DEL Examines “The Green Table” with Paul Taylor Dance Company
In our upcoming workshop, participants will experience an embodied reflection of the dance work and consider how dance can both respond to and reflect social injustice, as well as participate in a call for peace.
Those who join our upcoming with Paul Taylor Dance Company will also receive a link to livestream the company’s performance of Kurt Jooss’ The Green Table.
“The Green Table seeks to re-set our moral functions, with good will and kindness as the default.” – Robert Johnson, The Dance Enthusiast
DEL Facilitator Megan Minturn will lead dance educators in “expressive dance” inspired by the classic work in hopes of building empathy, enhancing understanding, and celebrating the message of Jooss’ masterpiece.
There are multiple resources about the work that dance educators may engage with to learn more:
Kurt Jooss discusses how he approached the work, not as a ballet but more like a religious ceremony, and Robert Joffrey asks if the piece was seen as very political at its time of premiere. Joffrey also notes that The Green Table never feels dated but that its subject matter remains significant.
A Dance Research article that explores how the work “insists on telling us about its time, even as it reflects into our own.”
Read: The Founding Father of Tanztheater
This Dance Teacher magazine article looks at Kurt Jooss’s background, training and contributions to dance and choreography.
Read: Kurt Jooss – Dance Theater with a Social Conscious
Another Dance Teacher article explores his style and work. “German choreographer Kurt Jooss was a pioneer of the Tanztheater (dance theater) movement, combining movement, text and drama.”
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”Very likely the most powerful antiwar statement ever devised for dance, The Green Table was first presented in Paris at a choreography competition. The ballet won first prize. A year later, in 1933, Mr. Jooss was forced to flee Nazi Germany because he refused to purge his company of Jewish and half-Jewish members, among whom were F.A. Cohen, composer of the music for ‘The Green Table.” – John J. O’Connor, The New York Times
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