College of Visual Arts, Theater, and Dance
Florida State University
Former
East Germany’s Radical Social Changes and Their Effects on
the Development of Contemporary Dance
The rising and falling of the Berlin Wall threatened an era of contemporary dance in former East Germany. If found, these missing pieces of history may assist us in the interpretation of the art form’s evolution. Despite its creative and ever-changing nature, dance was contained, marginalized, and molded into the ‘acceptable’ according to the German Democratic Republic, resulting in the people’s inability to delineate the topical social and political issues. Through my historical and ethnographic research, I am activating the reveal of the unknown and unspoken. Interviewing professionals and deciphering historical records laid the groundwork to discover how contemporary dance survived despite communist efforts and the radical social changes that challenged it after the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Efforts were made by a small community to reconstruct historical dances and continue producing new works that expressed either the present hardships or the anticipation of a hopeful future. When freedom did arrive, people were not concerned with sharing their past, but with preparing for the future Although the separating line between East and West no longer tangibly exists, the people have somehow inherited a wall within, inhibiting them from communicating their past, yet concurrently preventing them from letting go of it.