eine rankes schlankes mädchen...

THEA VON UYY

A BIT PLAYER IN GERMAN CABARET

Born in 1908, Thea was brought up in Vienna within an aristocratic family: her father was the court Hofoberintendant. She studied ballet with Toni Birkmeyer at the Hellerau-Laxenburg school, with Caecilia Cerri, and briefly with Smirnova.

Her first newspaper reviews for performances outside of school are from 1925, for a set of 10 solo dances to music from various periods: Milhaud, Debussy, Haydn, Chopin. She went down well with all the local critics:

It's as if everything we love about Vienna has crystallised in the body of this young Viennese girl: its playfulness, its somewhat sleepy grace, its decadence (which is, by the way, quite vital); its lightness countered by sentimentality, its beguiling charm...

Was it only because she was lightly dressed? More than one critic was reminded of the pantomime and puppets:

" ...it's as if her graceful body could move to any old rhythm to make the expression: and one recalls Kleist's immortal essay on the Marionette theatre: "Affectations appear when the soul is no longer found at the centre of gravity of the movement", and one understands that this "simple and without affectation" is really not simple at all, but requires a great deal of ability and talent."

Her costumes got a lot of interest - designed by Harry Tauber. What were the dances like? They wrote about clever, controlled fire in Sapelnikov's "Sprung", and athletic and gauzy grace during a Chopin e-minor waltz (a nice exercise in lightfootedness and pointe-work). She teamed up with an older dancer - Ernst Walt - and they toured a programme of solos and duets. Bela Balazs ( librettist for Bartok) wrote about Walt:

each movement is a gesture of a modern human. He mentally takes charge, to make dance into a nearly intellectual experience... these are no soft reproductions from an art-historical picture book...

The Chopin waltz was still doing service 2 years later in her Berlin debut : 'Sturm'. She apparently had the discipline, the grace and the originality, to make a career for herself.

Around this time she danced the lead in a new work 'the Invisible Girl' (das unsichtbare mädchen) at the Zoo theatre Berlin. Music by Allen Gray, Choreography Alexander von Swaine, direction Hans Kafka. Maybe this title refers to Balazs' pioneering book of film theory 'Der Sichtbare Mensch' (The Visible Man)...

1927 was Thea's busiest year, and found her giving a breathless interview at the cafe Meran in Berlin.

...and then one day I got a telegram from Karl Heinz Martin, and I went to dance in 'Franziska'. It was a success and from there I was in 'Nelson'. Yes, and now here I am. It's not been difficult. The agent arranged it all and it suits me very well, to my surprise. I didn't believe the public would understand my art, which I take hellishly seriously.. And from next month I'm going to have to commute, appearing in 2 places. God, it's costing a fortune, but, when everyone knows my name....

Higher on the same bill was Kate Kühl - der Gipfelpunkt der Vortragskunst - who gave the voice of experience:

...sure, I have success and work, but still... Look, I have to sing these funny songs so intensely and so often - have you heard my new Harold Lloyd song? - but the public always want old stuff, and then the director wants new material, and that's a really hard one to square... No, I'm lucky, I don't have to rely on it. It's just a one way ticket...

At some point, perhaps 1927, Thea had joined the Matray ballet, and worked in Berlin and Hamburg with the sisters Maria Solveg (later Maria Matray) and Katta Sterna. Solveg was about to score a film success this year, and the stage group didn't last. Thea had possibly already paired up with another Matray dancer, Annemarie Korff, and these two then worked for a while in cabaret.

1927 - they were in the Haller Revue, a big budget confusion of satires, dances and tableaux vivants. Did Ujj and Korff provide a sharper artistic note, against the oft kopiert, nie erreicht Tiller Girls, who in one sequence made a giant caterpillar, and later a mass of shooting stars, alongside Korff's Sagittarius and Thea's Crab? Max Ehrlich played the chief astronomer. In a later section they portrayed glassware, before a finale with a - very modernist - petroleum theme. At least one critic noticed Thea's classical training, and thought the production was the worse for not making use of it: but the crowd didn't mind because es leibt den Tanz...

1928 - touring their act. At the Berlin Alt-Bayern in June they were:

Zwei bezaubernde Tanzschwestern Geissel... die Ereignisse des abends.

Perhaps smaller venues better suited their style: October 1928 - Cabaret Mascotte Zurich, appearing alongside the living calculator Heinz Gihror, and Lotte Kauer comedy pianist.

At the Trichter theatre Hamburg they danced 5 numbers : Waltz and Bouquet - Clownerie - Children's dance - Black Bottom - Foolish Girls. Also featured was Mella Fortuna (eine zweite Josephine Baker) and a US showstopper involving a rampaging gorilla.

1931 - she had decided to concentrate on straight acting, and enrolled at the Deutsches Volkstheater, Vienna: although she played lead roles in the student productions - Catherine in Georg Kaiser's Oktobertag - she didn't break through as a professional.

1934 - She was dancing again in a depoliticized 'Little Art Stage' show in Vienna. ...she sings a delightful French song, dances an elemental Cannibal-dance, and acts with real Viennese irony...

Tonsillitis with complications seems to have put the lid on her acting career. She worked for an artists agency until escaping penniless via Italy to England in 1938, and, from necessity, put the bohemian high life behind her. She married another Austrian exile. Thea died in 1997.

Annemarie Korff made quite a few small film appearances, usually as something like a secretary. I wonder if Arnold Korff (Diary of a Lost Girl) was a relative...? If you have more information about anyone mentioned on this page.....

Thanks to Alan Lareau and Frank-Manuel Peter.

back to the more pages
and some links: Alan Lareau cabaret links - Hear Kate Kühl sing! -
Max Ehrlich and the Westerbork cabaret troupe - Kleist's Immortal Essay...