Harald Kreutzberg

Harald Kreutzberg was born on December 11, 1902, in Reichenberg, Austria-Hungary, a city now known as Liberec in the Czech Republic. His family later relocated through Breslau, Leipzig, and Dresden, Germany. His father and grandfather worked as circus performers and wild animal act entertainers, and his mother cultivated his early inclination toward theatricality. By age six, he was performing at Dresden's operetta house. He attended the Academy of Applied Art in Dresden, where he developed skill as a draftsman and an early interest in costuming and design. During the years of hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic, he helped support his family by designing women's clothing for a local department store. A "hashish dance" he performed at a student carnival in 1920 was received so enthusiastically that he chose to pursue formal dance training.

Kreutzberg studied at the Dresden Ballet School under Mary Wigman and Rudolf von Laban, two founders of Ausdruckstanz, a movement in which individual artistic expression of feeling and emotion is central. In 1923, he joined Max Terpis, a former Wigman student, at the Municipal Opera Ballet in Hannover. Finding ensemble work uncomfortable, Kreutzberg was steered by the opera director toward small character roles that showcased his gift for acting. When Terpis was appointed ballet director of the Berlin State Opera, Kreutzberg accompanied him. In 1926, Kreutzberg danced the role of Fear in the ballet Die Nächtlichen, a character intended to evoke sinister, demonic forces. Terpis's subsequent production, Don Morte, an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Red Death, cast Kreutzberg as an eccentric jester in a gold costume and mask. Because the opera costume shop could not produce a satisfactory bald wig, Kreutzberg shaved his blond hair entirely, a look he maintained for the remainder of his life. Don Morte also marked the beginning of his lifelong collaboration with composer and pianist Friedrich Wilckens, who became both his musical partner and life partner.

In 1927, theater director Max Reinhardt cast Kreutzberg in Salzburg productions of Turandot and Jedermann, initiating a professional relationship that extended to Broadway. Kreutzberg went on to appear on Broadway between 1927 and 1947, with credits including Danton's Death, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Peripherie, Jederman, and a program billed under his own name. Reinhardt later cast him as Puck in a New York production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1929.

Returning to Hannover in 1928, Kreutzberg collaborated with Wilckens and Yvonne Georgi, a former student of von Laban, on a grotesque pantomime titled Robes, Pierre and Co. The piece depicted a man falling murderously in love with a shop window mannequin and incorporated dance sequences accompanied by typewriters, gunshots, and Kreutzberg singing a falsetto parody of a coloratura aria. Between 1929 and 1931, Kreutzberg and Georgi undertook four extensive tours of Europe and the United States, performing on both coasts and throughout the Midwest. Their programs alternated solos with duets and drew on an austere, streamlined modern aesthetic. Both were athletic dancers with tendencies toward melancholy choreographic moods — Georgi toward dionysian impulses and Kreutzberg toward the grotesque and macabre. Their work emphasized mirror and echo effects, complementary movement patterns, and a synchronized, elegiac quality rather than dramatic tension between the two performers. American critics responded with particular enthusiasm to Kreutzberg, noting his lithe movement, dramatic intensity, and commanding use of stage space. Eyewitnesses described him as appearing seven feet tall on stage.

Among their best-known works was Fahnentanz, a mirror dance in which both performers wore centurion-like helmets, tunic-skirts, and large capes that they waved as flags in rapid, swirling motions. Hymnis, set to music by Lully, was a somber ceremonial piece, while Pavane, using music by Ravel, was performed with even greater gravity, the dancers moving slowly through a dark space in glowing white costumes. Persiches Lied, set to music by Satie, featured Oriental costuming and movements in which the dancers coiled around each other before sinking to the floor beneath a veil. Their 1931 Berlin performance set to Gustav Holst's The Planets was among the largest pair concerts ever staged, employing a monumental abstract set of cave-like entrances, spiraling ramps, and slanting walls. The comedic Potpourri featured polka dot costumes and staged clowning with Wilckens at the piano. Portraits of Kreutzberg and Georgi appeared on cigarette cards distributed as part of Cigarettenfabrik Orami's Famous Dancers Series E collection, alongside Anna Pavlova, Josephine Baker, Mary Wigman, Rudolf von Laban, Anton Dolin, and Ted Shawn. The two performed together for the last time in 1931.

Following the partnership with Georgi, Kreutzberg worked briefly with several other dance partners, including Elisabeth Grube, Tilly Losch, and Ilse Meudtner. In 1930, he and Wilckens met American ballerina Ruth Page aboard the Aquitania, forming a friendship and artistic collaboration that would continue for decades. In 1933, Page and Kreutzberg launched a new dance partnership. Kreutzberg was considered the most famous German male dancer of the twentieth century, though his reputation had largely faded by the twenty-first. He died on April 25, 1968.