Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Empire of Ecstasy: Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture, 1910-1935 Volume 13

Empire of Ecstasy: Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture, 1910-1935 Volume 13

Toepfer, Karl

Hardcover

Series: Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism, Book 13

Literary CriticismDanceGeneral Sociology

ISBN10: 0520206630
ISBN13: 9780520206632
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: Dec 31 1997
Pages: 439
Weight: 1.84
Height: 1.43 Width: 6.27 Depth: 9.24
Language: English
Empire of Ecstasy offers a novel interpretation of the explosion of German body culture between the two wars--nudism and nude dancing, gymnastics and dance training, dance photography and criticism, and diverse genres of performance from solo dancing to mass movement choirs. Karl Toepfer presents this dynamic subject as a vital and historically unique construction of modern identity.

The modern body, radiating freedom and power, appeared to Weimar artists and intelligentsia to be the source of a transgressive energy, as well as the sign and manifestation of powerful, mysterious inner conditions. Toepfer shows how this view of the modern body sought to extend the aesthetic experience beyond the boundaries imposed by rationalized life and to transcend these limits in search of ecstasy. With the help of much unpublished or long-forgotten archival material (including many little-known photographs), he investigates the process of constructing an empire of appropriative impulses toward ecstasy.

Toepfer presents the work of such well-known figures as Rudolf Laban, Mary Wigman, and Oskar Schlemmer, along with less-known but equally fascinating body culture practitioners. His book is certain to become required reading for historians of dance, body culture, and modernism.

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