Vera Skoronel

Vera Laemmel was born in Zürich, the daughter of Vienna-born scientist Rudolf Lämmel (1879–1962) and Sofia (Sonja) Axelrod (1881–1917).{{Cite book|last=Connelly|first=John|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h_aXjb3yLCkC&q=Vera+Skoronel&pg=PA57|title=From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933 to 1965|year=2012|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0-674-06488-1|page=57|language=en}} Her maternal grandfather was Russian revolutionary Pavel Axelrod, and her great-grandfather was writer Isaac Kaminer.{{Cite web|url=https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz116034.html|title=Skoronel, Vera|website=Deutsche Biographie|language=de|access-date=2020-04-05}}

Skoronel (a name she chose for herself) trained as a dancer in Zürich with Suzanne Perrottet and Katja Wulff, and in Dresden with Mary Wigman.{{Citation|last=Heinrich|first=Anselm C.|title=Review of Manning, Susan, Ecstasy and the Demon: The Dances of Mary Wigman|date=July 2007|url=https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13363|publisher=H-German, H-Review|language=en|access-date=2020-04-05}} At Wigman's school her fellow students included Gret Palucca, Hanya Holm, and Leni Riefenstahl.{{Cite book|last=Wieland|first=Karin|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gQdxBgAAQBAJ&q=Vera+Skoronel&pg=PT21|title=Dietrich & Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives|year=2015|publisher=W.W. Norton & Company|isbn=978-1-63149-096-5|language=en}}Funkenstein, Susan. [https://books.google.com/books?id=Zl8c5JOWFeEC&dq=Vera+Skoronel&pg=PA45 "Picturing Palucca at the Bauhaus"] in Susan Manning and Lucia Ruprecht, New German Dance Studies (University of Illinois Press 2012): 45. {{ISBN|9780252036767}}

File:Tanzgruppe-skoronel-foto-susebyk-1920erjahre.jpg, Berlin, 1920s]]

In 1924, Skoronel became dance director for theatres in Oberhausen, Hamborn and Gladbeck. In the 1925–1926 season she was dance director at the theatre in Darmstadt. In 1926 she opened a school in Berlin with fellow modern dancer Berthe Trümpy (1895–1983).{{Cite book|last1=Skoronel|first1=Vera|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sScUAQAAIAAJ|title=Schriften und Dokumente|last2=Trümpy|first2=Berthe|date=2005|publisher=F. Noetzel|isbn=978-3-7959-0853-9|language=de}} She was a proponent of the modern style known as "abstract dance", or Ausdruckstanz.Daly, Ann. "Individuality and Expression: The Aesthetics of the New German Dance, 1908–1936." TDR [Cambridge, Mass.], vol. 41, no. 4, 1997, p. 176. Gale Literature Resource Center, Accessed 5 April 2020. Her students included dancer Ludwig Lefebre,{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/48078401/college-engages-noted-dancer/|title=College Engages Noted Dancer|date=1936-11-29|work=The Cincinnati Enquirer|access-date=2020-04-05|pages=5|via=Newspapers.com}} music educator Hanna Berger, diver Ilse Meudtner, and Polish artist Oda Schottmüller. She also taught members of the Sara Mildred Strauss Dancers, from New York.{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/48078672/european-papers-carry-notes-of/|title=European Papers Carry Notes of Students, of Interest Locally|date=1929-08-11|work=The Montgomery Advertiser|access-date=2020-04-05|pages=18|via=Newspapers.com}} In 1930 she and her students attende the third German Dance Congress, in Munich.{{Cite news|last=Martin|first=John|title=The Dance: Munich's Festival|date=13 July 1930|work=The New York Times|page=102|id={{ProQuest| }}}} "Perhaps no dancer of the Weimar era was as aggressive in the pursuit of an emphatically modernist group aesthetic as Vera Skoronel," according to dance historian Karl Eric Toepfer.{{Cite book|last=Toepfer|first=Karl Eric|url=https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft167nb0sp&chunk.id=d0e5880&toc.depth=100&toc.id=d0e5716&brand=eschol|title=Empire of Ecstasy: Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture, 1910–1935|date=1997|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-91827-6|pages=241–245; quote on page 241|language=en}} Illustrator G. R. Halkett described her as having "one face which could not be overlooked."{{Cite book|last=G. R. Halkett|url=http://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.175048|title=The Dear Monster|date=1939|publisher=Jonathan Cape|pages=228–229|via=Internet Archive}}

Skoronel died in 1932, aged 25, in Berlin, from a blood disease, possibly complicated by alcohol abuse.{{Cite book|last=Wigman|first=Mary|url=https://archive.org/details/liebehanyamarywi0000wigm|url-access=registration|title=Liebe Hanya: Mary Wigman's Letters to Hanya Holm|date=2003|publisher=Univ of Wisconsin Press|isbn=978-0-299-19074-3|pages=[https://archive.org/details/liebehanyamarywi0000wigm/page/n70 41]|language=en}} Her grave is in the Wilmersdorf quarter of Berlin, and there is a small collection of her papers archived at Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln in Cologne.

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• [https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/skoronel-vera-dancer-choreographe-germany-portrait-ca-1932-news-photo/543906983 A portrait of Vera Skoronel], published in 1932, at Getty Images.
• [https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/vera-skoronel-danseuse-choreographer-germany-portrait-news-photo/548810701 A portrait of Vera Skoronel], by photographer Steffi Brandl, from about 1928, at Getty Images.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Skoronel, Vera}}

Category:1906 births

Category:1932 deaths

Category:Entertainers from Zurich

Category:Dancers from Berlin

Category:Modern dancers

Category:German female dancers

Category:German women choreographers

Category:German choreographers

Category:German people of Russian-Jewish descent

Category:German people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent