Political events part of controversial choreography

By Carol Egan
Special to The Advertiser

Betsy Fisher will perform a concert of German Expressionist dance pieces Saturday night at the Leeward Community College Theatre. 'Expression/Dance: Passion and Abstraction' Featuring Betsy Fisher 8 p.m. Saturday Leeward Community College Theatre $8 general 455-0385

In doing so, she also took on a potentially explosive issue: Was German Expressionist dance a form of art related to the repressive side of the German psyche that led to Nazism?

Fisher doesn't think the answer to that question is a simple "yes" or "no." She has encountered both hostile and enthusiastic responses to the dances at her performances and says, "I don't think it's so easy just to blame people — it's not so black and white. This whole project has brought up many questions."

It's hard for Fisher to contain herself as she describes the early modern dances she has been collecting from the German Expressionist school of work. Her enthusiasm is tangible, as the lean and lithe brunette sits at her desk in the dance building at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa, where she's taught since 1994.

"After I stopped dancing professionally, I was teaching in Hong Kong. I decided I wanted to keep dancing, and I wanted to explore my artistic family tree, which was mostly of the German modern dance tradition," Fisher said.

Fisher, who performed professionally in New York with the company of Murray Louis, had also studied with dancers who trained with Mary Wigman, a pioneer of German Expressionist dance. That style is often angular, percussive and stark — as well as challenging because it places the dancer's center higher on the body.

She became interested in collecting German Expressionist dances in 1992, but she wasn't sure how she would go about finding, reconstructing and presenting the pieces.

By chance, a German dance historian came to Hong Kong to give a lecture on Dore Hoyer, a postwar dance figure influenced by Wigman. Fisher was able to see videos of Hoyer dancing, and she tracked down people who owned the rights to Hoyer's works. One work she saw on video back in 1992 was called "Affectos Humanos," choreographed by Hoyer in 1962. Clear-cut spatial patterns, alternating dynamics, and small pulsations distinguish the dance, creating a kinetic etching in space. It will be among the dances to be seen at Fisher's concert at Leeward Community College tomorrow.

From that beginning, Fisher has gone on to explore and re-create numerous dances from the German tradition. What drew her to this form?

"The clarity in the style attracts me," she says. "The works challenge me as a performer to connect with someone's expressive style.

"When you get into this dialogue with history, you almost put yourself in another time. You get the idea that time's not a line, it's a forest, and we're in the middle of it."

Time is certainly an issue for many watching these works. Wigman, for example, worked during the rise of anti-Semitism and the Nazi Party in Germany. Two versions of her famous "Hexentanz" ("Witch Dance") premiered, one in 1914 and the second in 1926. As a result, many are suspicious of the connection of the dance to those political currents.

On the negative side, in 2000 Fisher found considerable antagonism among audiences in Finland. "Finland had originally sided with the Germans, later affiliated themselves with the Allies in World War II. The Finns are intense people and don't gloss over things. Bringing this work there brought up the painful issue of their past history."

She was not invited to perform at Manhattan's Marymount College, possibly because, as she was told by the presenter, that the school had many Jewish students who "might be upset" at seeing the dances.

On the other hand, during a visit to Israel in 2001, her performance was greeted warmly by an elderly Israeli dancer who had worked with Hannah Berger, a choreographer whose work Fisher will also present during her concert.

Unlike other German works, Berger's piece is lyrical and flowing. Instead of percussive, harsh sounds, it is accompanied by impressionistic piano music of Debussy.

Berger, a German who also happened to be Jewish and a Communist, was sent to a concentration camp by the Nazis but survived to immigrate after the war to Israel, where she became one of that country's most important dance figures.

Fisher's concert will also present works by Rosalia Chladek and Beverly Blossom, representative of the German school of modern dance and its American heirs. Despite working within this genre, the range of repertory is enormous, including lyrical, dramatic, abstract and comic. The program also features pianist Eric Schank.