Afterall, Imyself workedasaprofessional gardener for eight to ten hoursaday and felt it
in my bones.But Idid not wantto present theworkerwho toils and labors but theworker
whobuildsamorebeautiful life. [...]IworkeduntilIwas readytoacknowledgethat the
workershould not be dancedwith abowed head but that he hasto be shown as proud,
orientedtowardthe future.¹⁸With his bodynot onlymarked by dailyexperiences of exploitation but alsoani-
mated by his belief inradical change,Weidt soughtto capturethe movement,in
the words of MarionReinisch,“from feelingsocially[...]tothinkingpolitically.”¹⁹
Photographs from the performance at Hamburg’sKomödienhaus showaslender
man dressed in simple gray pants and an open shirt,with his bare feet signaling
his modern dance credentials (see figure13.5). His right arm is extended upward,
and his left armbent sideways across his chest–choices that recall the scene of
agitation in Querner. While his downward glanceconveys afeeling of hesitation
or concentration, the clenched fists and legs readytojump suggest an unfurling
of revolutionary energy.Despite negative reviews–one criticdismissively refer-
redto him as the ErnstToller of dance–Weidt was ableto build on these early
experiments in his later choreographic workwith theBerlin-based Die roten
Tänzer (Red Dancers) and in his collaboration with Erwin Piscator on the ambi-
tious program of political theater at the Theater am Nollendorfplatz. Thegoal of
the proletarian dancer,Weidt would later explain, was“to visualize the sur-
roundingworld with the means of his bodysothat his embodied experience
giveshis fellow human beingsspiritual nourishment!”His conclusioncan be
read asasuccinct definition of the communist habitus: “Dance is struggle,
and struggle is our language.”²⁰
In 1926,the Berlin-based dancerand poetJo Mihaly(1902–1989) created a
similar piece also calledDer Arbeiter(see figure13.6). One newspaperreview de-
scribedaperformance“in which the arduous life of the workingproletarian and
his breakingunder the weightofoppression werebrilliantlydepicted.”²¹Photo-
Jean Weidt,Der RoteTänzer.Ein Lebensbericht(Berlin:Henschel, 1968), 10.
Marion Reinisch, Preface,Aufder großen Straße.Jean Weidts Erinnerungen. NachTonband-
protokollen aufgezeichnet und herausgegeben vonMarionReinisch(Berlin: Henschel, 1984),5.
Foracomparative perspective,see Ellen Graff,Stepping Left: Dance and Politics in NewYork
City,1928– 1942 (Durham:DukeUniversity Press, 1997) that includesadiscussion of Edith Se-
gal’sRed Dancers.
Reinisch,Aufder großen Straße,184 and 186.
Quoted inYvonne Hardt,Politische Körper.Ausdruckstanz, Choreographien des Protests und
die Arbeiterkulturbewegung in derWeimarerRepublik(Münster: Lit,2004),87.For the onlyEng-
lish-languagearticle onWeidt, see, by the sameauthor,“Ausdruckstanz,Workers’Culture,and
Masculinity in Germanyinthe 1920sand 1930s,”inWhen Men Dance: Choreographing Masculin-
TakingaStand: The Habitus of Agitprop 249