Harald Kreutzberg (December 11, 1902 – April 25, 1968) was a Austrian dancer and choreographer associated with the Ausdruckstanz movement, a form in which the individual, artistic expression of feelings or emotions is essential. Though largely forgotten by the 21st century, he was the most famous German male dancer of the 20th century.
Education and early career Kreutzberg was born in Reichenberg, Austria-Hungary (now Liberec in the northernmost part of Bohemia, Czech Republic). He and his family subsequently lived in Breslau, Leipzig and Dresden, Germany. His father and grandfather worked as circus performers and wild animal act entertainers. His mother encouraged his penchant for play-acting and theatricality. At age 6, he entertained at Dresden's operetta house.
He attended the Academy of Applied Art in Dresden; he was reportedly an excellent draftsman. From an early age, Kreutzberg was also interested in costuming and style. During the years of hyperinflation in the Weimer Republic, he assisted with family finances by designing women's clothing for a local department store. In 1920, he performed a "hashish dance" at a student carnival. The piece was so well received, he decided to enroll in dance classes.
Kreutzberg trained at the Dresden Ballet School and studied with the founders of Ausdruckstanz, Mary Wigman and Rudolf von Laban. The Ausdruckstanz phenomenon of the early to mid-20th century flourished in German-speaking Europe. It grew out of the Lebensreform (life reform) movement which promoted physical culture, among other healthy practices, as a means of rejecting the industrialization, materialism and urbanization of modern life.
In 1923, he accepted the invitation of Max Terpis, a former Wigman student, to dance in Hannover where Terpis directed the Municipal Opera Ballet. Dancing with a large ensemble made Kreutzberg somewhat uncomfortable. Sensing this and recognizing his gift for acting, the opera director cast him in small, yet unforgettable, character roles. When Terpis accepted the position of ballet director for the Berlin State Opera, he took Kreutzberg with him.
In 1926, Kreutzberg appeared as Fear in the ballet Die Nächtlichen. The role was meant to depict a sinister, dissonant evocation of demonic forces. Terpis' next production was Don Morte, a version of Edgar Allen Poe's story The Masque of the Red Death. For this piece, Kreutzberg danced the role of an eccentric jester, wearing a gold costume and mask with bald head. The opera costume shop had trouble making a bald wig, so Kreutzberg shaved off all of his blond hair. His appearance made such a strong impression on audiences, he maintained the signature look for the rest of his life. Don Morte also initiated the lifelong collaboration between Kreutzberg and Friedrich Wilckens, Kreutzberg's composer, piano accompanist and life partner.
In 1927, theater director Max Reinhardt cast Kreutzberg in Salzburg productions of Turnadot and Jedermann and, later, as Puck for a New York production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1929).
Partnership with Yvonne Georgi
When he returned to Hannover in 1928, Kreutzberg collaborated with Wilckens and Yvonne Georgi, a former student of von Laban, on a grotesque pantomime, Robes, Pierre and Co., which presented a man falling murderously in love with a shop window mannequin. It featured dance sequences accompanied by the sound of typewriters, gunshots and Kreutzberg himself singing a falsetto parody of a coloratura aria.
Between 1929 and 1931, Kreutzberg and Georgi made four comprehensive tours of both Europe and the U.S., where they appeared on both coasts and throughout the Midwest, possibly as the most profitable modern dance act in U.S. history. Their enormously popular performances introduced Ausdruckstanz to a widespread audience that delighted in their artistry. Eyewitnesses to the productions were overwhelmed by Kreutzberg's charisma, he "added a theatricality that we did not have at this time," said one. Another recalled "his dramatic quality and terrific intensity…on stage he appeared seven foot tall, and he had a demanding spaciousness utilizing the whole stage."
Georgi and Kreutzberg's programs consisted of solos by both performers interspersed with duets. The dances focused on an austere, streamlined modern aesthetic. Both were muscular, athletic dancers who enjoyed showing off their physical prowess and dexterity; both were prone to melancholy choreographic moods: Georgi to dionysian impulses and Kreutzberg to the grotesque, demonic and macabre. The dances highlighted mirror or echo effects, such as complementary patterns or reciprocities of movement. They never presented man and woman in conflict or created tension through competing configurations of bodily rhythm. The pieces tended toward the elegiac and ceremonial; they seemed to express a virtuosic, synchronized cheerfulness rather than a stirring or triumphant happiness. In Empire of Ecstasy, author Karl Toepfer posits that they exhibited "reluctance to build dramatic tension between each other in relation to a source of conflict—the music, the musician, or the man... and precisely because they pursued such divergent ambitions that they could not long remain a dance couple." In 1931, they toured for the last time.
Their best-known pieces included Fahnentanz, a quintessential mirror dance. The duo was costumed in vaguely Roman garb: centurion-like helmets, tunic/skirts and large capes, which they waved as flags in rapid, swirling motions. Hymnis, with music by Lully, was a somber, ceremonial piece. Pavane, set to music by Ravel, was danced with even greater gravity. Georgi and Kreutzberg wore glowing white costumes as they moved slowly and mournfully through the dark space. Another slow piece, Persiches Lied (music by Satie), was performed in striking Oriental costumes. The dancers met in the space and coiled about each other with matching movements, finally sinking to the floor embracing and covered with a veil.
Kreutzberg and Georgi's 1931 Berlin performance, to Gustav Holst's The Planets, was one of the largest pair concerts ever staged. The piece employed a monumental abstract set consisting of a row of dark, cave-like entrances from which emerged spiraling ramps and towering, slanting walls. Though often separated in space, the couple remained united through complementary movement. In the comedic Potpourri, they wore polka dot costumes and clowned around on stage with pianist, Wilckens, interrupting his efforts to start the music by hovering over him and striking their own dissonant chords. They snatched up sticks and cavorted with them like children, until Wilckens, exasperated, crept away with the music, compelling the dancers to follow him offstage.
In the U.S., critics praised Georgi, but gushed over Kreutzberg, "It is more inspiring to see him merely walk upon the stage with his singularly lithe and detached movement than to witness a whole evening's performance by the average male dancer. Mr. Kreutzberg combines a grave and incisive intelligence with a powerful gift of projection, a clear vision with a lively imagination, and all of these with a splendid physique and a technical facility which is actually lustrous."
Portraits of Kreutzberg and Georgi, together and alone, were printed on cigarette cards distributed as part of Cigarettenfabrik Orami's "Famous Dancers (Series E)" cards. Anna Pavlova, Josephine Baker, Mary Wigman, Rudolf von Laban, Anton Dolin and Ted Shawn were also in this collection.
Partnership with Ruth Page
After touring with Georgi, Kreutzberg was involved in a number of brief dance partnerships: Elisabeth Grube, Tilly Losch and Ilse Meudtner. In 1930, he and Wilckens met Ruth Page, an American ballerina, aboard the Aquitania. The three hit it off immediately, forming a friendship and "artistic ménage a trois" that would last for decades.
In 1933, Page and Kreutzberg launched a "new and rather surprising partnership." Though the pairing of an American ballet dancer with an exponent of German modern dance seemed an unlikely collaboration, but the arrangement provided both artists with a number of advantages. Page, who lived in Chicago outside the dance mecca of New York, acquired a modernist, cosmopolitan aura as well as the musical support of Wilckens. Kreutzberg gained access to new performance venues and an escape from rising fascism and homophobic militancy at home. Both dancers capitalized on their contrasting, yet complimentary, personas.
They performed their first joint concert on February 25, 1933, at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago. Each danced two or three solos, then performed a duet together, a format similar to the one Kreutzberg and Georgi had used. He retained his usual repertoire of solos and refashioned his dances with Georgi to fit Page. Their U.S. tour in 1933 was so successful, they repeated it the following year, then continued on to Japan and China in 1934.
Among their most popular offerings were Country Dance, a folk ballet of sorts, with peasant-style polka dot costumes featuring bonnets and puffed sleeves; Promenade, set to music by Poulenc, a gender fluid number in which elegant, tapering hands and a demure attitude were prevalent; and Bolero, a dance of "fiery, forbidden desire" that played to sold-out houses, won long ovations from the audience and was lauded in the press. Bacchanale, music by Gian Francesco Malipiero, highlighted the experimental, advant garde facet of their collaboration. The austere, Futurist-inspired work was characterized by repeated falls, off-kilter weight distribution and unusual supports. The couple sometimes danced back to back with arms interlaced. Page wore a black dress, Kreutzberg a black shirt and pants. Both wore black elastic bands around their arms and white elastic bands crisscrossing their faces and looping around their necks and heads.
The pair's partnership ultimately dissolved. Kreutzberg may have felt he could best showcase his talents in one-man shows. Page had been appointed ballet director for the Chicago Grand Opera Company for the 1934–35 season. In addition, her partnership with Chicago-based ballet dancer Bentley Stone had become more satisfying. After 1936, as increasing numbers of American artists broke ties with those working in Nazi Germany, it became untenable for Page to continue touring with the German artist. In 1939, the German government revoked Kreutzberg's travel privileges; all scheduled appearances were canceled. Nonetheless, Kreutzberg and Page remained friends, corresponding frequently from 1939 through the postwar years.
Page remembered her years with Kreutzberg as the happiest time in her life. "Dancing with Kreutzberg was like dancing with a disembodied spirit – the spirit of dance itself." Along with Anna Pavlova, she regarded, Kreutzberg as one of the "greatest influences" on her career. Page wrote Kreutzberg's eulogy, published in Dance Magazine in 1968.
The Dancing Ambassador of National Socialist Germany
The rise of National Socialism had a profound effect on Ausdruckstanz. Many dancers remained in Germany and collaborated with the Nazis; others went into exile due to their leftist politics and/or Jewish heritage. Kreutzberg was one of a handful of dancers who maintained a good relationship with the Ministry of Propaganda. He understood what role to play so he could continue dancing. In the 1920s and 1930s, Kreutzberg's productions took on a heightened sense of nationalism. This aspect of his work proved to his advantage since it mirrored the regime's core ideology.