What was Expressionism?
Well, Expressionism freed — killed tradition. It was a new feeling of freedom. Shackled from the shadows of tradition were removed and people — in dancing, the positions and the grace and the charm of what is tradition in ballet was … people were moving with force. Beauty is nature. Beauty is as a cat stretches and moves and yawns. That’s natural. That’s why they freed themselves with movements of relaxation and tension and an entire new movement was born. … Modern dance was free. I went — my first teacher was … Blum, who, during the Nazi time, was a very important person because she had a — well, a technique of tension and release and so forth. I studied with Wigman later too. I studied with everybody who would possibly … [help] me to free myself. How did you come to America and start the Negro American Ballet? I want to come to my point, how I … [came] to America and became, through the German movement, I did a dance of machines with machine noises and the steam whistle
