| Vera Skoronel | |
| Birth Name: | Vera Laemmel |
| Birth Date: | 28 May 1906 |
| Birth Place: | Zürich, Switzerland |
| Death Place: | Berlin, Germany |
| Nationality: | German |
| Occupation: | Dancer, dance educator, choreographer |
| Years Active: | 1924-1932 |
| Relatives: | Pavel Axelrod (grandfather) Isaac Kaminer (great-grandfather) |
Vera Skoronel (28 May 1906 – 24 March 1932), born Vera Laemmel, was a Swiss-born German dancer and choreographer.[1]
Vera Laemmel was born in Zürich, the daughter of Vienna-born scientist (1879–1962) and Sofia (Sonja) Axelrod (1881–1917).[2] Her maternal grandfather was Russian revolutionary Pavel Axelrod, and her great-grandfather was writer Isaac Kaminer.[3]
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. At Wigman's school her fellow students included Gret Palucca, Hanya Holm, and Leni Riefenstahl.[4] [5]
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).[6] She was a proponent of the modern style known as "abstract dance", or Ausdruckstanz.[7] Her students included dancer Ludwig Lefebre,[8] 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.[9] In 1930 she and her students attende the third German Dance Congress, in Munich.[10] "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.[11] Illustrator G. R. Halkett described her as having "one face which could not be overlooked."[12]
Skoronel died in 1932, aged 25, in Berlin, from a blood disease, possibly complicated by alcohol abuse.[13] 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.