History of expressionist dance: A portrait of Laban and Wigman

At the beginning of the 20th century, a silent revolution took place on European dance stages. Many artists felt that classical dance, with its strict geometric lines, tight corsets, and the fixed steps of classical ballet, was a restrictive corset for the soul. They sought an art of movement that no longer just told decorative stories, but carried the inner truth of the human being outward in an unadulterated way. From this rebellion emerged European expressionist dance, which was to change the dance world forever.

At the center of this movement was the liberation of the body. The pioneers abandoned rigid step sequences and the hierarchies of classical ensembles. Instead, they declared gravity, breath, and emotion to be the new tools of creation. Dance was understood as an independent art form that needed no literary template and often not even music to unfold a profound effect. This new philosophy laid the foundation for what we know today as contemporary dance and modern dance theater for adults.

One name is inseparably linked to the theoretical and practical understanding of this new era: Rudolf von Laban. As a visionary choreographer and movement theorist, he dedicated his life to researching human dynamics in space. The Rudolf von Laban dance was not a rigid system of poses, but a profound movement analysis. He examined how the body moves through space and which energetic qualities are released in the process.

Laban developed the concept of the kinesphere, that space which surrounds the body and can be reached with the limbs without changing one's location. His theory of effort distinguishes the factors of space, time, weight, and flow. Through the conscious play with these elements, such as the change between direct and flexible spatial orientation or sudden and sustained duration, dancers received a universal vocabulary for improvisation. His work helped dancers to develop a deeper body awareness in dance and to understand movements beyond predetermined patterns.

While Laban analyzed the structural and spatial laws of movement, Mary Wigman gave expressionist dance its dramatic, emotional soul. As a student of Laban, she developed a unique, radical aesthetic. The Mary Wigman method placed pure feeling and existential experience at the forefront. Wigman often danced barefoot, used masks, and frequently dispensed with music entirely in her choreographies to follow only the rhythm of her own breath and heartbeat.

For Wigman, dance was a ritual act of self-encounter. She used the polarity of tension and relaxation to make emotional states such as fear, grief, or ecstasy physically tangible. Her movements were often earthbound, angular, and unvarnished, a conscious counter-design to the weightlessness of classical ballet. This uncompromising focus on the inner necessity of a movement continues to shape training in modern dance to this day. Anyone improvising in a contemporary class today is, often without knowing it, using the creative freedom that udansa once laboriously fought for.