Fast and Wunder - Reenacting Gertrud Kraus

An intimate choreographic ode

“In 1935, due to the threat of National Socialism, Gertrud Kraus immigrated to Israel, where she became one of the founders of Israeli Modern Dance. Coincidentally, my mother, as a child, lives on the same street in Tel Aviv where Kraus' dance studio is located. Attracted by the sounds of the piano that flood the street, she stands at the window overlooking the basement studio, and watches with emotion what is happening inside. Enchantment and disappointment, because her family is too poor to offer her this kind of happiness. Yet one day, Gertrud Kraus invites her to come in and take part in the lessons.

She then spends several years dancing with Kraus and enjoys a rich musical education. Kraus being a pianist graduated from the Vienna Conservatory of Music, she works her choreographies in a very musical way. It is therefore obvious for her to also transmit her musical culture.

As a young woman, my mother will be part of the “Gertrud Kraus Dance Company”. She then opened her own dance school, where I made my debut at 3 years old.”

Loulou Omer

Artistic intentions

“Fast ein Wunder - Reenacting Gertrud Kraus” - is a tribute to Gertrud Kraus, one of the eminent choreographers of Expressionism and the Viennese Avant-Gardes of the interwar period . The singularity lies in particular in the fact that she touches my family history, but whose impact on the path of my life had escaped me.

Fast ein Wunder is a piece about Gertrud Kraus and her work, was created by Loulou Omer at the invitation of the Vienna Theater Museum by the curator Andrea Amort and the MUK (Vienna University of Music and Arts). What makes it special is that it touches on Loulou Omer's own family history, although for a long time she was unaware of the influence it had on her own life.

Fast ein Wunder - Reenacting Gertrud Kraus was created in 2019. It is an intimate choreographic ode, the result of a ghost dialogue between Loulou Omer and Gertrud Kraus. A ghostly conversation, because the person we are talking to is no longer alive and her work has hardly left any traces. It means hearing an absence, wanting to evoke that absence, to restore the past. A life, a work, a story to act out. It is the will to create a memory out of oblivion.

Fast ein Wunder - Reenacting Gertrud Kraus is an attempt to touch on a mystery that writes the course of a life. It is the desire to revive what is no more, to communicate with the absent, the realm of the forgotten, to trace a fleeting past. It's a dialogue with the enigma of who we are - it's our relationship to history, to heritage, to memory. Above all, it is a homage to the woman whose life, passion and work were groundbreaking for my mother's artistic development - and who subsequently significantly influenced my own artistic being, my joie de vivre. At the same time, it is a tribute to my mother, who passed all of this on to me.

With this piece I want to celebrate all women, all mothers, not just birth mothers, but also all those who lived, worked, created and passed on and then were erased from the narrative of history.

Loulou Omer