With all respect to Dan Ronen for his comprehensive and important article, I want to correct the information about Rudolph von Laban who was German, though he also worked in Vienna; for his huge workers' parade in Vienna he had Gertrud Kraus as his assistant. Laban was supposed to stage the 1936 Olympic pageants glorifying the Nazis including thousands of dancers, but his protege Mary Wigman took over after Laban left for England. HIs Nazi sympathies are the cause of much debate. Wigman was clearly a Nazi sympathizer, dismissing all her Jewish performers from her company in 1933. Some of the Jewish dancers luckily escaped (Pola Nurinska ultimately for the US) and others reached the Yishuv and created dance there. (Elsa Dublon, Shulamit Bat-Dori, Katia Michieli and others)
With all respect to Dan Ronen for his comprehensive and important article, I want to correct the information about Rudolph von Laban who was German, though he also worked in Vienna; for his huge workers' parade in Vienna he had Gertrud Kraus as his assistant. Laban was supposed to stage the 1936 Olympic pageants glorifying the Nazis including thousands of dancers, but his protege Mary Wigman took over after Laban left for England. HIs Nazi sympathies are the cause of much debate. Wigman was clearly a Nazi sympathizer, dismissing all her Jewish performers from her company in 1933. Some of the Jewish dancers luckily escaped (Pola Nurinska ultimately for the US) and others reached the Yishuv and created dance there. (Elsa Dublon, Shulamit Bat-Dori, Katia Michieli and others)