Tanz für eine Frau
Dance for a Woman

Description

"The black and white video 'Dance for a Woman' shows the artist as dancer turning incessantly around her to the tune of the waltz 'I dance with you into the heaven' by Strauss. The action is filmed from above and visualises thus the seemingly faceless centre of a spinning voile skirt.
The tune is constantly repeated reflecting the endless turns of the dance. The image is both: dizzy and unsettling. The figure appears from above like the turning ballerina of a music box gentling swaying to and fro in the frame of the screen only to balance itself out again in the centre. The dancing woman resembles the core but, in this form, causes fright. She turns into a record stuck to the turntable of habit and role-playing. The togetherness suggested by the tune is missing completely. The artist paraphrases the title of the waltz “I dance with you into the heaven” by relating it solely to herself. At the end of the tape she breaks down. "(Source, artist's website)

"From above you can see the image of a spinning dancer who turns around her own axis without interruption in time to the well-known Viennese waltz I dance with you into heaven. The figure, dressed in flowing white circle skirts, looks from above like a rotating disk that sways slightly back and forth within the frame of the screen and yet always remains at its center. The constantly repeating rotation is reminiscent of the meditation of a dervish dance, but also of the actual togetherness during the dance, in which the woman here seems to have lost her partner. The paraphrase of the waltz title I dance with you into heaven emphasizes the artist's ironic decision to apply the statement to herself alone and to take her happiness into her own hands. The work should be seen in the context of the media works that Ulrike Rosenbach created in the 1970s as her contribution to women's cultural reconsideration."
(Source: Gerhard Glüher (ed.), Ulrike Rosenbach : Wege zur Medienkunst 1969 bis 2004, Köln, Wienand, 2005, p.219.)

View the work on Stiftung IMAI's website

Additional Informations

ZKM Collection

Publications and Periodicals which reference the work

Gerhard Glüher (ed.), Ulrike Rosenbach : Wege zur Medienkunst 1969 bis 2004, Köln, Wienand, 2005.

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