Dore Hoyer

Dore Hoyer (12 December 1911 – 31 December 1967) was a German expressionist dancer and choreographer.

Biography

Dore Hoyer was born in Dresden to a working-class family on 12 December 1911. As a young girl, she learned rhythmics and gymnastics.

In 1940–1941 Hoyer joined Hans Niedecken Gebhard's short-lived Deutsche Tanzbühne in Berlin. After the war, she took over what had been the Mary Wigman-Schule in Dresden as the renamed D.-Hoyer-Studio. This school had been lost by Mary Wigman for political reasons. Under Hoyer's direction, the school created Dances for Käthe Kollwitz. The elderly German artist Käthe Kollwitz was a kindred spirit as she shared Hoyer's dislike for violence and elitism while experiencing empathy with the underprivileged. By 1948 the D.-Hoyer-Studio closed, as German currency reform made it difficult for groups without state funding to survive.

Hoyer last performed on 18 December 1967 at the Theater des Westens in Berlin. She bore all the costs of the performance, which was poorly attended. In debt and facing the possibility that she would no longer be able to dance because of a knee injury, In one of the last letters she wrote before her death, she lamented: "Only in dance could I communicate."