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Vera Skoronel

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Vera Skoronel
(by anonymous) in costume, early 1920s
Born
Vera Laemmel

28 May 1906
Zürich, Switzerland
Died24 March 1932 (1932-03-25) (aged 25)
Berlin, Germany
NationalityGerman
Occupation(s)Dancer, dance educator, choreographer
Years active1924–1932
FatherRudolf Lämmel
RelativesPavel Axelrod (grandfather)
Isaac Kaminer (great-grandfather)

Vera Skoronel (28 May 1906 – 24 March 1932), born Vera Laemmel, was a Swiss-born German dancer and choreographer.[1]

Early life

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Vera Laemmel was born in Zürich, the daughter of Vienna-born scientist Rudolf Lämmel (1879–1962) and Sofia (Sonja) Axelrod (1881–1917).[2] Her maternal grandfather was Russian revolutionary Pavel Axelrod, and her great-grandfather was writer Isaac Kaminer.[3]

Skoronel (a name she chose for herself) trained as a dancer in Zürich with Suzanne Perrottet and Katja Wulff, and in Dresden with Mary Wigman.[4] At Wigman's school her fellow students included Gret Palucca, Hanya Holm, and Leni Riefenstahl.[5][6]

Career

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Skoronel dance troupe by Suse Byk, Berlin, 1920s

In 1924, Skoronel became dance director for theatres in Oberhausen, Hamborn and Gladbeck. In the 1925–1926 season she was dance director at the theatre in Darmstadt. In 1926 she opened a school in Berlin with fellow modern dancer Berthe Trümpy (1895–1983).[3][7] She was a proponent of the modern style known as "abstract dance", or Ausdruckstanz.[8] Her students included dancer Ludwig Lefebre,[9] music educator Hanna Berger, diver Ilse Meudtner, and Polish artist Oda Schottmüller. She also taught members of the Sara Mildred Strauss Dancers, from New York.[10] In 1930 she and her students attende the third German Dance Congress, in Munich.[11] "Perhaps no dancer of the Weimar era was as aggressive in the pursuit of an emphatically modernist group aesthetic as Vera Skoronel," according to dance historian Karl Eric Toepfer.[12] Illustrator G. R. Halkett described her as having "one face which could not be overlooked."[13]

Personal life

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Skoronel died in 1932, aged 25, in Berlin, from a blood disease, possibly complicated by alcohol abuse.[3][14] Her grave is in the Wilmersdorf quarter of Berlin, and there is a small collection of her papers archived at Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln in Cologne.

References

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  1. ^ "Vera Skoronel – Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln". www.deutsches-tanzarchiv.de (in German). Retrieved 2024-06-14.
  2. ^ Connelly, John (2012). From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933 to 1965. Harvard University Press. p. 57. ISBN 978-0-674-06488-1.
  3. ^ a b c "Skoronel, Vera". Deutsche Biographie (in German). Retrieved 2020-04-05.
  4. ^ Heinrich, Anselm C. (July 2007), Review of Manning, Susan, Ecstasy and the Demon: The Dances of Mary Wigman, H-German, H-Review, retrieved 2020-04-05
  5. ^ Wieland, Karin (2015). Dietrich & Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives. W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-1-63149-096-5.
  6. ^ Funkenstein, Susan. "Picturing Palucca at the Bauhaus" in Susan Manning and Lucia Ruprecht, New German Dance Studies (University of Illinois Press 2012): 45. ISBN 9780252036767
  7. ^ Skoronel, Vera; Trümpy, Berthe (2005). Schriften und Dokumente (in German). F. Noetzel. ISBN 978-3-7959-0853-9.
  8. ^ Daly, Ann. "Individuality and Expression: The Aesthetics of the New German Dance, 1908–1936." TDR [Cambridge, Mass.], vol. 41, no. 4, 1997, p. 176. Gale Literature Resource Center, Accessed 5 April 2020.
  9. ^ "College Engages Noted Dancer". The Cincinnati Enquirer. 1936-11-29. p. 5. Retrieved 2020-04-05 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. ^ "European Papers Carry Notes of Students, of Interest Locally". The Montgomery Advertiser. 1929-08-11. p. 18. Retrieved 2020-04-05 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. ^ Martin, John (13 July 1930). "The Dance: Munich's Festival". The New York Times. p. 102.
  12. ^ Toepfer, Karl Eric (1997). Empire of Ecstasy: Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture, 1910–1935. University of California Press. pp. 241–245, quote on page 241. ISBN 978-0-520-91827-6.
  13. ^ G. R. Halkett (1939). The Dear Monster. Jonathan Cape. pp. 228–229 – via Internet Archive.
  14. ^ Wigman, Mary (2003). Liebe Hanya: Mary Wigman's Letters to Hanya Holm. Univ of Wisconsin Press. pp. 41. ISBN 978-0-299-19074-3.
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