1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910496144403321

Autore

Toepfer Karl Eric <1948->

Titolo

Empire of ecstasy : nudity and movement in German body culture, 1910-1935 / / Karl Toepfer

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, c1997

ISBN

0-520-91827-4

0-585-29985-4

Edizione

[Reprint 2020]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xvii, 422 p., [48] p. of plates ) : ill. ;

Collana

Weimar and now ; ; 13

Disciplina

613.7/0943

Soggetti

Physical education and training - Germany - History - 20th century

Dance - Germany - History - 20th century

Nudity in dance - Germany - History - 20th century

Body image - Germany

Nudism - Germany - Sociological aspects - History - 20th century

Social Sciences

Recreation & Sports

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 387-409) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Figure One -- Early Nackttanz -- Nacktkultur -- Feminist Nacktkultur -- Erotic Nacktkultur -- Nacktballett -- Schools of Bodily Expressivity -- Solo Dancing -- Pair Dancing -- Group Dancing -- Theatre Dancing -- Mass Dancing -- Music and Movement -- Dance Criticism -- Dance as Image -- Ecstasy and Modernity

Sommario/riassunto

Empire of Ecstasy offers a novel interpretation of the explosion of German body culture between the two wars—nudism and nude dancing, gymnastics and dance training, dance photography and criticism, and diverse genres of performance from solo dancing to mass movement choirs. Karl Toepfer presents this dynamic subject as a vital and historically unique construction of "modern identity." The modern body, radiating freedom and power, appeared to Weimar artists and intelligentsia to be the source of a transgressive energy, as well as the sign and manifestation of powerful, mysterious "inner" conditions. Toepfer shows how this view of the modern body sought to extend the aesthetic experience beyond the boundaries imposed by rationalized



life and to transcend these limits in search of ecstasy. With the help of much unpublished or long-forgotten archival material (including many little-known photographs), he investigates the process of constructing an "empire" of appropriative impulses toward ecstasy. Toepfer presents the work of such well-known figures as Rudolf Laban, Mary Wigman, and Oskar Schlemmer, along with less-known but equally fascinating body culture practitioners. His book is certain to become required reading for historians of dance, body culture, and modernism.