Niddy Impekoven

Luise "Niddy" Impekoven (2 November 1904 – 20 November 2002) was a German dancer of the Golden Twenties.

Impekoven took up dancing at a young age and first performed publicly in 1910. She was considered a child prodigy and received intense dance training from Heinrich Kröller [de] and others.^[1]

She danced almost exclusively to classical music. Her performances were expressionistic and sometimes humorous. Her well-known choreographies included Der gefangene Vogel, Münchner Kaffeewärmer [de], and Schalk. Impekoven became famous outside Germany during the 1920s, performing in Vienna and Prague.^[2] By the 1930s she had toured in the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Java and Ceylon.^[1]

She appeared in three 1920s films, most notably Ways to Strength and Beauty.^[1]

She retired from professional dancing in 1934, in part due to the Nazi seizure of power, and went on to live in Switzerland,^[2] where she published her memoirs in 1955.^[1]

Impekoven was born in 1904 in Berlin to Toni and Frieda Impekoven. The family later moved to Frankfurt and then Munich. In 1919 she experienced a personal crisis, suffering from depression and anorexia nervosa; her parents brought her to Bad Ragaz, Switzerland, where she recovered under the care of Reinhard Goering [de].^[2]

She married Hans Killian [de] in 1923 but they divorced in 1929. She died in 2002 in Bad Ragaz.^[1]

• Frentz, Hans (1930). Niddy Impekoven und ihre Tänze (in German). Freiburg im Breisgau: Urban-Verlag.
• Impekoven, Niddy (1955). Die Geschichte eines Wunderkindes (in German). Zürich: Rotapfel-Verlag.
• Toepfer, Karl (1997). Empire of Ecstasy: Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture, 1910–1935. Los Angeles: University of California Press. pp. 182–186. ISBN 9780520206632.

• Niddy Impekoven at IMDb

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