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Address | 56 Karl-Liebknecht Street, D-01109 Dresden, Germany Dresden Germany |
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Coordinates | 51°06′50″N13°45′11″E / 51.113781°N 13.753133°E |
Type | German Festspielhaus |
Capacity | 560 seats (1911) |
Construction | |
Opened | 1911 |
Closed | 1939–2006 |
Rebuilt | 1992–2006 and ongoing |
Years active | 1911–1939, 2006–present |
Architect | Heinrich Tessenow |
Website | |
www.hellerau.org |
Festspielhaus Hellerau (English: Hellerau Festival House or Hellerau Theatre) is a theatre/studio building/classroom building located in Hellerau, the famous garden city district of Dresden, Germany. Built in 1911, it was an important center for early modern theatre up until the rise of the Nazi party, World War II and afterward when the area became part of Communist-occupied East Germany. After the German reunification and the departure of the Red Army, efforts were begun to restore the building, then nearly in ruins, to its original grandeur. The theatre was reopened to the public in September 2006 and restoration is currently ongoing.
Adolphe Appia, who was then working with Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, and who had been greatly influenced by his studies of Richard Wagner's music and ideas, designed the theater at Hellerau for Dalcroze's school. [1] [2] [3] Brockett states that it was "the first theatre of modern times to be built without a proscenium arch and with a completely open stage." According to Brockett, Appia designed the theater in 1910 and designed a series of productions for it in 1912 and 1913. [1] [4] The summer programmes at the Festspielhaus Hellerau attracted around 5000 international guests, including leaders in the arts such as George Bernard Shaw, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Konstantin Stanislavski. [5]
The start of World War II, in 1939, saw the Festpielhaus buildings commandeered by the Nazis and turned into a police academy. It served this function until the end of the war when the Soviet army took control of East Germany. Taking advantage of the fortifications the Germans had added to the property, the Festspielhaus continued to serve various military functions, first as a hospital and later a barracks. Neither the Germans or the Soviets gave much care to preservation of the building; rooms were rebuilt to suit while the Soviets tore down the ying-yang symbol on the front pediment and replaced it with a red star.
By the time the Soviets ultimately left in 1992 the building was in a very poor state. Roofs were caving in with many parts collapsed completely, the exterior stucco was stained and falling off in places and most of the original furnishings had been stripped.
Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski was a seminal Soviet Russian theatre practitioner. He was widely recognized as an outstanding character actor, and the many productions that he directed garnered him a reputation as one of the leading theatre directors of his generation. His principal fame and influence, however, rests on his "system" of actor training, preparation, and rehearsal technique.
The Bayreuth Festspielhaus or Bayreuth Festival Theatre is an opera house north of Bayreuth, Germany, built by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner and dedicated solely to the performance of his stage works. It is the venue for the annual Bayreuth Festival, for which it was specifically conceived and built. Its official name is Richard-Wagner-Festspielhaus. It is the home of the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra.
Scenic design, also known as stage design or set design, is the creation of scenery for theatrical productions including plays and musicals. The term can also be applied to film and television productions, where it may be referred to as production design. Scenic designers create sets and scenery to support the overall artistic goals of the production. Scenic design is an aspect of scenography, which includes theatrical set design as well as light and sound.
Yvonne Georgi was a German dancer, choreographer and ballet mistress. She was known for her comedic talents and her extraordinary jumping ability. In her roles as a dancer, choreographer, and ballet mistress, she was an influential figure in dance for decades.
Mary Wigman was a German dancer and choreographer, notable as the pioneer of expressionist dance, dance therapy, and movement training without pointe shoes. She is considered one of the most important figures in the history of modern dance. She became one of the most iconic figures of Weimar German culture and her work was hailed for bringing the deepest of existential experiences to the stage.
Viewpoints is a movement-based pedagogical and artistic practice that provides a framework for creating and analyzing performance by exploring spatial relationships, shape, time, emotion, movement mechanics, and the materiality of the actor's body. Rooted in the domains of postmodern theatre and dance composition, the Viewpoints operate as a medium for thinking about and acting upon movement, gesture, and the creative use of space.
Émile Jaques-Dalcroze was a Swiss composer, musician, and music educator who developed Dalcroze eurhythmics, an approach to learning and experiencing music through movement. Dalcroze eurhythmics influenced Carl Orff's pedagogy, used in music education throughout the United States.
Adolphe Appia was a Swiss architect and theorist of stage lighting and décor. He was the son of Red Cross co-founder Louis Appia.
Dresden is a cultural centre in Germany which has influenced the development of European culture. "It is [...] outstanding as a cultural landscape, an ensemble that integrates the celebrated Baroque setting and suburban garden city into an artistic whole within the river valley, and as an example of land use, representing an exceptional development of a major Central-European city."
Hellerau is a northern quarter (Stadtteil) in the city of Dresden, Germany, slightly south of Dresden Airport. It was the first garden city in Germany. The northern section of Hellerau absorbed the village of Klotzsche, where some 18th century buildings remain.
Prince Serge Wolkonsky was an influential Russian theatrical worker, one of the first Russian proponents of eurhythmics, pupil and friend of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, and creator of an original system of actor's training that included both expressive gesture and expressive speech.
Vera Griner, was a Russian Empire-born Soviet rhythmitician, born 5 April 1890 in Saint Petersburg, died 24 June 1992 in Moscow. Her father, Alexander Alvang, was a well-known barrister. Since 1908 the Alvang family had been living in Munich. It was here that Alvang became acquainted with Rhythmics. In 1911 she came to Dresden, where she took lessons from Dalcroze, and attended the newly founded Hellerau Institute. In 1912 Alvang, together with several pupils of Dalcroze came to St. Petersburg to train to be a teacher with courses set by Prince Serge Wolkonsky. After a year she was a teacher and a student of Hellerau, and in May 1913 she graduated from the Institute and returned to St. Petersburg to commence teaching, which she continued to do until 1970.
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. It is the oldest form of drama, though live theatre has now been joined by modern recorded forms. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. Places, normally buildings, where performances regularly take place are also called "theatres", as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον, itself from θεάομαι.
Ernst Thomas Ferand was an American musicologist and music educator of Hungarian birth. He was also known as Ernest Ferand and Ernst Ferand-Freund.
Hertha Feist (1896–1990) was a German expressionist dancer and choreographer. She established her own school in Berlin, combining gymnastics with nudism and dance. In the 1930s, her ambitions were seriously curtailed by the Nazis.
Jarmila Kröschlová was one of the most important representatives of modern dance in Czechoslovakia. She was one of the leading European expressionist dancers and as a choreographer had wide influence on other dancers, through her teaching and theoretical writings on dance. Working with the Czech avant-garde theater, producing librettos and as a professor in the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, she advanced modern dance and pantomime with her theories of movement.
Hans Neumeyer was a German teacher of musical theory, counterpoint and composition, and a pianist and composer. He was from a Jewish family in Munich; his father Nathan Neumeyer for a period owned a gentleman’s clothing store in Munich. Hans Neumeyer suffered from an eye complaint as a child, leaving him blind in one eye, then at the age of 11 lost the sight of the other eye after a scuffle at school with a fellow pupil.
Anne Suzanne "Lili" Ferrière was a Swiss dance teacher of Dalcroze eurhythmics and a humanitarian activist from a prominent Genevan family. As only the third female member of the governing body of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), she helped to pave the way towards gender equality in the organisation.
Jacques-Louis-Edmond Chenevière, commonly known as Jacques Chenevière, was a Swiss poet, librettist and novelist from a Patrician family in Geneva. For more than sixty years, he also served as a humanitarian official in top-positions of management and organisation at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Hans Gebhard-Elsaß was a German composer and music educator.