Triadic Ballet

Triadic Ballet

Bauhaus Zeitgeist

Bauhaus 1919 to 2023

Editors: Anastasia Leshchenko & Susan Harrison.

Bauhaus Archive Berlin Musuem of Design

Triadic

Ballet

Editors: Anastasia Leshchenko & Susan Harrison.

Design

Contents

Foreword Bauhaus

10 Principles

The Curriculm

Its fundamental Philosophy Premilinary Course

Oskar Schlemmer

Teaching How different it was from His beliefs everyday life

Triadic Ballet

Human body as shapes Movement of human body Costume materials

Two main currents

Foreword

At the Bauhaus in Dessau, workshops were quite popular however Gropius wanted to close the theatre workshop due to financial reasons. Nonetheless, a proposal was reached and the teathre workshop continued on to be one of the most popular and influencial workshops at the Bauhaus thanks to Oskar Schlemmer.

Oskar Schlemmer, a German painter, sculptor, designer and choreographer, was hired as ‘Master of Form’ at the Bauhaus theatre workshop. Whilst holding his position, Schlemmer produced his most famous work ’Triadisches Ballet’ in which he played with the movement of human bodies and replaced them with geometricak shapes,

using the design basics that originated from the Bauhaus, circle, square and triangle along with the three primary colours.

Schlemmer only decided to explore these basic elements within the space of a few years with dances such as the Form dance, Gesture dance, Space dance, Stick dance, Scenary dance and Hoop dance, together with the Module Play and Box Promenade.

Schlemmer also saw this as an opportunity to develop theatre play based on the fundamental principles and philosophy of the Bauhaus.

The Bauhaus’ fundamental philosophy relied on the combination of the education of the arts that were considered as ‘elite’ studies, with crafts –something done for the first time in the world and conceived as a new field of study, called design, as we know it today. The school was based around a holistic approach to the creative disciplines. Gropius wanted the school’s architecture to reflect these values. when he designed the building ‘Dessau’ to house the new school. The objective was to facilitate the creation of a Gesamtkunstwerk or a total work of art. Unified vision for the arts that made no distraction between form and function. Although the Bauhaus allowed students to be indivually expressive, the Bauhaus was still very much focused on the prodcution of work.

Philo sophy Curri culm

The term Bauhaus literally means construction house. The Bauhaus has ten principles which are, for the most part, self explanatory: No border between artists and craftsman, the artist is an exalted craftsman, form follows function, gesamtkunstwerk or the ‘complete work of art, true materials, minimalism, emphasises on technology, smart use of resources, simplicity and effectiveness, constant development. As time went on and the Bauhaus developed, individuality became more evident and students expressed themeselves more. Students were also enrolled in a mandatory ‘preliminary course’ where they were forced to complete and pass a workshop.

1Bauhaus Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist

is ‘the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time,’ then possibly nothing is more representative of that than Bauhaus. This year marks the centennial anniversary of the world’s most influential school of art, design and architecture in the 20th century.

ts founder, architect Walter Gropius, intended to create a Gesamtkunstwerk (“total’ work of art”), a place in which all the arts, including architecture, would eventually come together.

The curriculum was structured such that students would be taught everything under one roof in a compulsory, multi-disciplinary foundation course known as the Vorkurs, after which students could move into areas of specialization.

The Bauhaus Vorkurs (Foundation Course) is discussed as a versatile, enduring prototype for combining art, design, and architectural studio education in the American K-12 curriculum.

Kadinsky moved to bauhaus from Moscow, he taught mural painting and analytical drawing. He believed that there was a correspondence between colour and form. He believed squares were intrinsically red, circles are blue and triangles, yellow.

This belief inspired the look of a number of products designed at the Bauhaus. Kadinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist and is credited as one of the pioneers of abstraction in western art. The main idea of the Bauhuas is to reimagine the material world to reflect the unity of all the arts. The Bauhaus was founded by architect Walter Gropius in Weimar. It was grounded in the idea of creating a Gesamtkunstwerk (“comprehensive artwork”) in which all the arts would eventually be brought together.

It quickly became a very influential style.

Walter Gropius (1883-1969) was the Bauhaus director from 1919-1928. He was an architect whom designed Fagus factory aswell as modelled Bauhaus on medieval “Bauhütte” and wrote original Bauhaus Manifesto.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) was the Bauhaus director from 1930-1933. He was an architect - German Barcellona Pavilion. Concerned with beauty, believed that good design came with a price. He also believed that the Bauhaus was a school of architecture.

The building Dessau manifested into a school of thought that became free-spirited. Women at Bauhaus wore cropped hair and were permitted into metal workshops. People wrote in low caps. There was a lightness among the teachers and students. All symbolising a departure from traditional views of manner and etiquettes. These factors also ended up turning the Bauhaus into a more creative place.

The focus of the school was to reimagine the material world to reflect the unity of all the arts. Gropius’ initial aim was a unification of the arts through craft. At the time, the school also adopted the slogan “Art into Industry”. The Bauhaus believed in being efficeint therefore everything work made was important and made for the industry.

Some of the key events that happened in this time include: 1919, Bauhaus Weimar opened under Walter Gropius’ leadership. 1922, Oskar Schlemmar creates triadic ballet. 1923, Haus am Horn by Georg Muche created. 1925, Bauhaus moves to Dessau and Marcel Breuer designs The Wassily chair. 1926, Dessau building completed. 1928, Hannes Meyer becomes director as Gropius leaves. 1930, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe becomes director of the school. 1932, Bauhaus moves to Berlin and 1933, Bauhaus school closes due to nazi pressure.

“The Bauhaus was an Idea. Only an idea has a power to disseminate itself so widely.”- Mies van der Rohe

Oskar Schlemmer

Oskar Schlemmer (1888-1943) was hired as Master of Form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop, after working at the workshop of sculpture. His ideas were extremely influential making him one of the most important teachers working at the school.

Schlemmer’s work in the arena of performance was both experimental and subversive. He purposely broke free from the usual constraints and rules of theater and dance, creating completely new versions of the artforms. He was one of the first artists to modernize the genres and his work formed the basis for many modern performance ideas that followed. He also explored painting and sculpture. Schlemmer’s work aligned with Bauhaus thinking on merging art and technology, man and machine. His paintings often present genderless automatons and his dancers moved in unusual and machine-like ways. In relating humans to machines, Schlemmer was at the forefront of a movement

to utilize technology to seek a deeper understanding of the human condition.

Most standard art history timelines omit mention of Bauhaus, and yet the group’s work impacted society to such an extent that fonts developed by Bauhaus designers are still used today. Not to mention the returned interest in Bauhaus graphic and textile design, which is happening contemporarily. I also think that the current trend of calling oneself a “maker” indirectly adopts one of the core principles of Bauhaus, namely its attempt at uniting creativity and manufacturing. In melding these two components, Bauhaus was able to encompass various art forms, and so beyond architecture and graphic design, came textile and costume design, as well as dance, performance and theatre.

Two Main Currents

The Triadic Ballet was created by Oskar Schlemmer. He taught at the Bauhaus art school in Germany during the Weimar Republic.

Schlemmer’s ballet style: uncluttered, modern and geometric. He named it “Triadic” to reflect the three acts, three dancers, and three colours (one for each act).

Schlemmer also designed the costumes based on cylinder, sphere, cone, and spiral shapes. These turned out to be revolutionary. He saw ballet and pantomime as free from the historical baggage of theatre and opera. He presented his ideas of choreographed geometry, man as a dancer, transformed by costume, moving in space.

Schlemmer saw the modern world driven by two main currents, the mechanised (man as machine and the body as a mechanism) and the primordial impulses (the depths of creative urges).

Human Body

His theater and dance work combined his interest in the representation of the human body with kinetic studies and an investigation of the relationship between performer and space and he transformed his observations into abstract geometrical and mechanical choreography and costumes. The most famous of Schlemmer’s works, The Triadic Ballet (1922), is an important example of this process in action.

3

Triadic Ballet

Das triadisches Ballett (1922; “The Triadic Ballet”)—a ballet that he choreographed and for which he designed costumes. He named it “Triadic” to reflect the three acts, three dancers, and three colours (one for each act). The costumes he designed—based on cylinder, sphere, cone, and spiral shapes— were revolutionary.

Inspired in part by Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaireand his observations and experiences during the First World War, Oskar Schlemmer began to conceive of the human body as a new artistic medium.

He saw ballet and pantomime as free from the historical baggage of theatre and opera and thus able to present his ideas of choreographed geometry, man as dancer, transformed by costume, moving in space.

Schlemmer’s work in the arena and performance was both experimental and subversive. He broke free from the usual constraints and rules and theater and dance

He saw the movement of puppets and marionettes as aesthetically superior to that of humans, as it emphasised that the medium of every art is artificial. This artifice could be expressed through stylised movements and the abstraction of the human body.

His consideration of the human form (the abstract geometry of the body e.g. a cylinder for the neck, a circle for head and eyes) led to the all important costume design, to create what he called his ‘figurine’. The music followed and finally the dance movements were decided.

Costumes by Oskar Schlemmer (Bauhaus) for the Triadic Ballet, at Metropol Theater in Berlin.

Photo: Ernst Schneider, 1926. (Apic/Getty Images)

Each act had a different colour and mood: The first scene is broken up into three which are against a lemon yellow background which comvey a cheerful and burlesqque mood.

The second scene, also known as the two middle scenes, are set on a pink stage which appear to show a mood of festivity and solemness.

The third scene, also known as the three final scenes, are set on black which the intent of being mystical and fantastic.

The movement of puppets was superior to that of humans, as it showed the medium of every art is superficial. It could be shown through moments and the abstraction of the human body.

Schlemmer starting considering the human body as shapes. Example: Cylinder for the neck and a circle for the head and eyes. Costumes are constructed out of materials such as barbed wire and wooden panels.

featured three dancers (two female, one male) performing 12 choreographies across three parts, with 18 costumes. He sought to break out of the classic ballet models of dualism and soloing, instead trying to emphasise a collective.

With his work The Triadic Ballet, Oskar Schlemmer pushed dance into the 20th century, using cartoonish costumes and bright colours in a bizarre exploration of modernity – and a new exhibition shows off his unique imagination. Costumes were also made out of strange materials such as barbed wire.

If today’s arts love the machine, technology and organization, if they aspire to precision and reject anything vague and dreamy, this implies an instinctive repudiation of chaos and a longing to find the form appropriate to our times.

When dancers perform, they are exposed to the laws of cubic space, functional laws of the human body in relation to space, laws of motion of the human body and metaphysical forms of expressionism. The costume acts as a connecting element. Via the costume, the dancer is transformed into four different forms : A. walking architecture (following laws of cubic space, head, torso, arms, legs are transformed into cu- bical form), B. a marionette (using the laws of the human body in relation

to space, bodily forms are stereotyped: an egg-shape head, vase-shaped torso, club-shaped arms and legs), C. a technical organism (emphasizing rotation, directionality, intersection of space: a spinning top, spiral, disk), or D. dematerialized (metaphysical forms of expression symbolize parts of the body: the cross of spine and shoulders, the ∞ sign of folded arms).

Biblio graphy

Image sources

P.9- Dezeen

P.12- Wikiart

P.14- Rimonthly

P.18- Der Greif

P.19- Ballet Triádico | IDIS

P.19- Pinterest

P.19- Alamy

P.19- Visual Resources Library - Sarah Lawrence College

P.23- wikimedia

P.24- Artnet

Websites

Alexandra Griffith Winton, A.W, August 2007 (last revised 2016), The Bauhaus, 1919–1933, metmusuem.

Royal academy, The Bauhaus Preliminary Course.

Art.art, 10 Bauhaus principles that still apply today.

Google Arts & Culture. (n.d.). The Controversial Director.

Barnhart, B. (2021). The Bauhaus Movement: Design Principles, Ideas, and Inspiration.

Der Greif. (n.d.). Oskar Schlemmer -»Triadic Ballet«.

Triadisches Ballett, Wikipedia, June 26, 2022.

Modernity in Motion: Bauhaus’ Triadic Ballet, DailyArt Magazine, December 08, 2022.

100 Jahre Bauhaus: Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet - a staple of contemporary dance history, The Wonderful World of Dance Magazine, October 03, 2022.

Aesthetic analysis of Triadic Ballet by Oskar Schlemmer, Medium, August 08, 2021.

Oskar Schlemmer’s ballet of geometry – in pictures, The Guardian, November 24, 2016.

Oskar Schlemmer Paintings, Bio, Ideas, The Art Story, Date assessed: February 17, 2023.

MOVEMENT STUDY: ‘DAS TRIADISCHES BALLETT,’ OSKAR SCHLEMMER, AND THE BAUHAUS THEATER, Bagtazo, November 04, 2018.

Published in 2023

Edited by Anastasia Leshchenko

for the Bauhaus Archive Berlin Musuem of Design at the Institute of Art, Design + Technology Kill Avenue, Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, Ireland, A96 KH79Phone: + 353 1 239

4000Email: info@iadt.ie http://www.iadt.ie

Copyright © 2020All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced to be transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Text & cover design: Anastasia Leshchenko

Bauhaus Zeitgeist Triadic Ballet

Bauhaus 1919 to 2023

Editors: Anastasia Leshchenko & Susan Harrison.

Bauhaus Archive Berlin Musuem of Design

If today's arts love the machine, technology and organization, if they aspire to precision and reject anything vague and dreamy, this implies an instinctive repudiation of chaos and a longing to find the form appropriate to our times.

-Oskar

Schlemmer