The Green Table
Kurt Jooss' ballet
The Green Table is a ballet by the German choreographer Kurt Jooss. His most popular work, it depicts the futility of peace negotiations of the 1930s. It was the first work to be fully notated using kinetography Laban (Labanotation). It is in the repertoire of ballet companies worldwide, where it has been staged by Jooss himself. When he died in 1979, his daughter Anna Markard took over stagings of the work. With her death in 2010, Former Dutch National Ballet principal Jeanette Vondersaar assumed those responsibilities.
History
The Green Table was created in 1932 for the "Concours international de chorégraphie" in Paris, in which Jooss had been invited to participate. The originality of the piece won him the first prize and marked an important step in his career. Choreographed between two great conflicts, the work is a sort of generic war, a set of circumstances that produce the same result no matter where or when they are played out. So Death bears the combined iconographic attributes.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Green Table” as kurt Jooss' ballet. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as kurt Jooss' ballet. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 29, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2404976. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1979, 2010 and 1932.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Green Table”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow The Green Table primary sources, The Green Table archive and Green research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Green Table”?
- How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “The Green Table” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.