Modernism's Dancing Marionettes: Oskar Schlemmer, Michel Fokine, and Ito Michio

In: Modernist cultures, Band 9, Heft 1, S. 115-133

Abstract

Marionettes have inspired dance productions for centuries. In the early twentieth century, choreographers used the figure of the puppet to negotiate tensions between modern mechanization, national folk traditions, and expressive human movement. Modernism's dancing marionettes leap across national borders and genres of dance to appear in Michel Fokine's Petrouchka (1911), the Marionette Dance (1916) of Japanese-born modern dancer Ito Michio, and Bauhaus artist Oskar Schlemmer's Das Triadische Ballett (Triadic Ballet, 1922). All were influenced by modernist marionette theories that referenced Heinrich von Kleist and Gordon Craig. Ballet, modern, and avant-garde dance are often considered separate trajectories in modernism, but their use of the dancing marionette demonstrates a common impulse to explore the relation between machine and human movements.