Danced De/Stabilisations: Loheland's ‘Amazons’ between androgyny and body culture in the Weimar Period

Beschreibung

Amazons have long been a recurring subject in the arts. Particularly in the period of (dance) modernism, the image of the Amazon as a warrior-like female figure served to represent a danger to existing social and life orders and thus also to represent a potential for resistance. In my contribution, I would like to explore the reception of this subject and related ambivalent conceptions of womanhood with the example of the women's settlement community Loheland, which was called the Amazon state and read as an early queer community.
Founded in 1919 in the Rhön near Fulda by the dancer Hedwig von Rohden (1890–1987) and the visual artist Louise Langgaard (1883–1974) on a forest and meadow property, this community developed a training programme for women in the fields of physical education, agriculture and crafts. With its artisanal workshops, photographic experiments and performative practices, this community has similarities to the Bauhaus movement but is still considered a forgotten ‘rural avant-garde’ today, particularly in the context of dance.
The Loheland gymnastics system was based on an image of women that was perceived at the time as progressive and androgynous with ‘Amazonian tendencies’, conveying self-empowerment and independence. This was not (only) aimed at aesthetics, but at holistic physical training specifically conceived for women and was inspired by Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophical principles3: A new type of woman (‘calm + safe’4) was to be established by incorporating physical practices ranging from gymnastics with ball and stick, exercises with bow and arrow, somatic approaches as well as walking and hiking as body-based practices to artisanal and agricultural activities.
To what extent was this new Loheland body ideal ‘willful’ (Sara Ahmed) and did it (de)stabilise the existing (body) norms of womanhood at the time? How did these concepts between androgyny and the body culture of the Weimar Republic manifest themselves in their artistic practice as well as daily life? Which of these concepts correspond to or contradict current questions of gender, sexuality and corporeality? And can these ‘queer’ motifs be understood as subversive body-based practices in the sense of shifting and questioning the social realities of the time? Along these questions, I would like to re-read Loheland in a way that is both queer and critical of its Nazi past and situate it in all its ambivalence between avant-garde concepts and fascist ideologisation of the body through the figure of the Amazon.

Zeitraum	5 Dez. 2024
Ereignistitel	Queer Avantgarde
Veranstaltungstyp	Workshop
Ort	Bochum, DeutschlandAuf Karte anzeigen
Bekanntheitsgrad	International