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Traditions

Body as Landscape

The Cologne Tanzmuseum is dedicating an exhibition to Raimund Hoghe

by Bettina Trouwborst

An exhibition? Anyone entering the small room at Tanzmuseum Köln pauses at the threshold, struck by a sense of bewilderment: the floor is black, inscribed with quotations in white lettering. A few objects are scattered throughout the space, while photographs line the walls, arranged in a strict, side-by-side sequence. Among them are red discs bearing fragments of memory—some poetic, others shocking. No, this is not an exhibition; it is a mise-en-scène, an aesthetic reenactment that echoes the quiet, evocative minimalism of Raimund Hoghe. It is a setting whose stillness and mysteries one instinctively wants to take in from a distance.

Inscrit – Schreiben mit dem Körper is the title, accompanied by the subtitle "An Exhibition for Raimund Hoghe." This tribute would have immensely pleased the choreographer, dancer, and journalist who passed away in 2021. He was celebrated in theaters across the globe, yet Germany struggled to embrace him. While the French Ministry of Culture named him an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2019, he received the German Tanzpreis for lifetime achievement in his home country in 2020—just in time before his death on 14 May 2021. Hoghe himself attributed this reticence to Germany’s past. "I perform two or three times a year in Germany, but twenty times in France. There is a different kind of openness there toward me and my body. This has to do with German history—with the Nazi ideology regarding the ideal body. I fall outside the norm. People like me are viewed as victims; no one wants to see us in any other role, whether on the street or in life," he once explained to the author of this article in an interview. Hoghe’s experience: "When I walk across the street abroad, people look at me quite differently. More kindly, with acceptance. In France, there are also more short men in the public eye—take Nicolas Sarkozy, for instance."

Under Archways
The city of Montpellier has even named a square after the artist who stood 1.54 meters tall: "Place Raimund Hoghe (1949 – 2021), Danseur, Chorégraphe et Dramaturge Allemand" reads the sign in front of the art academy; a staff member from the dance museum shows it to me on his phone. Hoghe shares this honor with his longtime associate Pina Bausch (for whom he worked as a dramaturge from 1980 to 1989): both were revered in France, and both had a square (or, in Bausch’s case, a street) in the southern French city dedicated to them after their deaths. For the two artists from Wuppertal shared a close connection to the Montpellier Danse festival and the Agora, a former 17th-century Ursuline convent and one-time women’s prison that now houses the Centre chorégraphique national de Montpellier Occitanie.

At the entrance to the Cologne exhibition, one immediately sees a production still from Hoghe’s Montpellier, 4 Juillet 2011—featuring the artist himself and dancer Ornella Balestra—set against the backdrop of the site’s imposing, heritage-listed archways. It was here that he created several pieces, including the commissioned work Si je meurs, laissez le balcon ouvert (2010), a tribute to the festival’s founder, Dominique Bagouet who died in 1992.

Quiet Art
The Cologne presentation is a small, exquisite show. At its heart are the wonderful photographs and the film installation Scrivere con il corpo by Rosa Frank who documented Hoghe's work photographically for almost 30 years. Thomas Thorausch, deputy director of Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln, curated the exhibition together with her. In addition to other media installations and films, texts by and about Hoghe, as well as notations and some objects from his choreographies, are on display. What detracts from the viewing experience, however, is the absence of explanatory panels for the photographs. There is a helpful accompanying booklet with – besides interviews and quotations – a floor plan of the space. In it, all the exhibits are labeled, yet constantly switching between paper and the physical space is tedious.

Hoghe’s art was quiet. On stage, he created worlds characterized by a slower pace; he was fascinated by the simplicity of forms and colors, using coffee beans, lentils, or rice as artistic materials—simple elements he shaped into circles or small piles, much like a child at play, transforming them into installations.

Diva in Gold Foil
With a touch that was as gentle as it was firm, he laid a finger on the woundsof German history and the present day. The music arrived like a balm for the soul—much like the sounds drifting in from a small adjoining room. There, the film Traces – Raimund Hoghe #5 by Sandeep Mehta is playing. Ji Hye Chung’s melancholic solo, performed on the beach in Porto against a picturesque sunset, blends with the music and the gentle rhythm of the waves to create a beauty that is almost painful. This is all the more poignant given its connection to the theme of refugees—a subject Hoghe addressed so movingly in his final piece, Postcards from Vietnam.

Beauty is a major theme in the work of Raimund Hoghe. In his art, he challenges ideals of beauty and the collective societal perception that reacted with awkwardness to bodies like his: "I fight for people with different bodies to be allowed to appear on stage." Rosa Frank’s powerful photographs document his mission—his stature and spinal curvature make him stand out immediately among the other dancers. Anyone who has seen a traditional Swan Lake and then experiences him—set to Tchaikovsky’s music in Hoghe’s Swan Lake, 4 Acts—mimicking the characteristic arm movements grasps this idea instantly. In this spirit, he used his body—which he described as a landscape—to create a contrast with "beautiful" people and harmonious music, even appearing unclothed.

For him, beauty did not stop at old age; rather, it was the expression of a life lived in harmony with oneself. "I saw Gret Palucca when she was 86. There was a radiance in her eyes. She still moved with such lightness—an incredibly beautiful woman," he enthused. Hoghe embodied and staged diversity long before the term became a political buzzword. There is a solo in La Valse—artfully captured by Rosa Frank in a five-part photo series displayed in a special spot within a bay window—that shows the unique dancer as a diva in a costume made of lavish gold foil. Gradually, he emerges from the shimmering material until the magnificent wrapping is nothing more than a heap of gold. Hoghe stands there, revealing his body as it is—and then slips away. What magnificent and courageous imagery.

Inscrit – Schreiben mit dem Körper, until 28 February 2027; www.deutsches-tanzarchiv.de

Portrait at the top of the article: Raimund Hoghe in Meinwärts; © Rosa Frank
Background photo: Raimund Hoghe in 36, Avenue Georges Mandel; © Rosa Frank