In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

70 ARRAYS
insistence on "reading" the movements of Josephine Baker's body as
"expressions" goes back to Wigman's widely admired style. In contrast,
Valeska Gert, Wigman's main competitor on the Berlin dance scene, is a
star of the cabaret stage. Instead of expressing meanings which are
supposed to come from an "archaic depth," she strives to become a part
of the contemporary world's "concrete reality" by portraying prostitutes,
go-betweens, and circus girls. [see Uncertainty vs. Reality] It is thus no
accident that the press associates Valeska Gert's dancing with Josephine
Baker's (von Soden and Schmidt, 158).
The contrast between dancing as expression and dancing as body
rhythm mirrors the central antinomy within the political world. The
Italian novelist Mario Puccini sees the fox-trot, together with a number
of other imported American dances (often called "jazz dances") as an
obstacle to the development of Fascist art as an art of expression: "The
coming of a Fascist art (that is, an art which improves the race and at
the same time expresses it) is impossible so long as thousands and
thousands of young people read short stories and novels-you know the
ones I mean-that are set in nightclubs or theaters, and full of disreputable
operettas and even more disreputable fox-trots" (Puccini, 258). At
the opposite end of the political spectrum, the Communist poet Johannes
R. Becher, while dutifully attacking the moral decadence of nightclubs
and prostitution (Becher, 93, 99), consistently uses dancing as a metaphor
for social and individual emancipation: "Oh, dance yourself out of
/ Your splintering thighs, / Tuschka!" (61ff.). The generations are distinguished
by their preference for different styles of dancing, even more
than by their preference for different political and social groups. [see
Present vs. Past] In Thomas Mann's story "Unordnung und friihes Leid"
("Disorder and Early Sorrow"), Professor Cornelius fails to bridge the
gap between his own taste and that of his teenaged children-and his
reaction to a dance party which they organize at his house becomes even
more negative when he sees what a strong emotional impact these modern
rhythms have on his beloved four-year-old daughter [see Gramophones]:
The young people dance eagerly-so far as one can it call dancing, this
movement that they perform with such quiet devotion. Indeed, they
move in strange embraces and in a new style, propelling their lower
body by moving their shoulders and swaying their hips. They dance