Danse Macabre

Images of death dancing and its tradition, which goes back to the Middle Ages, continue to fascinate people until today. With her Totentanz (Dance of Death) of 1926, Mary Wigman, the renowned protagonist of modern expressive dance, followed in the tradition of popular stories of dead people performing their grotesque dances as unredeemed revenants at night in cemeteries.

Wigman’s dance work, which Ernst-Ludwig Kirchner recorded in drawings and paintings, provides the starting point for a cooperative project by four cultural institutions in Osnabruck, which have dedicated themselves to this theme in exhibitions, installations, a symposium, and other formats. The accompanying book documents the project and sheds light on fascinating aspects of this “final topic.”