Dancing to Utopia Modernity, Community and the Movement Choir Colin Counsell

RESUMEN: Established by dance and movement theorist Rudolf Laban, the Bewegungschören or "movement choirs" of the 1920s and 1930s were a spectacularly visible element of German national culture. A network of amateur clubs, each run by a graduate of Laban's schools, the choirs were modern, urban phenomena, operating in cities and large towns against the backdrop of German industrial society. Their membership represented that society's diversity, for although choir leaders and many dancers were drawn from the educated middle class, those traditionally concerned with cultural generation and preservation, anecdotal evidence suggests they also recruited from the industrial working classes. Their amateur status was central to their aims, such that, as initially conceived, choir works were to have no audience. Although groups quickly became involved in public performance, taking part in community festivals and celebrations, their works were originally envisioned as an end in themselves, an experience for those talking part.