My research tends to center on contemporary work, but after teaching a course that included Colette and Martha Graham, I’ve become increasingly interested in female voices in various media from the first half of the 20th century. It was thus with surprise and delight that I stumbled into an exhibition of the Weimar era dance photography of Hans Robertson at the Berlinische Galerie. Robertson’s work is relatively unknown, as he was forced to flee Germany for Copenhagen, where his second studio was eventually disrupted by the occupation of Denmark. The collection includes a variety of celeberated and obscure figures from Berlin’s dance scene in the ’20s.

Gret Palucca, Bewegungsstudien (um 1930)