Kurt Jooss (1901-1979)

Co-founder of the Folkwangschule for music, dance, speech; first director of the dance department 1927 – 1933; “The Green Table” and first prize at the Concours de Chorégraphie 1932 in Paris are the beginnings of his international career as a choreographer; 1933 emigration to England; 1934 established the Jooss-Leeder-School of Dance in Dartington Hall; numerous students and teaching staff follow him there; 1949 return to Germany; until his retirement in 1968 Kurt Jooss was again director of the Folkwang dance department.

“The central experience in new dance is formed by the knowledge of the profound inner correlation of bodily gestures, effectively every outward movement with an inner one, with the emotion.... The dancer and the choreographer are confronted with the task - with strict self-criticism and uncompromising discipline - constantly to find the genuine, the essential movement for a specific content and to compose with that. From this challenge a narrow path evolves, the hard road of the inner substance, the essence.” Kurt Jooss, in “ Thoughts about questions of style in dance”.