Throughout his life, Jean Weidt strove to give expressive dance a political dimension. With his company Die Roten Tänzer (The Red Dancers), he organised socially critical dance evenings in Berlin from 1929. Weidt was thus an important protagonist of the political theatre of the Weimar Republic. For him, dance was a mouthpiece for issues of the working class and the oppressed. In 1933 he emigrated to France and worked in Paris, Moscow and Prague until the end of the Second World War. He became internationally known with his group Ballets Weidt, for which he created, among other things, the choreography “Under the Bridges of Paris”, the original masks of which can be found in the Tanzarchiv Leipzig e.V.. After his return to Berlin in 1948, he directed the newly founded Dramatic Ballet of the Volksbühne and later the group of young dancers at the Komische Oper Berlin until the 1980s.