Something in the atmosphere? Michael Chekhov, Deirdre Hurst Du Prey, and a web of practices between acting and dance

This article contextualises principles of Chekhov’s technique within convergent developments in dance by bringing into focus the interesting web of connections between Chekhov’s female colleagues — specifically his associate Deirdre Hurst Du Prey — and key pioneers in the field of dance and dance-mime, including Mary Wigman, Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham and Margaret Barr. Their cross-connections broaden our view on the canon of embodied theatre practice, and also open up reflection on how overlaps between acting- and dance principles may be useful for contemporary embodied theatre practice and its efforts to work across these currently (in the Western conservatoire context) quite segregated disciplines

“Berlin … Your Dance Partner Is Death”

Dance and death combined in post-WWI Germany to complicate the material authority they were seen to share. Using nascent modern dance techniques to exploit the expressive capacities of the dancing body, choreographers turned to dances of death to portray the increasingly difficult conditions of humanity. The logistics of performing these spectacles of the real are investigated through three choreographer/performers of the Weimar Republic: Kurt Jooss, Valeska Gert, and Anita Berber