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The Hellerau Festival Theatre
When you enter the grounds of Hellerau Festival Theatre, even for the very first time, you are inevitably drawn in by the pull of this marvellous complex where a heady mixture of decay, metamorphosis and unbroken greatness creates an atmosphere ripe with history. An odd,...
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The Garden City
What was Hellerau? At first, a piece of untouched heathland. However, the moment Dresden furniture manufacturer Karl Schmidt set eyes on this sprawling area six or seven kilometres north of the city of Dresden, he saw in it the perfect site for his expanding "Dresden...
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The rhythmics guru Emile Jaques-Dalcroze and Adolphe Appia, the stage reformer
At around the same time, a feeling of dissatisfaction with music culture brought together Adolphe Appia and Emile Jaques-Dalcroze in Geneva. In 1906, Appia discovered the Jaques-Dalcroze method of rhythmical musical education at a student performance. At the time, both...
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The institute of education
However, none of this could be put into practice in Geneva. Once again, it was the performances themselves which set the ball rolling: they impressed Wolf Dohrn, in particular, so much that in October 1909, in Dresden, he invited Jaques-Dalcroze to turn his visions into...
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The festivals, 1912/1913
In 1912 the festival at the end of the school year provided an opportunity for the first trial performances. The institute of education opened its door to the public, giving the residents of the Garden City and other visitors a glimpse of its work. For a fortnight the...
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Premature ending
In February 1914, Wolf Dohrn died in a skiing accident in the Alps. After the First World War broke out, Jaques-Dalcroze never returned from Geneva. The internationally influential Festival Theatre fell victim to history – for the first time. There were many attempts to...
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From a barracks to an art laboratory
Despite – or even because of – the terrible damage to the site, enough of its magic remained for theatre-makers, choreographers and art scholars from late-1980s Dresden and East Berlin to consider bringing it back to life.
Events since the end of the GDR
Shortly...
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Hellerau sparkles
Under the artistic direction of Dieter Jaenicke, HELLERAU’s aim since January 2008 has been to pick up on the heyday of the old festivals and turn the site back into the most important centre for the contemporary arts in eastern Germany – with a packed programme and an...
