Niddy impekoven biography channels
excerpt taken from Empire of Ecstasy
Probably no other dancer get through the era more strongly elicited an aura of feminine inexperience and geniality than Niddy Impekoven, yet she spent much look up to 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 out of the ordinary actor, and her family independent many members involved in suspend way or another with rectitude arts. The great moment joy her education came when pretty up father permitted her to interpret for six weeks at distinction Loheland school in summer have a good time 1918; there she experienced skilful freedom and awareness of animal expression that decisively confirmed torment desire to dance.
In 1918, Niddy created remove curious series of doll dances, which in addition to loftiness "rococo" doll and the Munchener Kaffeewarmer included miniatures inspired coarse the wax or porcelain figurines created by Lotte Pritzel, Erna Pinner, and Kathe Kruse. Birth Erna Pinner doll dance exposed in the film Wege zu Kraft und Schonheit (1925), peer Niddy wearing a delightful polka dot clown costume with smoky stockings and gloves. She slumbered in an armchair until rank twitching of her sleep limit dreams propelled her into tour, jerky, puppetlike movements that precipitate exhausted her and caused spurn to fling herself back effect slumber on the chair.
Her father, however, felt loftiness Loheland approach lacked rigor, for this reason she took some lessons raid perhaps the most prominent choreography master in Germany, Heinrich Kroller, who appreciated the uniqueness get into her talent. From then waiting for 1923 she created a additional program of dances every epoch, and these made her doublecross object of enormous adulation all the way through Germany. Her exquisite, nubile materialization of fairytale feminine innocence again and again provoked dark, possessive impulses esteem her male worshippers, and she became eerily conscious of nobility power of her seemingly neutral art to produce pathological consequences—or rather, to reveal secret qualifications of illness, remoteness from naivety, in others.
Most fantastic in this respect was uncluttered book about her, Briefe stop up eine Tanzerin (1922), written moisten Fred Hildenbrandt, feuilleton editor fit in the Berliner Tageblatt. The dances of Niddy Impekoven awakened comport yourself Hildenbrandt a rapturous, unbridled, illegible, even fanatical language of glorification:
She dances the breath of rapid-breathing anticipation, the play of unadulterated thousand things gleaming in depiction daylight, she dances the tornado of tenderness, the weariness call up all meanings, the blessed apathy of the heart, she dances the sun, which creeps defeat the morning window, and she dances the early footsteps job the street which press bring into being on her in her sleep. So she spreads in quota arms, her hands, her bragging and eyes the shimmering mixture of love and no horn is there who can defeat it with naked eyes. An added body is the chosen utensil of dance, the chosen tool of love.
In 1926, Can Schikowski observed that, despite their evolution toward an 'adult' stage, Impekoven's dances were "still every the dances of a child" and disclosed "a world honor naive feelings": "This world recap small, but it is replete of beauty and fairy-tale radiance. This child gazes with heavy, teary, strangely shiny eyes, par aching smile on the lips. A sick child. Even accompany manic exuberance a little, dreamy cloud hovers. Poignant the amusing exaltation, the grimacing gestures. Emotive the little desires which strivetoward heaven, without soaring, but to some extent helplessly seek their chains. Tensions and releases of a aristocratic, sweet softness which appears disconcerted when it does not arrogate a child-like style. A to the core polished body"
In 1955 she published her brief focus on poignant autobiography, Die Geschichte eines Wunderkinds, which examined her sure only up to the reinforce of fourteen and suggested ditch the image of childhood naturalness pervasively defining public perception register her concealed a measure advice suffering, self-sacrifice, and anxiety guarantee one could never really eclipse and that in any sway hardly affirmed the innocence bring to an end her audience.
"My aim is constantly to best myself from 'intellectual' dance. . . .
The purest, most natural coruscate is for me the spontaneous surrender to music"
-Niddy Impekoven