Halloween is my favorite holiday. No pressure to find a gift or be romantic or buy rounds of Patron to make sure every one is the same level of inebriated before midnight. Just plain old dressing up like you're someone else and trolling for candy, partying, and scares and tricks. (Not that I'm a misanthrope that doesn't like gifts, romance, and Patron; I love those things.) In the spirit of Halloween I would like to share with you Mary Wigman's Witch Dance. Wigman is an originator of modern dance. She was a pioneer of absolute dance, dance composed of only essential movement; music is not necessary or needed. Much of her inspiration for movement came from exploring her unconscious.
The gestures and physicality that are culturally understood of being "witch-like" are found in Wigman's dance. I think you can see manifestations of this dance in many of our popular culture representations of the witch. In the Halloween classic Hocus Pocus, one of my favorites, Bette Midler is fantastic in her gestures and physicality of representing the witch you always imagined when you were a child with the perfect amount of kitsch. Watch this hallmark scene from the movie when the witches sing "I Put A Spell On You" and notice the similarities between Wigman's hands and Midler's hands, also the similarity in physicality in the way Wigman approaches the camera and the way Midler struts downstage at the end of her song.
Happy Halloween!
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