HANNOVER.- “No dance without ecstasy!” proclaimed the famous dancer, choreographer and dancing instructor Mary Wigman (1886-1973). Born in Hanover, this icon of German Ausdruckstanz (expressive dance) counts among the pioneers of the life reform movement in Germany in the first third of the 20th century. During her career as a dancer she broke the rigid corset of obsolete convention, encouraged her students to express themselves freely as individuals and propagated the human body’s natural diversity of movement as the basis of free expression in modern dance.

The Sprengel Museum Hannover is now devoting an exhibition to representations of dance in the art of modernism. Comprising more than a hundred works from the period between the turn of the century and the 1930s, the exhibition will at the same time afford visitors an insight into the revolutionary developments that took place in the dialogue between the visual and the performing arts at that time. With constant regard for an artistic and individual approach to the subject matter, the exhibition spans the whole diversity of dance from the glittering world of the music hall via the expressive dance of Mary Wigman and her disciples to the Bauhaus-influenced concept of figure and space. Exhibits will include paintings and sculptures, prints, photographs and films, with works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Georg Kolbe, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Pablo Picasso, Alexander Archipenko, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Robert Delaunay, Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, Oskar Schlemmer among a multitude of other artists. The art exhibits will be accompanied by displays visualizing the historical development of “free dance” and highlighting the influence of significant dancing schools and famous protagonists, such as Loïe Fuller, Mary Wigman and Gret Palucca.