ABSTRACT
The texts in this section cover a number of Laban’s activities in the period between January 1930 and July 1936. With his appointment to Master of Ballet at the Berlin Opera, his summer residence in Bayreuth Festspielhaus and his Dancer’s Congress in Munich, 1930, was clearly an Annus Mirabilis. There are documents about Bayreuth and Munich, but little about his activities at Berlin Opera; Dörr lists 29 productions directed by Laban in his four years there. From 1934, he became Director of the newly created Deutsche Tanzbühne (which could be translated as the German Dance Association). Part of the brief was to programme annual festivals of German dance, which he delivered in 1934 and 1935. The nationalist emphasis should be noted: this is a festival of German dance as an expression of German culture.
Accounts of the German Dance Festival and the German Dance Association indicate how Laban attempted to continue his former activities under the new regime. The chapter concludes with passages from the programme Wir Tanzen written for Vom Tauwind der Neuen Freude,Laban’s massive choral piece to celebrate the opening of the Dietrich Eckart Stadium, constructed for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The contrast between Laban’s and Frau Lieschke’s texts is instructive: where one stresses the joy in collective movement and the other stresses duty and quotes Hitler.
