Gift of Movement Exhibit Examines Leaders in Expressionist Dance in Austria by Gary Tischler Today, names such as Gertrud Bodenwieser, Grete Wiesenthal, Rudolf Laban and Rosalia Chladek donít exactly make culture mavens sit up and take notice, nor does the idea of plunging into the world of Ausdruckstanz set hearts aflutter. It takes a real dance aficionado to instantly recognize these names, as well as the ideas in ìExpressionist Dance in Vienna: The Roots, the Stars, and the Legacy of Ausdruckstanz,î now showing at the Austrian Embassy. But the novice who finds the title and subject a little daunting might miss an opportunity to become lost in a fertile, energetic and seductive world of intellectual and cultural ferment. The exhibition affords a firsthand opportunity to examine this rich, legendary world of artistic turmoil, when modernism washed over the last vestiges of the Austro-Hungarian empire like an explosive flood. ìAusdruckstanzî refers to expressionist dance, and Wiesenthal, Bodenwieser and Laban were its pioneersóstrong, colorful personalities who sought to loosen dance from the formal strictures of ballet. These three brilliant, provocative and powerful leaders with expansive personalitie s and diverse gifts dominated the expressionist dance movement in Austria and beyond, and they dominate this exhibition as well. The trio, along with the less-documented Chladek, came onto the scene at a time when all of the arts in Europe were experiencing what amounted to a contradictory revolutionóa fact that was particularly evident in the waning days of the Austro-Hungarian empire, a political system on the verge of ossification and paralysis even as a bountiful cultural energy was about to explode. World War I not only killed millions and destroyed the old political order of European empires and kingdoms, it also destroyed old cultural and artistic norms and finished the job that these pioneers had begun. The material in this exhibit, culled from the archives of the Austrian Theatre Museum in Vienna, is a kind of archeological dig into the origins of modern dance. The result is the visual resurrection of a golden age of experimentation that focuses on the key figures in expressionist dance while hinting at what we know was going on in other areas of the arts. The most important work, that of Laban, Bodenwieser and Wiesenthal, was being done in the 1920s and early í30s, an abundant period for the experimental, avant-garde movements in art, theater, music, film and writing not only in Vienna but Weimar Germany. The rise and solidification of Nazi power in Germany put an end to all that. The Nazis, in cultural terms, were remarkably retrograde and feared anything modern that did not involve technological advances in weaponry. We begin with glimpses of various personalities who made forays to Vienna, including Gustav Mahler and Isadora Duncan, the gifted, eccentric champion and exemplifier of free dancing. Here we see a program for the Cabaret Fledermaus, where the Wiesenthal sisters performed waltzes that escaped the bounds of rules. There is also a big section on Laban, a dancer, choreographer, dance movement theoretician, professor, and a kind of ¸ber-promoter and organizer of modern European dance. Along the way, he founded an amateur choir movement, wrote books and articles, and created schools based on his theories of movement and dance. Laban and others would stage huge pageants and dance festivals in Vienna. One such performance in 1935 featured 1,500 dancers and included the participation of Bodenwieser and the Vienna Opera Ballet. Wiesenthal was trained in classical ballet but came to be called the ìambassador of waltzî with her free-flowing reinterpretations of classic waltzes. She founded a dance school and was a key figure in modern dance. Her leaps and style were described as combining qualities of elf, fawn and deer, and in the exhibit photos, she looks seductive and a little otherworldly. Bodenwieser was a dancer, theoretician and a woman whose personality was described as impulsive and dramatic. She rejected all traditional forms of dance and pushed boundaries constantly. Forced to emigrate with the coming of the Nazis, she first went to Bogot·, Colombia, and then ended up in Australia and New Zealand, where she is revered. You may not end up knowing exactly what expressionism isóexcept that in dance it means to push the possibilities of movement and use everything available in the service of movement. What you will find on these walls is a kind of introduction to a world long gone, when a passionate belief in a particular art form seemed as important as anything in the whole wide world. ìExpressionist Dance in Vienna: The Roots, the Stars, and the Legacy of Ausdruckstanzî runs through Nov. 12 at the Austrian Embassy, 3524 International Court, NW. For more information, please call (202) 895-6776 or visit www.austria.org. Gary Tischler is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.