The Green Table
Encyclopedia
The Green Table is the masterpiece of German choreographer Kurt Jooss
, and his most popular work, depicting the futility of peace negotiations
of the 1930s. It was the first play to be fully notated using kinetography Laban (Labanotation).
It is in the repertoire of ballet companies worldwide, where it has been staged by Jooss himself.
Since his death in 1979, his daughter Anna Markard has been responsible for stagings of the work.
He left Essen in Germany, where since 1927 he had directed the Volkwangschule's dance department and experimental dance group and, since 1930, the ballet company of the Opera as well. He founded the Ballet Jooss, a private company which toured Europe and performed his dances, including The Green Table.
It opens with a group of diplomats (the Gentlemen in Black) having a discussion around a rectangular table covered with a green cloth. They end up pulling guns from their pockets and shooting in the air, thus symbolizing the declaration of war.
The next six scenes portray different aspects of wartime: the separation from loved ones in The Farewells, war itself in The Battle and The Partisan, loneliness and misery in The Refugees, the emotional void and the atmosphere of forced entertainment in The Brothel, and, finally, the psychologically beaten and wounded survivors in The Aftermath. The ballet then ends as it began, with the "Gentlemen in Black" around the green table.
Throughout these episodes the figure of Death is triumphant, portrayed as a skeleton moving in a forceful and robot-like way, relentlessly claiming its victims.
The dance ends with a repeat of the opening scene, a device the choreographer uses to show his mistrust in the talks of the diplomats; completely indifferent to the ravages of war, they continue their hypocritical negotiations.
.
He then worked closely with the designer, Hein Heckroth, and the composer, Frederick Cohen, to build the piece. Jooss, in fact, advocated a form of dance-theatre, in which the choreography is dramatic and develops from a libretto (often his own).
Choreographer, composer, and designer combine their efforts to produce a coherent work in which all the elements, in harmony with each other, convey the feelings and ideas more powerfully.
This concept of a unified work of art, previously theorized by Richard Wagner
and, in the 18th century, by Jean-Georges Noverre
, was popular among German artists in the early 20th century.
Examples are found in the visual arts, for instance in the work of George Grosz
and the Herzfelde brothers, or in the theatre of Erwin Piscator
and his dramaturgical collective.
The Green Table reflects a concern for social issues and the problems of that era (shared by many artists contemporary with Jooss) such as political corruption and militaristic policies.
Its style, with its cutting irony, caricature, and boldness of language, has much in common with Expressionism
, which flourished in the first decade of the 20th century. The cynical structure of the dance, for example, is a formal expression of this dry humour: the diplomats repeat their routine with total indifference to the real consequences of their decisions. The seriousness of their discussion is negated by the music that Jooss chose to accompany this scene: a playful tango
. He also dressed the characters in masks, which gave them a grotesque look, and created movements that are exaggerations of naturalistic movement, such as gesticulating while talking, or nervously pacing up and down while thinking.
The costumes and props were chosen for their symbolic qualities: a flag for the hopeful soldier, a red dress coupled with a white scarf for the partisan, or the skeleton-like costume of Death.
Jooss mastered the visual outlook of his compositions with great skill; again the scene of The Gentlemen in Black provides an example of how the choreographer directed the audience to focus on a particular point of interest, which may be a dancer located on a higher plane than the rest of the group, or someone keeping still while everybody else is moving (or vice versa), or simply a convergence of the compositional lines.
His use of space for expressive purposes, as well as the foundation of his technique, stemmed from his formative training as Rudolf Laban
's student and assistant. Together they explored the interrelation between space and the body, with its various movement qualities reflecting different mental states and feelings. Jooss integrated Laban's findings and his free-style approach to dancing with the discipline of classical ballet training. The result was a new technique that emphasizes the use of the body as an expressive whole.
This technique was to be absorbed and further developed by Jooss' students, among whom were Birgit Cullberg
and Pina Bausch
.
The Green Table is a mature example of this technique. It uses elements of classical ballet, such as turn-out, demi-pointe, extensions, turns, arabesques, and other ballet steps. However, there is no pointe work or any other feature that could suggest virtuoso display. The gracefulness, elegance, ethereal quality, and other affectations of classical ballet are eliminated.
As with the choreography of Antony Tudor
, every step is used, not for its formal look, but for its intrinsic expressive value, and the meaning it conveys is often reinforced by the position of the hands: rather than the relaxed wrists of ballet, Jooss uses stretched palms, fists, reaching hands, and so on. The focus of the dancers also varies, shifting towards the centre of drama, rather than being primarily towards the audience, as in ballet.
The resulting style, called by Jooss "Essentialism", tries to capture the essence of each movement or pose, its inner motivation.
Death, for instance, moves with sharp, direct, string, and angular movements, cutting through space, advancing, or pacing with clockwork regularity. In contrast is the style of the Profiteer: he has a swift and agile way of moving, his back usually curved, his cunning nature further accentuated by the indirectness of his focus and his multidirectional spatial patterns.
Such elements combine to make The Green Table a truly innovative work and the depth and universality of its humanistic content give it a timeless and meaningful quality.
ISBN 1-55862-084-2 (Vol. 1 and 2)
Kurt Jooss
Kurt Jooss was a famous ballet dancer and choreographer mixing classical ballet with theatre; he is also widely regarded as the founder of dance theatre or tanztheater...
, and his most popular work, depicting the futility of peace negotiations
Peacemaking
Peacemaking is a form of conflict resolution which focuses on establishing equal power relationships that will be robust enough to forestall future conflict, and establishing some means of agreeing on ethical decisions within a community that has previously had conflict. In order to do so there...
of the 1930s. It was the first play to be fully notated using kinetography Laban (Labanotation).
It is in the repertoire of ballet companies worldwide, where it has been staged by Jooss himself.
Since his death in 1979, his daughter Anna Markard has been responsible for stagings of the work.
| Choreography | Kurt Jooss Kurt Jooss Kurt Jooss was a famous ballet dancer and choreographer mixing classical ballet with theatre; he is also widely regarded as the founder of dance theatre or tanztheater... |
| Music | Fritz Cohen |
| Design | Hein Heckroth |
| Libretto | Kurt Jooss Kurt Jooss Kurt Jooss was a famous ballet dancer and choreographer mixing classical ballet with theatre; he is also widely regarded as the founder of dance theatre or tanztheater... |
| First Production | Folkwang Tanzbuhne, "Concours international de chorégraphie en souvenir de Jean Borlin", organized by the Archives Internationales de la Danse, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées Théâtre des Champs-Élysées The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées is a theatre at 15 avenue Montaigne. Despite its name, the theatre is not on the Champs-Élysées but nearby in another part of the 8th arrondissement of Paris.... , Paris, 3 July 1932 |
| Principal Dancers | Kurt Jooss Kurt Jooss Kurt Jooss was a famous ballet dancer and choreographer mixing classical ballet with theatre; he is also widely regarded as the founder of dance theatre or tanztheater... (Death), Karl Bergeest (The Profiteer), Ernst Uthoff (The Standard Bearer), Elsa Kahl (Woman), Lisa Czobel (Young Girl) |
| Other Productions | Jooss Ballet (new name of the Folkwang Tanzbuhne), restaged by Jooss, New York New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... , 31 October 1933; restaged Paris, July 1946; City Center Joffrey Ballet Joffrey Ballet The Joffrey Ballet is a dance company in Chicago, Illinois, founded in 1956. From 1995 to 2004, the company was known as The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago. The company regularly performs classical ballets including Romeo & Juliet and The Nutcracker, while balancing those classics with pioneering modern... (restaged Jooss), New York New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... , 9 March 1967; Northern Dance Theatre (staged Anna Markard), Manchester Manchester Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater... , 30 May 1973 |
History
The Green Table was created in 1932 for the "Concours international de chorégraphie" in Paris, in which Jooss had been invited to participate. The originality of the piece won him the first prize and marked an important step in his career.He left Essen in Germany, where since 1927 he had directed the Volkwangschule's dance department and experimental dance group and, since 1930, the ballet company of the Opera as well. He founded the Ballet Jooss, a private company which toured Europe and performed his dances, including The Green Table.
Plot outline
Lasting about 30 minutes and subtitled "A dance of death in eight scenes", The Green Table is a commentary on the futility of war and the horrors it causes.It opens with a group of diplomats (the Gentlemen in Black) having a discussion around a rectangular table covered with a green cloth. They end up pulling guns from their pockets and shooting in the air, thus symbolizing the declaration of war.
The next six scenes portray different aspects of wartime: the separation from loved ones in The Farewells, war itself in The Battle and The Partisan, loneliness and misery in The Refugees, the emotional void and the atmosphere of forced entertainment in The Brothel, and, finally, the psychologically beaten and wounded survivors in The Aftermath. The ballet then ends as it began, with the "Gentlemen in Black" around the green table.
Throughout these episodes the figure of Death is triumphant, portrayed as a skeleton moving in a forceful and robot-like way, relentlessly claiming its victims.
The dance ends with a repeat of the opening scene, a device the choreographer uses to show his mistrust in the talks of the diplomats; completely indifferent to the ravages of war, they continue their hypocritical negotiations.
Analysis
The inspiration for the dance, originally conceived as a solo, was provided by the medieval "Lubecker Totentanz", a sequence of pictures portraying different types of people dancing with Death. Jooss gave it a contemporary setting and added the political content which reflected his and many artists' concerns during Germany's Weimar RepublicWeimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
.
He then worked closely with the designer, Hein Heckroth, and the composer, Frederick Cohen, to build the piece. Jooss, in fact, advocated a form of dance-theatre, in which the choreography is dramatic and develops from a libretto (often his own).
Choreographer, composer, and designer combine their efforts to produce a coherent work in which all the elements, in harmony with each other, convey the feelings and ideas more powerfully.
This concept of a unified work of art, previously theorized by Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
and, in the 18th century, by Jean-Georges Noverre
Jean-Georges Noverre
Jean-Georges Noverre was a French dancer and balletmaster, and is generally considered the creator of ballet d'action, a precursor of the narrative ballets of the 19th century...
, was popular among German artists in the early 20th century.
Examples are found in the visual arts, for instance in the work of George Grosz
George Grosz
Georg Ehrenfried Groß was a German artist known especially for his savagely caricatural drawings of Berlin life in the 1920s...
and the Herzfelde brothers, or in the theatre of Erwin Piscator
Erwin Piscator
Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator was a German theatre director and producer and, with Bertolt Brecht, the foremost exponent of epic theatre, a form that emphasizes the socio-political content of drama, rather than its emotional manipulation of the audience or on the production's formal...
and his dramaturgical collective.
The Green Table reflects a concern for social issues and the problems of that era (shared by many artists contemporary with Jooss) such as political corruption and militaristic policies.
Its style, with its cutting irony, caricature, and boldness of language, has much in common with Expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
, which flourished in the first decade of the 20th century. The cynical structure of the dance, for example, is a formal expression of this dry humour: the diplomats repeat their routine with total indifference to the real consequences of their decisions. The seriousness of their discussion is negated by the music that Jooss chose to accompany this scene: a playful tango
Tango music
Tango is a style of ballroom dance music in 2/4 or 4/4 time that originated among European immigrant populations of Argentina and Uruguay . It is traditionally played by a sextet, known as the orquesta típica, which includes two violins, piano, double bass, and two bandoneons...
. He also dressed the characters in masks, which gave them a grotesque look, and created movements that are exaggerations of naturalistic movement, such as gesticulating while talking, or nervously pacing up and down while thinking.
The costumes and props were chosen for their symbolic qualities: a flag for the hopeful soldier, a red dress coupled with a white scarf for the partisan, or the skeleton-like costume of Death.
Jooss mastered the visual outlook of his compositions with great skill; again the scene of The Gentlemen in Black provides an example of how the choreographer directed the audience to focus on a particular point of interest, which may be a dancer located on a higher plane than the rest of the group, or someone keeping still while everybody else is moving (or vice versa), or simply a convergence of the compositional lines.
His use of space for expressive purposes, as well as the foundation of his technique, stemmed from his formative training as Rudolf Laban
Rudolf Laban
Rudolf von Laban aka Rudolf Laban was a dance artist and theorist whose work laid the foundations for Laban Movement Analysis and other more specific developments in dance notation...
's student and assistant. Together they explored the interrelation between space and the body, with its various movement qualities reflecting different mental states and feelings. Jooss integrated Laban's findings and his free-style approach to dancing with the discipline of classical ballet training. The result was a new technique that emphasizes the use of the body as an expressive whole.
This technique was to be absorbed and further developed by Jooss' students, among whom were Birgit Cullberg
Birgit Cullberg
Birgit Cullberg was a Swedish choreographer. The daughter of bank manager Carl Cullberg and Elna Westerström, Cullberg was born in Nyköping and married from 1942 to 1949 to actor Anders Ek...
and Pina Bausch
Pina Bausch
Philippina "Pina" Bausch was a German performer of modern dance, choreographer, dance teacher and ballet director...
.
The Green Table is a mature example of this technique. It uses elements of classical ballet, such as turn-out, demi-pointe, extensions, turns, arabesques, and other ballet steps. However, there is no pointe work or any other feature that could suggest virtuoso display. The gracefulness, elegance, ethereal quality, and other affectations of classical ballet are eliminated.
As with the choreography of Antony Tudor
Antony Tudor
Antony Tudor was an English ballet choreographer, teacher and dancer.-Biography:Tudor, born William Cook, discovered dance accidentally. He began dancing professionally with Marie Rambert in 1928, becoming general assistant for her Ballet Club the next year...
, every step is used, not for its formal look, but for its intrinsic expressive value, and the meaning it conveys is often reinforced by the position of the hands: rather than the relaxed wrists of ballet, Jooss uses stretched palms, fists, reaching hands, and so on. The focus of the dancers also varies, shifting towards the centre of drama, rather than being primarily towards the audience, as in ballet.
The resulting style, called by Jooss "Essentialism", tries to capture the essence of each movement or pose, its inner motivation.
Death, for instance, moves with sharp, direct, string, and angular movements, cutting through space, advancing, or pacing with clockwork regularity. In contrast is the style of the Profiteer: he has a swift and agile way of moving, his back usually curved, his cunning nature further accentuated by the indirectness of his focus and his multidirectional spatial patterns.
Such elements combine to make The Green Table a truly innovative work and the depth and universality of its humanistic content give it a timeless and meaningful quality.
Sources
Bremster, M. (ed.) 1993. "International Dictionary of Ballet" Detroit: St James PressISBN 1-55862-084-2 (Vol. 1 and 2)