For the last 30 or so years, I have been engaged in understanding and then trying to re-write the history of the German Modern Dance phenomenon that was intentionally modern, philosophically-theoretically devised and promoted together with the practice of choreography and performance. German Modern Dance was a utopian vision that projected and advocated dance as a revolutionary means for social change. It created a theory of movement with distinct aesthetics, as well as a political prophecy, and did not merely advance them implicitly through individual performances. The making of history was so closely integrated into the making of modernist dance in Germany that one can hardly be separated from the other. All this raises questions of how one writes and rewrites dance history – is there a timeframe? Is there a critical mass that is required? Do new histories have to enter main-stream thinking? Do we rewrite by re-defining or re-framing, or by imposing new theories onto historical phenomena, or by devising new categories for the examination of German dance? Does it just happen by itself over time and through shifting sensibilities of actors then and now?

In the following pages, I shall apply the concept of ‘networks’ in my attempt to look back at the beginnings and then to look forward to current practices: were the beginnings constitutive for the entire movement?; were they the cause for a certain historical formation or were they a mere effect?, a tool to better facilitate the intended ends of German Dance spread across the globe?

‘Networks’ are here understood as organizational formations that instigate action, enable interaction and facilitate the realization of specific agendas. Within networks, participants become agents and act in order to bring agendas from articulation towards accomplishment. The Actor-Network Theory1 posits that there exist no relationships outside of networks, albeit shifting networks. That might be correct on a very general level: human beings are social creatures and need to be embedded in social relations to survive, networks are one strategy to do so. But it might also be misleading as several layers of networks in complex societies interact and co-exist and a network theory needs to acknowledge the instability as well as the complexity of human interactions, within as well as without networks.