Vera Skoronel
Vera Skoronel | |
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File:Vera Skoronel in costume, early 1920s.jpg
(by anonymous) in costume, early 1920s
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Born | Vera Laemmel 28 May 1906 Zürich, Switzerland |
Died | 24 March 1932 (aged 25) Berlin, Germany |
Nationality | German |
Occupation | Dancer, dance educator, choreographer |
Years active | 1924-1932 |
Parent(s) |
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Relatives | Pavel 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.
Early life
Vera Laemmel was born in Zürich, the daughter of Vienna-born scientist Rudolf Lämmel (1879–1962) and Sofia (Sonja) Axelrod (1881–1917).[1] Her maternal grandfather was Russian revolutionary Pavel Axelrod, and her great-grandfather was writer Isaac Kaminer.[2]
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.[3] At Wigman's school her fellow students included Gret Palucca, Hanya Holm, and Leni Riefenstahl.[4][5]
Career
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).[2][6] She was a proponent of the modern style known as "abstract dance", or Ausdruckstanz.[7] Her students included dancer Ludwig Lefebre,[8] 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.[9] In 1930 she and her students attende the third German Dance Congress, in Munich.[10] "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.[11] Illustrator G. R. Halkett described her as having "one face which could not be overlooked."[12]
Personal life
Skoronel died in 1932, aged 25, in Berlin, from a blood disease, possibly complicated by alcohol abuse.[2][13] 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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- ↑ 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
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- ↑ 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.
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External links
- A portrait of Vera Skoronel, published in 1932, at Getty Images.
- A portrait of Vera Skoronel, by photographer Steffi Brandl, from about 1928, at Getty Images.
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- Articles with hCards
- 1906 births
- 1932 deaths
- Entertainers from Zürich
- Dancers from Berlin
- Modern dancers
- German female dancers
- German women choreographers
- German choreographers
- German people of Russian-Jewish descent
- German people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent