GOLDEN YEARS | Dance dreams in Cologne

A new departure in the 1960s
Running from 04 May 2024 to 23 February 2025

Forgotten? Romanticised? Remembered! The 1960s were a decade of new beginnings in terms of dance aesthetics and dance politics in Cologne. In a city still reeling from the horrors of World War II, an unprecedented will to create made visions and dreams become reality over a very short period of time. Following the 1958/1959 season, the strive for status and the visionary cultural policies of those years brought about significant progress. The newly built opera house, opened to great fanfare in 1957, was followed by the Cologne Dance Ensemble reforming under internationally renowned choreographer Aurel von Milloss, the foundation of a dance training academy as well as the takeover of the International Summer Academy of Dance from Krefeld. A ballet week with guest performances by international dancers enthralled the citizens of Cologne. And not just them! The cathedral city became a meeting point for dance and ballet aficionados from Germany and around the world.

“Cologne shall be a metropolis of ballet!”
Oscar Fritz Schuh | General Director of Bühnen Köln, the municipal theatres of Cologne, from 1959-1963

During those years, the ballet management staged performances ranging from classical to experimental, which were greeted sometimes by enthusiastic cheering, sometimes by disapproving booing. Inspired by the visual arts and enthused by the spirit of new music, a wealth of new dance works was created in Cologne, with the willingness of the audience to open up to experimental dance growing continuously. Aurel von Milloss (1959-1963), Todd Bolender (1963-1966), Gise Furtwängler (1966-1969) and Peter Appel (1969-1971) had an unconventional understanding of the politics of dance in common. They all took a public stand in their own individual way – on questions of dance aesthetics as well as cultural policy.

How visionary the actions of the Cologne dance scene really were during those years was exemplified by the passionate discussions about a German national ballet, a Rhine-Ruhr Ballet or a German Ballet on the Rhine. Not all dreams become reality, however. And the embittered quarrels about the direction of dance aesthetics continued – arguments that made their way into dance history as the “Ballet Wars” or the “Cologne Critics’ War”. Dance artists, ballet lovers, theatre directors, ballet critics and politicians concerned with cultural affairs (these positions were mostly held by men in the 1960s) all took part in this round dance, which set the rhythm for the narrative of this exhibition about the years from 1957 to 1971. A round dance sometimes comprising elements that do not seem connected directly to dance or dance history at first glance – for example the scepticism of the younger generation towards traditional forms of arts and culture, and the resulting search for alternatives. Also the view through the lens of photographer Annelise Löffler on the architectural rebirth of the city and the day-to-day life of the people of Cologne during those years.

Despite, or maybe even because of all the frictions, Cologne inspired young emerging choreographers who staged their ideas in the shape of choreographic experimental theatre or presented their work to the public and an expert jury as part of a choreography competition.

“I basically worked under a bunch of machos. Balanchine, Cranko, de Mille, Béjart, Milloss etc., they were pretty much all ballet machos. But then came the years of 1967/1968, which were genuinely liberating for me. I was one of the first people to say: ‘That’s enough, Maestro, tell me why I am doing this.’”
Johann Kresnik | Dancer at Bühnen der Stadt Köln from 1962 to 1968

New freedom for young choreographers! The need to cut costs at the theatres of Cologne helped a new generation of Cologne choreographers to break through at the end of the 1960s. Faced with a financial crisis at the municipal theatres, their general director and the head of the city’s cultural department became enthusiastic proponents of modern dance – it required fewer dancers to be employed and was the only viable option to achieve the necessary savings. The end of the contemporary-classical dance company at Bühnen Köln was thus decided. The papers in Cologne decried the Death of the Swans, while Claus Helmut Drese, general director of the municipal theatres, pledged to bring fame and new audiences to dance in Cologne.

“As you know, Cologne has the chance to become a centre of ballet. We have the Ballet Academy, the Dance Archive, the Society for Artistic Dance, all helping to create the right environment for ballet to flourish in the city. I believe it needs new ideas and inspiration and a strengthening of choreography. After an Apollonian period of classical aesthetics, we are now awaiting our return to the Dionysian ecstasy of dance as befits the spirit of our time.”
Excerpt from the lecture “Theatre for Cologne” held by Claus Helmut Dres, general director of Bühnen Köln, on 28 April 1968.