![\"Watch](\"https:\/\/ebooks-a-telecharger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/oskar-1.gif\")
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Given the emphasis on functionality and design for industrial production, the Bauhaus movement<\/a> is rarely associated with disciplines like dance. But for Oskar Schlemmer (1888-1943), translating its principles into movement and performance was as compelling as a well-conceived chair or building.<\/p>\n In the last century, the Bauhaus has indelibly shaped our modern built environments and the ways we think of the relationship between form and function (it even inspired conceptual cookbooks<\/a>). German architect\u00a0Walter Gropius\u00a0founded the school in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, with the intention of uniting architecture, fine arts, and crafts. The school focused on minimalism and creating for the social good and involved artists and designers like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Moholy-Nagy, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Anni and Josef Albers.<\/p>\n The Master of Form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop, Schlemmer was a painter, sculptor, and choreographer responsible for the under-known Triadic Ballet<\/em>, a striking, playful dance structured around groups of three. Debuted in 1922, the avant-garde production comprises three colors\u2014yellow, pink or white, and black\u2014and three costume shapes\u2014the square, circle, and triangle.<\/p>\n “Building on multiples of three,” says an explanation from MoMA<\/a>, “transcended the egotism of the individual and dualism of the couple, emphasizing the collective.”<\/p>\n In true Bauhaus form, the idea was to eliminate the decorative frills associated with ballet, including tutus that allow bodies to bend, twist, and explore a full range of mobility. Instead, Schlemmer’s costumes restrict movement and add a modern quality as dancers appear stifled and almost mechanical, a nod to the movement’s focus on accessibility through mass production and turning “art into industry.”<\/p>\n Several of Schlemmer’s illustrations for the ballet are available online, including his bizarre sculptural costume designs with wide, bubbly skirts and vibrantly striped sleeves. MoMA’s collections contain a print titled “Figures in Space<\/a>,” which reveals one of the performance’s foremost preoccupations: how bodies move and interact in space.<\/p>\n![\"a](\"https:\/\/ebooks-a-telecharger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/schlemmer-1-960x695-1.jpg\")