To be A Body for You: On Sensing and Making Sense of Another Dancer's Life.

Academic summary

My PhD project builds on three years of preliminary research into the life of the German–Norwegian dancer Elsa Lindenberg (1906–1990) and her important, yet largely undocumented, body of work. Although regarded as a pioneer of Laban’s free dance in Norway and one of Oslo’s first dance therapists, Lindenberg is most often remembered as the second wife of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich—reduced to a footnote in a man’s life.

Lindenberg’s life and work constitute a crucial, yet missing, chapter in Norwegian dance history. Spanning Weimar Berlin’s avant-garde, free body culture, exile in Norway, anti-fascist activism, and a later turn toward somatics and movement therapy, her story resembles a time capsule—half buried, yet still vibrating with life.

My overarching method is “to be your body for you”: an approach that investigates dance through the tension between embodying for another and embodying for oneself. At its core, the project asks: How can we sense and make sense of the life of another dancer—as a dancer—through dancing?

The research departs from an embodied encounter with Lindenberg’s material and immaterial legacy. As the first researcher to access her extensive private archive, I combine archival research with somatic practice, including participation in Spenningsregulering (tension regulation) classes, a practice established by Lindenberg in 1964 and rooted in the work of the German somatic pioneer Elsa Gindler (1885–1961). Collaborations with experts further situate Lindenberg’s work within Reichian and Labanian contexts and highlight its significance within a broader geopolitical framework.

Through the format of somatic performative biography, the project develops a plural and relational account of Lindenberg’s life. In partnership with Danseinformasjonen, her archive will be transferred to the Norsk Riksarkivet, ensuring its preservation and accessibility for future scholarship.