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Empire of ecstasy : nudity and movement in German body culture, 1910-1935
- Author
- Toepfer, Karl Eric, 1948-
- Title
- Empire of ecstasy : nudity and movement in German body culture, 1910-1935 / Karl Toepfer.
- Format
- Book
- Published
- Berkeley : University of California Press, c1997.
- Description
- xvii, 422 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.
- URL
- <ACLS Humanities E-Book> http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.05956 <Contributor biographical information> http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/bios/ucal051/96034015.html <Publisher description> http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/description/ucal042/96034015.html
- Notes
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 387-409) and index.
- Contents
-
- Figure One
- Early Nackttanz
- Nacktkultur
- Feminist Nacktkultur
- Erotic Nacktkultur
- Nacktballet
- Schools of Bodily Expressivity
- Solo Dancing
- Pair Dancing
- Group Dancing
- Theatre Dancing
- Mass Dancing
- Music and Movement
- Dance Criticism
- Dance as Image
- Ecstasy and Modernity.
- Summary
- Empire of Ecstasy offers a novel interpretation of the explosion of German body culture between the two wars: nudism and nude dancing, gymnastics and dance training, dance photography and criticism, and diverse genres of performance from solo dancing to mass movement choirs. Karl Toepfer presents this dynamic subject as a vital and historically unique construction of "modern identity," which stimulated often contradictory impulses, desires, and ambitions in participants and enthusiasts. Through the presentation and analysis of unpublished archival material (including many little-known photographs) and the reclamation of forgotten discourses of fashion, gymnastics, nudism, and the visual arts, he investigates the process of constructing an "empire" of appropriative impulses toward ecstasy. Toepfer presents the work of well-known figures such as Rudolf Laban, Mary Wigman, and Oskar Schlemmer, as well as many obscure but equally fascinating practitioners of German body culture. His book is certain to become required reading for historians of dance, body culture, and modernism.
- Subject headings
- Nudism--Sociological aspects--Germany--History--20th century. Physical education and training--Germany--History--20th century. Dance--Germany--History--20th century. Nudity in dance--Germany--History--20th century. Body image--Germany.
- ISBN
- 0520206630 (alk. paper) 9780520206632 (alk. paper)