The history of contemporary dance is full of gaps. Manja Chmièl (1922-2006) slipped into oblivion because dance scholarship forgot her. Eyewitness Irene Sieben brings her once most important teacher at the Mary Wigman Studio into the light with her book and places her alongside Dore Hoyer as a distinctive inventor of a specific dance language.
1962 Chmièl broke away from expressionist dance. She wanted to position herself on equal footing with Neuer Musik, literature and abstract arts. Her group Neuer Tanz Berlin was the first independent dance company in Germany. In 1968 the Czech-born artist received the critics' prize for dance. If there was a catalyst between Expressionism and the contemporary dance of the 1980s, it was her. Manja Chmièl's rigorous dances, stripped of pathos, prove it.
The reconstruction of Dresden dancer Anna Till makes this visible in a wonderful way. She will show it as a film and comment on it.