Book-Review by Horst Koegler

“The Sacharoffs – Two Dancers within the Blaue Reiter Circle”

A fabulous book! One that would be worthy of a discussion in “the world’s leading dance magazine” – if there only was such a thing. Here, however, its publication can only be noted with a few brief remarks. Entitled “The Sacharoffs – Two Dancers within the Blauer Reiter Circle”, the book was edited by Frank-Manuel Peter and Rainer Stamm and published by Wienand Verlag in Cologne. It appeared in order to accompany the Sacharoff exhibition staged, in cooperation with the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum in Bremen, by the Deutsches Tanzarchiv in Cologne, where it is on view until 23 February, before continuing on to the Villa Stuck in Munich. The 272-page book, published in English and German, features opulent photographs in colour and in black and white. It is printed on the finest paper in an attractive layout and costs only € 25.00 at the exhibition – a real bargain – and is still well worth the price at € 48.00 in bookstores.

It provides us with an uncannily vivid impression of Alexander Sacharoff (1886-1963) and Clothilde von Derp (1892-1974) who initially performed as solo-artists and then appeared as a duo in many European countries in the 1910s and 1920s. They later gave dance performances all over the world, until the late 1940s, and spent their remaining years teaching dance in Rome and Sienna. He was Ukrainian and came to dance via painting. She was born in Berlin. They met in Munich and were members of the Neue Künstlervereinigung, i.e. in a circle of friends that included Kandinsky, Jawlensky, Werefkin, Münter and Hartmann (the composer who inspired Musorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”) – hence, part of the Bohemian scene of “München leuchtete.” The contemporary documents referring to their performances are augmented by rich illustrations and provide fascinating reading (and make one grow green with envy with regard to the literary merits of the texts – no wonder, considering the fact that Rilke was also one of their admirers). They cultivated a highly aesthetic, elaborately mannerist, spiritualistic style that took on its own, very personal nuance as a result of Sacharoff’s ostentatiously androgynous manner (this is precisely analysed by Patrizia Veroli in her essay “The Mirror and the Hieroglyph“). They can best be compared with the dancers Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn – but they are not as well represented in international dance publications as their contemporary American colleagues are. That can and should be changed – not least of all thanks to this bilingual book that has been produced with tremendous dedication to detail. It will only receive the attention it deserves when the American prophets of the gender discussion discover the hitherto unknown sources that are at their disposal here. For me it is – without doubt – the most beautiful dance book of the year!