Writer, Artist and Critic
HELLMUT GOTTSCHILD at Painted Bride Arts Center, Philadelphia
Gottschild met Wigman when she was in her seventies, and he twenty-one; he acted as her assistant until she retired. In this dense memory-piece, the old and young Gottschild and the old and young Wigman all move and speak. Gottschild summoned us, and the ghosts of his past, banging on the very gong Wigman used to call her students to class. Moving and talking, often at the same time, Gottschild showed his command of phrasing, with slow curves and lovely, extended falls articulated by small, snapping gestures.
Like a good literary memoir, this piece found its metaphors in its memory-elements. One of these is running: the dancer--who came to dance from track and field--runs, away from the ravages of age, back into his past, for the sheer joy of running. Another is the Olympics. Gottschild was born in 1936, the year of the infamous Berlin Olympics, where Wigman also presented an official dance. As a teenager, he was inspired to start running by the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. These events offer touchstones for him to explore German pride, humiliation and racism.
But the heart of the work lies in his eerie impersonation of Wigman. Donning a long skirt, he became the seated Meisterin (Master), with nervous hands and singsong voice that had the pungency of living memory. Seated on the floor, he recreated her legendary "Witch Dance" with angular ferocity; later, he spun slowly as a dervish-like Mary, hands spread in semi-darkness. This homage of a man for his female mentor had a rare and touching quality, more resonant for its echoes of sacred transvestism.
Gottschild touches on the incendiary issues of German racism and Wigman's complicity with the Nazis (a brief one; they quickly closed her studio as their differences became apparent). Brenda Dixon Gottschild, acting as onstage interlocutor, pushed these questions to a point. But the intersection of Wigman's innocent paganism with Aryan nature-fantasies is one that cries out for deeper examination. Here, such questions were left hanging as, in a final Olympic fantasy, Mary spun off, levitating into the air of pure memory.
--Miriam Seidel