Bauhaus:

Bauhaus was a teaching institution for the arts established in Weimar Germany in 1919. Founder and architect Walter Gropius wished to unify all of the arts in a "cathedral of Socialism." The word "Bauhaus" is derived from the German word "hausbau" for "construction." Oskar Schlemmer, painter sculptor and choreographer, directed the Bauhaus stage activities from 1923-1929. Schlemmer was not interested in representational theater, but in the theater of abstraction. In Schlemmer's view there are three elements of the theater: man in space; light in motion; and architecture. He saw the life of our time as a product of mechanization. His fascination with the mechanical led him to attempt to reduce all form and motion to the smallest possible number of shapes and movements.

Quotations from Oskar Schlemmer:

"Man stands in the cultural, abstract space of the stage. Man and space. Each has different laws of order. Whose shall prevail? Either abstract space is adapted in deference to natural man and transformed back into nature or imitation of nature . . . or natural man, in deference to abstract space, is recast to fit its mold. The laws of cultural space are the invisible linear networks of planemetric and stereometric relationships."

"Man as dancer is the medium of transition into the great world of the theater."