Australia Dancing - Demon Machine

Demon Machine

Kirby, Walter: (l-r) Coralie Hinkley, Margaret Chapple, Moira Claux, Eileen Cramer [Kramer] and Mardi Watchorn in Gertrud Bodenwieser's 'Demon Machine', Bodenwieser Ballet, c. 1947

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Gertrud Bodenwieser's Demon Machine was first performed in Vienna in 1924. It was a work for five dancers and dealt with the effects on man of the machine age. It was danced to specially created music, which has not been published, by Lisa Maria Mayer. The work immediately attracted critical acclaim. The British critic Arnold Haskell wrote in 1926: 'These beautiful girls actually became a great powerful efficient machine, and the effect was as inspiring as a visit to the engine room of some great works'. In the early 1930s Demon Machine won a prize a both the Reunione internationale della danza in Florence and the Concours internationale de la danse in Paris.

One of the dancers on whom the work was created in Vienna in 1923, Hede Juer, has written about the creation of the work:

'The work fell into two parts. In the first part the dancers moved weightlessly, untroubled by any problems, in paradisial innocence, through space; while Bodenwieser, as the evil spirit of the machine, kept in the background squatting, staring, rigid. Suddenly a crashing chord and Bodenwieser's first abrupt, thumping movement shattered the innocence and peace. Now with ever-increasing force the demon drew the people closer, gradually overpowering their resistance, until they suddenly became grouped in front of the demon as parts of a dehumanised, soul-less mechanism, completely under the demonic compulsion. Now the machine began to work, as presses, pistons, wheels and seemingly with all the reciprocating motions that the observer sees who looks into the heart of moving machinery; and gathering speed as it worked, and exerting its unrelenting force and momentum. Music and movement stopped abruptly, the power switched off. No trace of humanity is left.'

In Australia Demon Machine became a staple item in the repertoire of the Bodenwieser Ballet. A version of it, called 'The machine', was performed by the Bodenwieser Troupe ('Seven Famous Dancing Viennese Girls') in two J. C. Williamson revues London Casino Revue: Folies d'Amour and Around the Clock in which some of Bodenwieser's dancers appeared shortly after their arrival in Australia in 1939. It also appeared on the program for the company's first Australian tour of of 1939-1940. Programs for those first Australian performances do not identify the cast other than 'Ballet group', which must have been selected from the six dancers of the group for that tour: Emmy Taussig, Evelyn Ippen, Melitta Melzer, Edith Shorter, Bettina Browne and Katja Georgiewa.

Australian program notes over the period that the work was performed gave the following explanation of the work: 'The machine gains ascendancy over the souls of the people instead of man dominating the machine. The vital problem of our age'.

Bibliography:

Meg Abbie Denton and Genevieve Shaw, 'Gertrud Bodenwieser: The Demon Machine', Dance Notation Journal, 4 (No. 1, 1986), pp. 21-29.

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Find more about Demon Machine in:

Internet - Google
Articles - New York Public Library Dance Collection
Pictures - Picture Australia