LABAN FOR CROWDS: CHORAL DANCE AND NAZI GERMANY

Abstract

The article presents a brief historiography of choral dances in the light of Rudolf Laban's ideological premises in comparison with the National Socialism ideology in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. Laban choral dances were a form of collective dance that the choreographer proposed as a means of recovering a sense of community, and which occupied an essential place in his project of propagation of dance. Considering the background of choral dances and, more specifically, the episode of the choreography that Laban created for the 1936 Olympic games activities, the article deals with the approximations and distances between Laban's cultural projects and National Socialism. The article shows how the collective power contained in choral dances, which were part of the cultural policy instituted in the early years of the Nazi regime in Germany, ended up being a key point for both Laban's rise and fall within the German government. Finally, the text seeks to reflect on the responsibilities and consequences of concessions in the relations between art, politics and ethics that arose in this specific relationship between Laban and Nazism. Keywords Rudolf Laban. Choral Dance. Dance History. Nazism.