Setting Out – Passing On. Wigman, Jooss, Palucca
Reading from diaries and writings by Mary Wigman
11/22/2025, 6:30 PM

Choreographers Susanne Linke, Reinhild Hoffmann and Arila Siegert studied under Mary Wigman, Kurt Jooss and Palucca. Together, they recall the essence of their schools – and how the new freedom of dance also became an expression of their own time and the contradictions of both post-war German societies; together with other artists, they find a discursive stage form for this. Texts by Mary Wigman open up historical perspectives.

Academy members recall the emergence of artistic dance as a free form on a par with classical dance, which laid the foundations for contemporary dance. The fact that these paths also intersect in their biographies and can come together here to deepen understanding is a leitmotif of the programme. Susanne Linke, Reinhild Hoffmann and Arila Siegert reflect on how their careers were shaped by the protagonists of expressive dance. Pina Bausch followed in their footsteps, and her dancers talk very personally in a film about their paths to dance; author Norbert Servos relates this to individuation and freedom.

The history of the expressive dance movement, including that of many artists who are almost forgotten today, whose paths were interrupted by National Socialism and war or whose lives ended, is told in John Neumeier‘s dance collage Die Unsichtbaren (The Invisibles) with the Bundesjugendballett, finding its own aesthetic language for this in a movingly authentic way. The piece can be seen for the first time in Berlin at the end of the programme (4/5 March 2026, Haus der Berliner Festspiele).