Grit Hegesa

Grit Hegesa (ca. 1896–?) remains a mystery. She came from Cologne, but her debut concert occurred in Berlin in 1917, at which time she apparently associated with expressionist artists affiliated with the Secession ("Exp. im Tanz"). In 1917–1919 she was active in Holland, giving concerts in Amsterdam and in Rotterdam, where she associated with a circle of modern artists, mostly expressionists, calling itself De Branding (Brinkman 107–109). At this time she worked with the Dutch composer Jaap Kool (1890–1959), but it is not clear if this collaboration brought her to Holland or began after she had arrived. Hegesa was unique in exclusively using music composed by a modern composer for her dances. Educated in Paris, Kool contended that dance could not seriously develop a modern identity as long as one danced to old pieces of classical music, even those written for dance. Music for dance, he argued, emphasized rhythm at the expense of harmony, which Western classical music did not but which jazz, some forms of popular music, and exotic music from the Orient did (Kool, Tänzszene , 1–4). Old classical music lacked a modern sense of rhythm, by which Kool meant not only a complex, dominating sense of pulse but also strange sounds . He therefore employed in his music for Hegesa drums, bells, and gongs from his collection of Javanese gamelan instruments and different kinds of glass-timbred instruments. But Kool had eclectic tastes that allowed him to travel comfortably in the realm of commercial popular music. In addition to his labor Symphony (1924) and concert piece for twenty-eight drums, he composed arrangements for the Erik Charrell Revues in Berlin, operettas such as Miss Fu (1924), film music, jazz pieces, and dance tunes. Perhaps his most widely known works were composed for the eccentric ballets Die Elixir des Teufels (1925), staged by Ellen Petz in Dresden, and Der Leierkasten (1925), choreographed by Max Terpis in Berlin, then by Claire Eckstein in Würzburg (1927) and Anne Grünert in Duisburg (1927).

In 1919, Kool wrote an article about Hegesa for the Dutch art journal Wendingen (2/3, 15–21) in which he described her art as "visible music" and "pathbreaking in expressive possibilities" of the body, especially the arms, because of her excavation of archaic, erotic modes of bodily movement. He quoted Hegesa as saying that when she choreographed herself she kept in mind the image of ancient Greek movement choirs such as appear on vases, not the ladylike Grecian dances of Duncan but those "which in our highly developed culture come into conflict with the censor; I think moreover of the splendid nude dances of the youths and girls of the gymnasium. I think

of the stylized erotic dances from the island of Lesbos and the satyr plays and faun dances of the Phrygian Dionysian festivals." However, the Hegesa Tango (1922), which Kool also scored for full symphony orchestra, was a dark (E minor), lilting, haunting piece, never loud for a single measure, with a melodic theme built out of the letters of her last name. In 1919, while collaborating with Hegesa in Berlin, Kool also worked with Anita Berber, composing for her the music for her Pritzel Doll dance and the piano arabesque Profane (1920), which Hegesa actually danced. In other words, collaboration with Kool implied pursuit of an aesthetic that blurred distinctions between high cultural seriousness, exoticism, and the mondaine salon.

But Hegesa had her own ideas about blurring the distinctions. She delighted in cultivating a complex, unstable image of dance, which she reinforced through her affiliations with visual artists. She may have been the first modern dancer to wear the Bubikopf , or pageboy haircut, adopting it as early as 1917. In Rotterdam the artist Herman Bieling (1887–1964) did a series of etchings of her dancing, one of which now resides at the Nederlands Theater Instituut (Figure 42). This image from 1917 depicts Hegesa performing her Groteske and suggests a sort of manic extravagance in her movements, as if the dance had twisted her body into a fantastic, muscled plant with weird blossoms and sprouts, her foot almost violently rooted into the ground. The picture also contains six tiny human figures—homunculi images of different movements of the same dance. The following year Bieling painted a large portrait of the dancer (also deposited at the Instituut), an astonishingly beautiful piece of expressionism, full of powerful colors (Figure 43). However, it shows her on pointe (in ballet slippers), holding a pose, with eyes closed and head turned away, crowned by a large wig. She wears an enormous skirt decorated with a hieroglyphic expressionist design. Deep in the background, which is traversed by abstract geometric shapes and intersecting layers of planes, stand three women in bathing suits, two with their backs turned, the third gazing not at the dancer before her but at something concealed from both the dancer and the spectator. It is a most fascinating portrait because it dramatizes the perception of dance as a highly artificial construction of identity that moves both the body and space toward abstraction: the dancing body transforms space into a kaleidoscopic skewering of geometric order.

But Hegesa did not confine her image to these visions. For photographer Nicola Perscheid she appeared in luxuriously decorative and sometimes exotic-Oriental costumes; for Berlin photographer Ani Riess she posed in a low-cut, expressionist minidress with an extravagant collar, often before backdrops of swirling expressionist arabesques (Elegante Welt , 8/11, 1919; Kool, Tänzszene , frontispiece). Then she posed for the fashion page: in lush kimono, with legs exposed, reclining voluptuously on a divan before a luminous Oriental screen; modeling a suave afternoon cloak and dress (Elegante

Welt, 9/14, 1921, 20). Despite her considerable beauty and her peculiarly large, captivating eyes, one hardly recognizes Hegesa as the subject of these images, so preoccupied was she in disclosing new aspects of her identity. Suhr reproached her (as well as Kieselhausen and Berber) for her eagerness to produce such worldly, hedonistic images of herself, but he did not think they concealed a weak dance aesthetic (WS 37).

In 1920, Hegesa began starring in movies, including at least two tragic melodramas directed by E. A. Dupont, Der weisse Pfau (1920) and the two-part Kinder der Finsternis (1921), in which she played an American heiress in Italy. She received strong praise for the sophistication of her acting (Paul Leni, 266–267, 279–281). Der weisse Pfau, an adaptation of a play by Dupont and Paul Leni, described the doomed effort of an English aristocrat to transform a child gypsy cabaret dancer, Maryla, into a lady. Class prejudices prevent the romance from succeeding, so the dancer goes her own way as Marylova and becomes famous, especially for her dying white peacock dance (modeled, obviously, on Pavlova's dying swan). Years later, the aristocrat cannot forget her, but it is too late: she performs the dying peacock dance, then dies herself when the theatre catches fire.

Hegesa later incorporated a white peacock dance into her concert programs, with music by Kool, and this dance, using a feather costume, contrasted significantly with the film version. The concert dance began with the peacock strutting proudly and narcissistically, then confronting a motionless demonic idol. At first the bird expressed belligerence and fury at the idol for its lack of response, then displayed intense fear of a monstrous doom. Seeking to avoid this fate, the bird bestowed affection and worship upon the idol, but when these failed to produce any response the peacock resumed its proud, haughty strut (Kool, Tanzszene, 5). The dance appeared on a program Hegesa and Kool brought with them to Holland in 1921, but this time they performed in a theatre entirely associated with cabaret. One reviewer felt her art was too serious for such a context; her dancing, which made the theatre "as silent as a temple," required too much concentration and lacked the casual informality the cabaret patron expected ("Grit Hegesa"). In 1924 or 1925, Hegesa married the painter Emil van Hauth (1899–?), from Cologne but resident in Berlin. In him, she inspired a fascinating, mysterious portrait of "a type of female youth unknown until lately" (The Studio, 92/401, 14 August 1926, 134) (Figure 44). But after this point, one loses trace of her.

The final piece of evidence for the dance aesthetic of Grit Hegesa comes from a program for a concert of her expressionist dances sponsored by De Branding in Rotterdam on 1 February 1919. Kool preceded the dances themselves by giving "ideas on modern dance art," and the program itself announced that dance, which did "not provoke sexual stimulation," could offer "the most beautiful expression of all human feelings" and that the

dances of Grit Hegesa would "evoke the dark spheres of the tragic." Florrie Rodrigo assisted Hegesa in two of the dances. In all but the last two pieces, Hegesa wore pants of one sort or another. She began with a waltz, then performed a coolie dance in baggy silk pants, silk shirt, and conical hat, employing symmetrical movements in accordance with the symmetrical rhythms Kool associated with Oriental music. Next came the grotesque dance already discussed and the Leisure Hour of a Page, an example, apparently, of what Suhr identified as "psychic perversities" in her aesthetic (WS 35). Then, with Rodrigo, she performed a pantomimic Pierrot and Pierette dance: Pierette (Rodrigo), having returned from a ball, danced a tired, happy, "harmless" waltz until she sank into sleep. Pierrot (Hegesa) then entered, pirouetting exuberantly, but abruptly became delicate upon noticing the smiling slumber of Pierette. He took the flower that had dropped from her hand and danced with it tenderly, joyfully, reverently, then sank down to kiss Pierette on the neck. In her sleep, Pierette extended her arms to embrace the lover of her dream, but when Pierrot awoke her to her feet, her disappointment and fear drove her immediately from the scene, leaving Pierrot to sink back into the pillows. After the intermission, Hegesa performed a "melodrama," Der Held, based on a story by Rabindrath Tagore. She followed this with a "Japanese scene," assisted by Rodrigo: a servant (Rodrigo) entered, lighting lamps and arranging flowers and pillows. Then an elegant Japanese woman (Hegesa) appeared, wearing a "splendid headdress" and the red obie of mourning. She sank to the pillows, and immediately an ominous mood pervaded the scene; the face of her dead lover glowed briefly in the lamplight, calling to her. The image filled her with great longing. She called for the poisoned flower petals, which she kissed; then, in silence, she sank to her death on the pillows (Kool, Tanzszene, 5). A samurai dance followed the Japanese scene, and it, like the grotesque dance, had "nothing to do with feminine beauty or charming gracefulness"; then a scherzo, in which she wore the strange, expressionist minidress, and a Slavic dance, about which I know nothing other than that it was in a melancholy vein.

A reviewer expressed dissatisfaction with the Pierrot and Tagore pieces because Hegesa play-acted too much at impersonating a male and therefore looked liked a "childish young woman," in sharp contrast to the "powerful expressiveness" of the other pieces. The reviewer also noted that Hegesa moved often on tiptoes, which suggests that she had ballet training ("Grit Hegesa"). Nikolaus thought she was too intellectual to embody expressionist dance: her will to dance, her intensity of concentration, was stronger than the feeling she constructed (46). And Suhr felt she danced elegantly, especially with her arms and hands, but "without the trace of a soul" (WS 35). However, these writers were consistently skeptical of dancers who relied on pantomimic-decorative effects, an aura of luxurious and even per-

verse refinement; they did not deny that Hegesa presented a strong, serious personality and a smooth technique. The perversity of her aesthetic was perhaps most evident in a dance not performed at the Rotterdam concert. She impersonated a Javanese prince, who sat in the lotus position on pillows and decorated himself with jewels and paint in preparation for his wedding. He rose only in anticipation of meeting his bride, and when she did not appear, he returned to the lotus position and sat, motionless, waiting for her, having become, so to speak, the idol that had appeared in the peacock dance. What made Hegesa unique was the extent to which dance mutated her personality. She seems to have relied on the symmetrical technique of movement, whereby one part of the body mirrors another, for almost all her dances. She displayed a distinct style of movement and a distinct taste in costume, yet she delighted in not being "recognizable," of being someone else every time she appeared, a stranger to her own image.