Biography

Jean Weidt

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Jean was a German dancer and choreographer. He first danced with a youth folk dance troupe and later studied with Leeder and Olga Brandt-Knaack. He gave his first solo concert in Hamburg in 1925, including the first version of his signature piece, The Worker. In the same year he formed his own company, with which he moved to Berlin in 1929 where it became known as the Red Dancers. The political content of his works grew stronger with the rise of fascism and he was briefly arrested in 1933. He then lived and worked in Moscow, Prague, and Paris, continuing to choreograph work with intense political and humanitarian concerns, such as The Cell (1947). From 1948 to 1950 he directed the Dramatic Ballet at the Volksbühne in E. Berlin, then worked at opera houses in Schwerin and Karl-Marx-Stadt and at Berlin's Komische Oper (1958-66 and 1978-80).
- IMDb mini biography by: André Rigaud

He was a dancer.
Louis Armstrong had some of his first engagements from Jean Weidt, and toured with the company across Europe between 1933 and 1936.
In his extreme old age Jean Weidt developed the "Dance Hour" series, in which all the top dance companies of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) took part. It was by some criteria Jean Weidt's most successful post-war production.
In May 1933 Hans Weidt escaped to Moscow, from where he moved into Paris which was becoming the informal headquarters of the German Communist Party in exile. In Paris he got to know Jean Gabin, Maurice Chevalier, Pablo Picasso (for whom he on several occasion s sat as a model) and Josephine Baker.
In 1933 he founded the "Weidt Group" ballet company, which performed at Communist party sponsored rallies. Works included "Unter den Brücken von Paris" ("Under the Paris bridges"), "L'été aux champs" ("Summer in the fields") and "Sur la grande route" ("On the highway"). Some of his programme sheets included contributions from Jean Cocteau.

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