Kurt Peters (dancer)
Kurt Peters was a German dancer, dance educator, dance critic, dance historian and publisher. In 1948, he founded the Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln.
Life
Born in Hamburg, Peters received his professional training in the school for classical dance by Mariska Rudolph, Hamburg, Hungarian Court Opera Budapest, in the opera ballet school of Alexandra Fedorowna-Fokine, in the Laban school in Hamburg and in the school for acrobatics and tap dance of Donald Winclair.He was a dancer at the Hamburg State Opera and in Aachen; solo dancer and assistant ballet master in Saarbrücken; training master and choreographer of travelling variété stages ; training master in step and acrobatics for members of the Copenhagen Pantomime Theatre.
Military service from 1939 to 1945 with a shot in the stomach, foot injuries and imprisonment ended his career as a theatre dancer. From 1946, he was a teacher in Hamburg, from 1965 to 1979 a lecturer and co-director, later director of the Cologne Institute for Stage Dance of the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln and Rheinische Musikschule, where he also taught Kinetographie Laban and expanded the Pedagogical Seminar. In 1953, he founded the journal "Das Tanzarchiv". He also founded numerous associations in the field of dance, such as the "Gesellschaft der Freunde der Tanzkunst" in 1953, and finally the in 1987. He was married to Gisela Peters-Rohse from 1967.
Peters founded the private dance archive in 1948, which was taken over by the in 1986 as the Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln.
He died in Cologne in 1996 at the age of 80 and was buried in.
Awards
- I. classe der GDR, 1957
- Deutscher Tanzpreis 1984
- Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 1987
- Honorary member of the, Cologne, 1994
Publications
Main publication:- Kurt Peters: Lexikon der klassischen Tanztechnik. Eine systematische Terminologie der klassischen Tanzkunst. Hamburg 1961. 2nd edition. Wilhelmshaven 1991
- Kurt Peters et al.: Dance History. In four concise compendia. Wilhelmshaven 1991