TUTU

BACKGROUND INFORMATION ACCOMPANYING TUTU

Lichtbende

As Lichtbende, we collected an old magic lantern from somewhere in the Netherlands and were given a box of old lantern slides dating from around 1930 to go with it. Special family photographs printed on glass plates. We were deeply moved by a childhood portrait of a little girl with a dark doll in her hand. We spun a personal tale about that girl of a child who makes her dreams come true. You follow her joys and sorrows from her first dance steps during a time of great change: the interbellum. The dance, which at the time was influenced by personal drives for freedom, mechanisation and other cultures, reflects her life.

 

The techniques
In TUTU, dancing shoes, which in reality are only half a centimetre in size, are projected onto a screen with handheld lanterns. This is an old Japanese technique called Utsushi-e. The magic lanterns arrived in Japan through trade with the Netherlands and went through a different technical development than in western countries. The magic lantern is the film projector avant la lettre, invented in 1659 by the Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens.

 

INSPIRATION

Lichtbendes projected images are inspired by film fragments, dance personalities, musical recordings and art movements from around the 1930s. We have compiled some background information in this programme pamphlet about the associative imagery that can be seen in TUTU, ordered by appearance in the performance.

 

The Red Shoes

The Red Shoes is the title of a well-known fairy tale by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. The fairy tale is about Karen, a poor orphan girl. A rich old lady takes compassion on her and Karen grows up into a well-mannered yet spoilt girl. Against the wishes of her benefactress, Karen picks a pair of red shoes to commemorate her communion. The shoes are however enchanted and Karen will have to continue dancing forever.   

Edisons gramophone  

In TUTU you will hear music played on an old gramophone player. This device was accidently invented by the American Thomas Alva Edison in 1877. It is an exceptional device as it doesnt work on electricity but must be driven mechanically. The first sentence Edison recorded on his new machine came from a childrens rhyme Mary had a little lamb. The prototype of the device had a wax cylinder as a sound carrier. Gramophone records were later made from shellac. In the performance you literally hear a voice from the distant past.

Shirley Temple (1928 - 2014)

Temple is the child star from the thirties. She played in dozens of films in the thirties and forties. During the crisis years the public falls en masse for her cheerful, disarming smile and dimples. Between 1936 and 1938 she is regarded as the most successful artist in Hollywood. But at the age of twelve her star seems to have burnt out. And there is no big comeback. She retires from the film and television world in 1950. She dabbles in politics twenty years later and although she doesnt manage to win a seat in congress she becomes the American representative at the United Nations.

 

 Tap dance

This is a form of dance whereby rhythmic sounds are made by ticking the ground with metal plates attached to the soles of shoes. The dancer is thereby doing a form of percussion. Tap dancing originated in the 1930s in the Five Points district in New York, as a mix of the American shuffle and English step dancing. Dancers from various immigrant groups competed with their best steps and, from that, an American style arose. Tap dancing also combined itself with Lindy Hop from the thirties. The heyday of tap dancing ran from about 1900 to 1955. It was the most important show dance in Vaudeville and on Broadway at that time.

 

Anna Pavlova (1882 - 1931)

At the start of the century this prima ballerina did more than any other to make classical ballet known around the world. Anna Pavlova was educated at the Imperial Ballet School in Petersburg where she was accepted in 1892 at the age of ten. In 1899 she was directly given the role of soloist in the ballet by the Mariinsky Theatre. Anna danced the Dying Swan at least six thousand times. It is a dance without difficult pirouettes, without large jumps and without pantomime, a dance that created a believable, lively being on stage and not a puppet with a stiff body solely moving its arms and legs. Anne lived in America but finally established herself in London, England. Anna led her own group form 1910, in which she was the only star.   

Oskar Schlemmer (1888 1943)

Schlemmer was a German artist who was part of the Constructivism art movement. In 1922 he created a dance performance in which he clad dancers in mathematical shapes. One of the dancers costume consisted of cubes around his head, body, arms, legs and feet. Another dancer was dressed entirely in spheres, another in spirals etc. Oskar Schlemmer wanted to see how the various shapes should move and how the music should sound.  

 

“Besame Mucho”

Kiss me Much is a song written by the Mexican songwriter Consuelo Velázquez in 1940. It is one of the most famous boleros. According to Velázquez, she wrote this number although she had never actually kissed before and kissing was considered a sin. She was inspired by a piano piece written in 1911 by the Spanish composer Enrique Granados.

 

Tango

The Argentine tango dance style originated more than hundred years ago in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. The poor immigrants made music and their musical traditions, from Italy, Spain and East Europe, mixed with the native South American music. In a society with more men than women the tango was an important means to get a woman in your arms. What stands out in particular are the razor-sharp leg and footwork and the spirit and self-confident postures of the dance couples. The dance is an alternation between desire and despair, between defiance and surrender. Even though the dance originated in the working-class neighbourhoods and slums the dance gained increasing attention from the affluent classes. The tango became really popular in the European capital cities during 1915-1920 when a tour was organised for a few orchestras and dancers.

Mary Wigman (1886 - 1973)

A dance form arose in Germany around 1920 called Ausdruckstanz, an expressionistic dance wanting to represent a feeling. As one of the first, Wigman made dance pieces with nothing more than percussion providing the rhythm. As such she focused the attention on the artistic function of dance as an independent art form. Wigmans most important principle is: dance is an expression of deep and strong emotions through the expressive power of the movement itself. The body is an instrument that sings or moves or tremors. Breathing was very important in her dance style, this in order to create the natural tension and release in her dance movements. This resulted in a flowing, harmonious dance style. Feelings of fear and sorrow dominated around the First World War and Wigman became famous with her tragic, dramatic dance piece Hexentanz from 1914 in which she confronted the audience with the negative sides of man: decay, destruction and death.  

“La vie en rose”

This song was sung by Edith Piaf (1915 1963). She made her debut as a singer at the age of fifteen on the streets. She was discovered at the age of twenty and performed in theatres from then on. During the German occupation in the Second World War Piaf wrote her celebrated song La Vie en Rose. At that time she was a beloved singer among the German occupiers and the French population. After the war she performed all over Europe and her fame spread far beyond France. Her tragic life, characterised by personal loss, was reflected in her music.

Ballroom

Ballroom is the collective term for style dancing in which the steps and posture are fairly accurately defined, such as the English waltz, tango, quickstep, slow fox and Viennese waltz. Ballroom is danced as a couple, against each other or at a slight distance. The dancers move in an anti-clockwise direction around the dance floor. The rules for each individual dance were established between 1920 and 1930 and thus enabling the broad public to dance to the popular music at the time.

 

 “El Negro Zumbon”

This song is by Silvana Mangano from the film Anna (Alberto Lattuada, 1951). The story of Anna is largely played in the city, where the nun and nurse Anna is plagued by her past as a prostitute. Manganos song was a big international hit in 1953 under the name Anna.

 

 

 

Josephine Baker (1906 – 1975)

Baker grew up in poverty and was homeless from the age of twelve. She kept herself alive by dancing for passers-by on the streets, performing in a theatre for the first time when she was fifteen. She moved to New York and had her debut on Broadway at the beginning of the twenties, followed by performances in Europe and South America. At that time she appeared on the stage almost naked and became famous for her vaudeville dancing. Baker established herself in France in 1937 and worked for the Resistance during the Second Word War. After the war she fought for the rights of Afro-Americans.

   
p