cultural life all over the world and reflects the spirit of the times.

This exhibition presents dance as a global form of representation and expression and tells of the interdependencies between dance in its social functions and its role as art. With exhibits ranging from ancient artefacts depicting dance to examples from the visual arts and contemporary installations, it takes a look at the multitude of different forms and styles.

The exhibition invites visitors to experience and participate in dance: with videos and projections, live performances, dance workshops and dance evenings for everyone. Professional dancers rehearse and dance in the specially designed dance hall in the Ostgalerie and offer insights into choreographic processes.

Storytelling

Dancing has a strong narrative power. Whether mythological or spiritual themes, literary material, historical or everyday events - the body and its sheer inexhaustible possibilities have been and continue to be used to convey stories of the most diverse content.

The range of formal language is just as multifaceted - linearly narrated, epically elaborated, ritually charged or fragmentarily layered. The danced stories always reflect social, political, cultural and artistic trends of the time and fulfil the human need to pass on experiences and invent new worlds.

Ballet

Ballet emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries at the Italian and French courts as part of the political festive culture. The reformers of the 18th century rebelled against this representative ballet practice, which had ossified over time. Dancers now created roles in which emotion and individual expression came to the fore. This tradition lives on to this day in romantic ballets such as Giselle or in so-called classical ballets such as Swan Lake. The introduction of pointe dancing in the 19th century brought extreme technical brilliance, which became a symbol of the beauty and weightlessness of ballet dance.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the narrative conventions of ballet were challenged by shorter, flexible program formats. The dance company Ballets Russes, founded by Serge Diagilev, led the way. With his productions, Diagilev created a kind of Gesamt- kunstwerk that shocked and thrilled audiences with a new dance aesthetic and deliberate provocations. With ballets such as Scheherazade or The Firebird, Diagilev catered to the preference for the “exotic” at the time, but his new formal language was to change ballet and the audience's viewing habits forever.

The Choreographer’s Workshop

Rare insights into the working processes for the ballet Nijinsky (2000) show how the choreographer and Nijinsky researcher John Neumeier develops his works. The work and life of the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky (1889-1950) has preoccupied John Neumeier since his childhood. In a kind of scenic kaleidoscope, he masterfully interweaves characters from Nijinsky's ballets with authentic people from his life, creating an imaginary universe of one of the most important dancers of the 20th century. In doing so, Neumeier succeeds in combining Nijinsky's revolutionary ideas with his own movement language. At the same time, he sheds light on his creative environment, above all Serge Diagilev's Ballets Russes - one of the first, highly influential “touring companies” in dance history.

The rich collection of material from the catalogue raisonné of the great storyteller John Neumeier shows the basis on which he expanded and deepened the traditionally linear dramaturgy of story ballets. Historical photographs of people and original locations, drawings, notations and newspaper clippings come together to form a “picture atlas” from which the complex stage events develop.

Tanztheater

Tanztheater (lit. dance theater) emerged in Germany in the second half of the 20th century as a counter-movement to the bourgeois conventions of post-war society, the ballet traditions and the need to place people at the center of attention. As the name suggests, dance and theatrical elements are combined to form a scenic unit. The term describes less a specific dance style or technique, but is an expression of an overarching attitude towards the world.

Dance theater focuses on people as social beings. It addresses their fears, longings and dreams and takes their subjective perceptions as a starting point, whereby it neither wishes to gloss over this personal reality nor to moralize it. A linear narrative is replaced by collage-like scenes and associative images that often speak to the viewer on a deep emotional level. The movements usually have their origins in the personality of the dancers and their inner experience. Even though the dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch is one of the best-known representatives of dance theater, many different positions ensure that this form of expression is still relevant today.

Stilised Dance Drama

Japanese Nô is a dance drama performed by highly qualified, traditionally exclusively male actors and musicians. The focus is on the highly stylized dance, the form of which develops over the course of lengthy rehearsals. The stories of Nô, which has been performed since the 14th century, combine reality and dream worlds.

Kabuki theater, which emerged at the beginning of the 17th century, forms a counter- balance to Nô. The plays were originally performed by women and served the sole purpose of entertainment. Censorship banned women from the stage, and professional male actors eventually developed kabuki into a recognized art form. Aesthetically, it is characterized by extravagant make-up and costumes. The plays often deal with themes such as love, honor and the conflict between tradition and modernity.

The Balinese dance Legong tells stories in the form of stylized dance pantomimes, which are characterized by complex finger movements and footwork as well as expressive facial expressions. This dance probably originated in the 19th century as entertainment at the royal court and was originally performed by young girls. Today, there are a total of 15 Legong dances, each with a different narrative.

Cultural Diversity – Dancing on the African Continent

The African continent has a rich cultural heritage, of which music and dance are essential components. The diverse dance styles and traditions are just as numerous as the social and ethnic groups of the African countries. Nevertheless, fundamental similarities can be identified, which manifest themselves, among other things, in the prominent role of dance as a medium of cultural identity formation, spiritual practices and communication.

Oral tradition in the sense of knowledge transfer forms the basis of the different dance and music cultures, especially in the rural regions of Africa. Many religious and ritual dance events are characterised by the use of masks, which are often worn as full-body masks. They can symbolise gods, ancestral spirits or other beings, they are seen as mediators between this world and the hereafter, but they can also be used purely for entertainment.

Dancing on the African continent has always been subject to many changes. New, transcultural dance forms have developed and new social identities have emerged, especially in the cities.

Dancing Together – Celebrations and Rituals

Dancing plays an important role in building communities: Dancing creates an emotional and social connection between people.

The strengthening of the group feeling and the promotion of togetherness is particularly visible in round and chain dances, which are among the oldest dance formations worldwide and form a link to the contemporary dances of many cultures. Parade and carnival dances also combine local traditions with collective joie de vivre around the world.

Dances are also created in connection with rituals and religious ceremonies. They serve to confirm and strengthen belief systems and are often deeply rooted in the spiritual world. With the help of such ritual dances, people gain security and stability and experi- ence an intense sense of togetherness.

The Community – the Celebration – the Dance

The most important traditional dance of the South Pacific Santa Cruz Islands/Salomon Islands is the Nelo dance, named after a mother-of-pearl nose jewellery. This may only be worn by fully initiated dancers and goes back to an event that took place many generations ago. The coexistence of the people on Santa Cruz and therefore also the Nelo dance are characterised by the central concept of kastom - a concept that outlines the current world view and equally revolves around its creation and transmission.

The Nelo dance addresses certain dukna (spirits) who make themselves known in individual dreams or through natural phenomena and disasters. It is at the centre of elaborate festivals that are organised by a family or a village community and pursue different goals.

The Nelo dance, the clothing worn and the jewellery made from natural materials also characterise the central practices of local relationship systems. They represent a cultural heritage and are closely related to people's everyday lives, but also to their connection to the cosmos and the extrasensory world.

Imagining Dance

Pioneers of modern dance created spiritual and art-philosophical dance worlds by drawing inspiration from historical and non-European dances. In doing so, they often moved between cultural appropriation and first steps towards transcultural encounters.

In many cultures, however, dances are part of religious practices and serve to create sacredness. They are often associated with sacrifice, ecstasy and death. In dance movements, people can step out of themselves and enter into ecstatic states.

Dances of death exist all over the world. However, the dance of death, which originates from the Christian faith, is not a real dance, but a fantasy and a permanent warning re- minder of the inevitability of death. In many cultures, dances of death are celebrated to express grief, honour the deceased and celebrate with them.

Appropriation and Transfer

From the very beginning, ballet uncritically and transfiguringly integrated motifs from non-European cultures in order to serve ideas about the “exotic”. Modern dance in Europe and the USA also initially looked for inspiration at world exhibitions, colonial shows or in the field of “exotic” entertainment dance. This gave rise to pseudo Egyptian or pseudo-Indian dances, whose choreographies, stage sets and costumes were often cultural appropriations.

The American dancer Ruth St. Denis believed that dance was an expression of the spiritual. Inspired by Indian dances and strengthened by religious studies, she created a series of “Indian” choreographies. Although they originated solely from her imagination, they shaped European and American perceptions of this art form. The French-Indian dancer Nyota Inyoka was quite different, combining Eastern and Western traditions in her dances to create unique choreographies. She left behind an impressive written and iconographic legacy, excerpts of which are being exhibited for the first time. Once labeled an “exotic dancer”, Nyota Inyoka is now considered a representative of European modern dance.

Traditions

In many cultures, dance plays an important role in connection with spirituality and religious practices. Hinduism, for example, attributes the creation of the world to the creation dance of the god Shiva.

Traditional Hindu dances convey a variety of aesthetic expressions as well as spiritual content. Some of the dances considered “classical” have their origins in temple dance and the devadasis, the temple dancers who worshipped and entertained the gods. These traditions were suppressed under British rule and only revived during the Indian independence movement.

The “classical” dances include the North Indian Kathak, which dates back to the 13th century. Its origins can perhaps be traced back to the wandering bards who accompanied religious songs about the life of Vishnu and Krishna with dance. The religiously inspired, expressive Kathak established itself as an entertainment dance at the courts during the Islamic rule of the Mughals. The hostilities under British colonial rule shifted the cultivation of this dance tradition into the private sphere. Today, Kathak, which combines Hindu and Muslim elements, is one of the most frequently performed dances in India.

Transcendences

Since ancient times, dancing has been a preferred medium for making contact with the world of the transcendent and the divine. Different cultures and religions developed their own strategies to put body and mind into a trance-like or intoxicated state. In the mystery cult surrounding the ancient god of wine Dionysus, for example, ecstatic dances were at the center of events. One possible relic from this period is Apulian tarantism, a kind of dancing mania that was supposedly the result of a wolf spider bite. In the Middle Ages, the mass phenomenon known as St. Vitus' Dance occurred in Europe, in which people danced until they were completely exhausted or fainted. This phenomenon, also known as the dance plague or choreomania, still puzzles scientists today.

In the ritual spinning dances of the Sufis (members of a Muslim-Ascetic religious community), the dancing dervishes achieve spiritual experiences through the unification of mind/spirit, emotion and body.

Excessive dancing can trigger a certain state of consciousness, but it can also be the result of such a state. This is confirmed by experiences with shamanistic practices that are still alive today.

New Paths

In their search for new forms of expression, many pioneers of modern dance at the beginning of the 20th century were inspired by Greek antiquity. They perceived the movements of the figures on reliefs and vases or the poses of sculptures as “original” and saw them as models for the dance realization of naturalness, harmony and symmetry.

Isadora Duncan was one of the first to break with the rigid conventions of ballet and paved the way for abstract, free dance. Dancing barefoot and in loose tunics, she emphasized the harmony between body and mind in her personal dance style and sought a direct connection to nature and human emotions.

Ancient models also changed the presentation of the male body in dance and expanded its expressive potential. Vaslav Nijinsky, for example, created an “archaic” nature deity in his ballet L’après-midi d’un faune (The Afternoon of a Faun, 1912) and developed innovative and provocative movement sequences that went beyond classical ballet. Alexander Sacharoff also dealt intensively with the “Greek body”, which for him meant the fusion of physical beauty with spiritual formation.

Dances of Death

For decades, people in New Orleans, USA, have been celebrating funerals that include second lines. A second line is a parade of people who follow a brass band playing jazz music to enjoy the music, dance and celebrate the deceased. The dance form, which has West African roots, is called second lining.

Medieval Europe was also familiar with the connection between death and dance. Against the backdrop of devastating plague epidemics, cycles of images of skeletons dancing with people from all social groups were created. These depictions, known as the Dance of Death, were regarded as a metaphor for the communal, inescapable experience of death. The theme of the dance of death later inspired numerous dancers and choreographers.

Skeletons are part of West African rituals and Caribbean voodoo practices that live on in the transatlantic cultures of the African diaspora. For 200 years, the North Scull and Bone Gang has been parading through the Treme neighborhood in New Orleans on the early morning of Mardi Gras. Dressed as skeletons, the gang members dance in remembrance of their ancestors and exhort people to live good lives.

Showtime!

The undisputed show qualities of the medium of dance are revealed when spectacular dance events captivate and inspire the audience and when the dynamism of the performances is transferred to those present. The extravagant, technically increasingly elaborate and, over time, commercialised stage productions of European and US vaudeville in the 19th and 20th centuries offered their fun-loving guests glamour, glitz and entertainment. Similarly intoxicating activities developed on the threshold of the 20th and 21st centuries in the popular milieu of African American club cultures in particular. They entertained and energised their communities with spectacular, improvised and individualised dance events, which gradually developed into influential social and artistic dance fashions.

The Magic of the Veil Dance

At the end of the 19th century, the American dancer and choreographer Loïe Fuller developed the serpentine dance, a veil dance that made her a star overnight. In a sequence of dance steps and tilts of the upper body, she whirled the voluptuous lengths of her silk costume through the room with her arms extended by bamboo poles. During her performances, Fuller used colored light projections that intensified the hypnotic effect of her dance. Today, she is regarded as a revolutionary in dance and stage technol- ogy; with her serpentine dance, she created one of the first performances in dance history. From 1895, the serpentine dances could also be admired on the big screen in the form of the first colorized films.

The performances of the Dance of the Seven Veils of Salome were always surrounded by an aura of scandal. In his tragedy Salomé (1893), Oscar Wilde thematized the Old Testament story of Salome, who removed her veils in an erotic dance. At the time, countless dancers slipped into the role of Salome and catered to the fashion for exoticism of the time with their orientalizing and supposedly historical portrayals. One of the most famous adaptations of this dance was the Visions of Salome (1906) by Canadian dancer Maud Allan.

Moving in Alternative Realities

Socially marginalised communities and their artistic approach to identity have shaped an innovative form of performance in recent decades, known as voguing. Voguing has its origins in the African-American and Latin American LGBTQ+ communities in Harlem, New York City. There, the so-called ‘ballroom’ scene offered discriminated social groups safe spaces to develop. Voguing plays with forms of self-presentation and mixes different styles of movement and dance, fashion, theatre and performance art across borders. Costumes constantly create new gender-fluid body realities.

Artistic transformations and multidisciplinary exaggerations of voguing are the subject of the works of two contemporary artists who interweave personal and collective narratives. In his provocative and opulent performances, Trajal Harrell speculates on fictitious connections between different strands of dance history, raising questions of discrimination, belonging, power and powerlessness. Jacolby Satterwhite uses digital art to create complex, often surreal figures, communities and landscapes that take up and liquefy themes such as queerness, identity and familial memory.

Dancing Together – City Dance

Collective experience is the theme of participatory performances that make it possible to experience the democratic power of dance. Against the backdrop of political unrest in the USA, the dancer and choreographer Anna Halprin (1920–2021) realised several City Dances in San Francisco in the 1970s. The entire city was transformed into a dance stage for a day, bringing thousands of city dwellers together in a large, peaceful ritual.

In 2016, Cologne-based choreographer Stephanie Thiersch picked up on Anna Halprin's revolutionary idea. Together with a collective of artists, she developed an all-day city dance for Cologne. The successful project transformed the cathedral city into a place of togetherness.

Dancing Together – Dancefloor

Ballroom dances in Europe developed from courtly dances. They were subject to strict rules that determined the step sequences, couple configurations and body movements. It was only with the establishment of bourgeois ballrooms in the 19th century that ballroom dances became freer and lost their ceremonial character.

The rapid changes of the 20th century also influenced European ballroom dancing. Afro-Argentine, Afro-American, Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Cuban dances such as the tango, foxtrot, samba and rumba arrived in Europe.

Standard dances such as the waltz were codified in order to standardise ballroom dances worldwide. Together with the Latin American dances, they have been part of the world dance programme since 1963.

From the Royal Court to the Dance Hall

European dance culture developed in two separate social spheres - at princely courts and in the rural environment. The mediators between these two worlds were often the wandering minstrels, who included musicians, singers, jugglers, actors, poets and dancers.

Courtly dance flourished during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Numerous dance books summarized the complex rules, the indispensable dance masters constantly invented new dances and taught their protégés the correct steps, arm movements and choreographies. Of many of these dances, which are now considered “historical”, only the music is known, such as the minuet, a dance that was widespread and extremely popular in the 17th and 18th centuries.

It was only when they were adopted in bourgeois ballrooms that ballroom dances lost their ceremonial character. The fashionable waltz, already known before the French Revolution, was initially considered vulgar due to the close physical contact between the dancers. Over time, it developed into a popular classic that is indispensable at every ball and is one of the five standard dances in the world dance program.

The Hidden Legacy of Social Dances

The history of many well-known and popular dances is closely linked to colonial expansion and the exploitation of Africa and the Americas.

For millions of enslaved people in the southern states of the USA, dancing was an important medium of resistance and an expression of a hoped-for new beginning. In the course of the so-called “Great Migration”, generations of African Americans moved to the industrial cities of the North after 1910, bringing their culture with them. The best-known dances that conquered Europe from New York at that time included jazz dance and the Charleston.

Tango Argentino originated in the 19th century in the suburban brothels of Montevideo and Buenos Aires. It fuses indigenous elements with African and European influences. This multicultural melange was transformed in Europe by British choreographers into the “tamed” International Tango.

Salsa, which is danced all over the world today, is a mixture of European, African and indigenous Caribbean influences. This is reflected in its name, which was coined in New York in the 1960s: salsa means “sauce”. At that time, the dance contributed to the emancipation of the Puerto Rican and Cuban communities and to the consolidation of their identity.

Ruptures and Departures

Social conditions have always shaped dance and, conversely, dance has characterised the perception of the body, identity and social relationships.

Since the beginning of the 20th century in particular, dance has repeatedly broken with familiar visual habits and questioned not only aesthetic traditions, but also social conventions and political structures.

Both on stage and on the street, dance has emerged as an expression of emancipation, liberation or even as a means of protest. Even seemingly purely artistic departures by influential figures in dance history can never be viewed in isolation from the circumstances surrounding them.

Blurring Boundaries

Dance as an expression of a critical attitude towards social and aesthetic conventions is characterized by extremely individual forms of performance. The representatives of the expressive (or expressionist) dance in the first half of the 20th century redefined theatrical and performative traditions. They focused on the body as a means of “liberation”. Valeska Gert developed her rebellious, expressive style by unconventionally combining elements of dance, theater and pantomime. Anita Berber shocked audiences in Vienna and Berlin in the 1920s with her then scandalous nude dances. Harald Kreutzberg, probably the most important male protagonist of Western European expressive dance, conveyed complex characters and stories in his emotional dance performances.

This broad spectrum of creative positions also influenced dancers from other cultures. For example, Harald Kreutzberg inspired Kazuo Ohno, one of the co-founders of Japanese Butoh, the “dance of darkness”, which views life from the perspective of suffering and death. Butoh developed as a counter-movement, a protest against the social norms and artistic conventions in Japan and the integration of influences from the West.

Empowerment

Kurt Jooss' socio-critical dance work Der Grüne Tisch (The Green Table) from 1932 is considered the first “political” ballet. Inspired by the motifs of the Dance of Death, it deals with the senselessness of war. The Workers Dance League (WDL), founded at the same time in New York City, was primarily aimed at the working class in the belief that it could bring about social change through the power of dance. With her performances in the 1930s and 1940s, choreographer Katherine Dunham took a stand against segregation in everyday American life and founded the first internationally touring, predominantly African-American dance company.

The dances that emerged in the urban milieu of the USA from the 1970s onwards were also an expression of the emancipation and liberation of oppressed communities. Dance styles such as hip hop and house emerged on the street, in schoolyards and parties, in parks and nightclubs, as the African-Americans and Latin Americans who developed these dances generally had no access to dance studios. Dancing as protest and revolt developed particularly in South Africa. Dances such as Pantsula were seen as manifestations against the system of apartheid and a sign of the black population's self-assertion.

Movement Research

An expanded concept of dance has defined the concepts and methods of contemporary (stage) artists in recent decades. Bodies, movements and dances have become independ- ent spaces of knowledge that are tested and further developed in different constellations. For example, everyday movements have found their way into the choreographic vocabulary (e.g. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker), claims to virtuosity and technique have been radically questioned in some cases (e.g. Yvonne Rainer). New, improvisational techniques, which were also accessible to amateurs and dispensed with fixed movement patterns (e.g. Steve Paxton), became increasingly important. At the same time, elaborate physical techniques were also understood as a means of penetrating new, previously unknown kinetic images and qualities (e.g. Saburo Teshigawara).

The testing of new formats of performance practice, the blurring of genre boundaries and the incorporation of impulses from the visual arts, music, architecture and film (e.g. Merce Cunningham) are also considered groundbreaking. The deconstruction of classical forms of movement and their reinterpretation (William Forsythe, Pichet Klunchun) has also had a lasting influence on choreographic work, as has the inclusion of new media.