A dancer raises her arm, shifts her weight, turns – and slips out of the picture the very next moment. Dance presents the visual arts with an age-old problem: how can movement be captured without turning it into a pose? The Kunsthalle Mannheim takes this tension as the starting point for its exhibition ‘TANZ!’ (DANCE!), which opens on 13 November.
The exhibition spans more than 125 years, from Edgar Degas’s dancers through the avant-gardes to the present day. Paintings and sculptures sit alongside drawings, stage costumes, installations, video and performance. Works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Oskar Schlemmer and Georg Kolbe are intended to enter into dialogue with works by Lavinia Schulz, Marie Laurencin and Alexandra Exter. The concept was developed by Johan Holten; the exhibition is curated by Holten and Julia Katharina Thiemann.
From image to performance
The breadth of media announced already shifts the question: not just what an image shows of a dance, but also who performs it and how their work is passed down. A painting survives as an object. A choreography, by contrast, lives first in bodies, rehearsals and repetition. Its notation, recording or subsequent performance can preserve traces – but cannot conserve any movement unchanged.
This is more than a difference in materials. In painting, the creator’s name is usually firmly attached to the work. In dance, the work is distributed across choreography, performance, training and, often, technical and organisational contributors too. Who is credited, who appears in the picture, whose contribution remains documented? The announced combination of dance imagery, costumes and performance offers an opportunity to consider these questions of attribution. Whether the exhibition addresses them explicitly will become clear on a visit.
The body as form and statement
Alongside historical works, the Kunsthalle has also announced new commissions by contemporary artists Tino Sehgal and Isaac Chong Wai. According to the exhibition concept, choreography also plays a role as a source of inspiration for artists such as Emma Amos and Barkley L. Hendricks. This brings into focus not only the moving body, but also the structures that shape movement: who is allowed to perform, which bodies are considered beautiful or suitable, and who remains on the margins?
The history of depicting dance is not a neutral succession of ever-new poses. Images of bodies convey ideas about gender, identity and ideals. An exhibition bringing painting and sculpture together with performance can show how differently these ideas operate in an enduring object and a fleeting performance. The crucial question will be whether the performers appear not merely as subjects, but as practitioners of artistic work in their own right.
What remains when the moment passes?
Live performances have been announced; the available exhibition information does not specify in detail which works will be presented when. This very openness makes the question posed by this preview all the more pressing: an image can fix movement in place, a video can make it repeatable, a performance can bring it into being anew. None of these methods is neutral. Each helps determine what becomes visible and what is lost.
‘TANZ!’ runs until 7 March 2027 at the Kunsthalle Mannheim. The exhibition promises no simple answer to the question of who stays in the picture. For now, its appeal lies in the opportunity to look more closely at the boundary between dance as depicted and the work involved in performing it – and to pay attention to whom the movement is attributed.
Original reviewed by the editors · 31 October 2026
