Mutual Inspiration: Choreographers and Composers at the Bennington School of the Dance

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 108-117
Author(s):  
Elizabeth McPherson
Keyword(s):  
Modern Dance ◽  
College Campus ◽  
Visual Artists ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
American Life ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Integral Component ◽  
American Modern Dance ◽  
One Year ◽  
Do So

Visual artists, designers, composers, photographers, poets, and choreographers were vital participants in the Bennington School of the Dance, which ran on the Bennington College campus in Bennington, Vermont, from 1934–1942 with one year, 1939, spent at Mills College in California. Collaborations were an integral component of the school, occurring between faculty and staff members as well as between students and faculty/staff. Of particular importance were the collaborations between musicians (including Louis Horst, Gregory Tucker, Norman Lloyd, and Alex North) and choreographers (including Martha Graham, Hanya Holm, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman). These collaborations influenced the direction of American modern dance, which was establishing itself with new breath as a form that could express American life and traditions without necessarily drawing upon European composers to do so.

Cunningham, Merce (1919 – 2009)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger F. Copeland
Keyword(s):  
Modern Dance ◽  
John Cage ◽  
Visual Artists ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Professional Career ◽  
Merce Cunningham ◽  
Classical Ballet ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Classical Shape

One of the twentieth century’s most influential dancers and choreographers, Merce Cunningham re-defined the genre of modern dance. He began his professional career as a member of the Martha Graham Company in 1939. However, by 1953, when he founded his own company, he had repudiated many of the prevailing beliefs and practices of previous modern dance pioneers. Prior to Cunningham, most modern dance choreographers (including Graham) vehemently rejected the fundamentals of classical ballet. Cunningham, by contrast, re-incorporated ballet’s emphasis on classical shape, line, elevation and intricate footwork. He offset these balletic elements with eccentric tilts and twists of the torso, back and arms. In the early 1950s, in collaboration with the composer John Cage, Cunningham also pioneered the use of ‘chance methodologies’ as a choreographic tool. Together, Cunningham and Cage fundamentally re-conceived the relationship between movement and music which had characterised virtually all earlier genres of choreography. In Cunningham’s dances, movement, sound and décor all remained independent of one another. Yet the underlying concept of collaboration remained fundamental to Cunningham’s dances, with celebrated composers and visual artists creating sound scores and designs for the company. Over the course of a career that spanned more than 60 years, Cunningham choreographed over 200 dances including Root of an Unfocus (1944), Sixteen Dances For Soloist and Company of Three (1951) Septet (1953), Suite for Five in Space and Time (1956), Summerspace (1958), Rune (1959), Winterbranch (1964), Variations V (1965) Walkaround Time (1968), Rainforest (1968), Sounddance (1975), Torse (1976), Quartet (1982), Fabrications (1987), CRWDSPCR (l993) and BIPED (1999).

Prologue

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Victoria Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
National Interest ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
The Public ◽  
Female Protagonists ◽  
American Modern Dance ◽  
High Level ◽  
Hearts And Minds

In 1955, Martha Graham and her company of diverse dancers landed in Japan to begin their first official State Department–sponsored tour of Asia and the Middle East to countries that President Dwight D. Eisenhower designated as the “domino nations,” or those most likely to fall to communist influence. On the tarmac, Graham was greeted by mass crowds and children bearing bouquets. American modern dance challenged the Soviet ballet, as a tour by Galina Ulanova preceding Graham. Newspapers announced, “U.S. and Soviet Competition in Dancing: Graham and Ulanova.” Graham triumphed with her abstract works alongside tales from the Western canon, fractured narratives, and female protagonists, all to describe the “soul of mankind.” Graham became useful as she attached herself to Eisenhower’s American battle for “hearts and minds,” particularly since she added the frontier and its pioneers to the cast of archetypes presented onstage in “the language that needs no words,” and embodied what she called the “universal.” Graham was heralded as an ambassadress during high-level diplomatic exchanges and embassy parties on the “cocktail circuit of diplomacy.” Graham and her company also functioned as diplomats when they engaged with the public during lecture-demonstrations and shopping for artifacts. While Graham proclaimed that her work was “universal,” and thus not political, one critic remarked that “the patriotic placing of American national interest at the end with Appalachian Spring” served “to underscore the diplomatic nature of this cultural mission.” Graham’s dances were modernist and seemingly apolitical art as creatures of Cold War politics.

scholarly journals Dance, The Divine, and The Devious Other: Orientalism and the Presentation of Race and Gender in the Work of Ruth St. Denis

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Krista Kee ◽  
Class of 2016
Keyword(s):  
Modern Dance ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Eastern Hemisphere ◽  
Isadora Duncan ◽  
American Modern Dance ◽  
And Gender

Ruth St. Denis is considered to be one of the pioneers of American modern dance. She was a performer and choreographer often mentioned alongside the historical giants of modern dance like Isadora Duncan and St. Denis’s own protégé, Martha Graham. Ruth St. Denis’s Eastern-inspired and ornate dance spectacles earned her significant notoriety and enthralled audiences. St. Denis certainly contributed to the evolution of the American modern dance tradition; however, her success also highlights the presence of Orientalist thought in Western culture. St. Denis focused much of her work on what she referred to as Oriental Dancing. Orientalism refers to the idea that the East is spiritual, sensual, and intriguing. Orientalism overlooks the wide variety of cultures and nations in the Eastern Hemisphere and conveniently names them all as exotic other, thus degrading and oversimplifying them. An analysis of two of St. Denis’s most prominent works, Incense and Radha, reveals how Orientalism insidiously affects the perception of both race and gender in dance spectacle while reinforcing imperialist attitudes of Western superiority.

Tamiris, Helen (1902–1966)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Graff
Keyword(s):  
Modern Dance ◽  
Social Protest ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
Negro Spirituals ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Political Activist ◽  
Collaborative Ventures ◽  
American Modern Dance ◽  
Modern Dancers ◽  
Popular Audience

Helen Tamiris was a key figure in the development of American modern dance; along with Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Hanya Holm, she helped to forge the art form. Born Helen Becker to an immigrant Russian Jewish family on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, she was introduced to dance at the Henry Street Settlement House. After a brief stint in the ballet world and on the commercial stage, she gained recognition as a concert dancer with a suite of dances set to Negro Spirituals. These signature works established her reputation as a choreographic voice for the oppressed; themes of social protest inspired her throughout her career. As a political activist she promoted collective bargaining for dancers, organized collaborative ventures with other early modern dancers, and led the campaign to create a Federal Dance Project for unemployed dancers during the Depression years. She was unusual among early moderns in her desire to reach a broad popular audience, and in the 1940s and 1950s choreographed a succession of Broadway musicals, receiving critical acclaim for choreography in shows such as Annie Get Your Gun and Plain and Fancy. Her political engagement and her success in bridging the divide between high art and popular culture distinguish her among American modern dancers.

Maslow, Sophie (1911–2006)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Rossen
Keyword(s):  
Social Activism ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
Significant Contributor ◽  
Folk Traditions ◽  
Dance Company ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Group A ◽  
American Modern Dance

Sophie Maslow, a prolific choreographer and significant contributor to American modern dance, was often characterized as a populist or people’s choreographer because she was inspired by the struggles and experiences of ordinary people. Combining modernism with humanism, Maslow’s work depicted emotional and universal experiences (a hallmark of mid-century modern dance) while also envisioning a more just and equitable society. Throughout her more than 50-year career she drew from a variety of sources, including folk traditions, rural and urban American life, and literature. During the 1930s, while a soloist with the Martha Graham dance company, she began choreographing her own work and joined the New Dance League, the precursor to the New Dance Group, a collective of choreographers who viewed dance as a form of social activism.

Bennington School of the Dance (1934–42)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Candace Feck
Keyword(s):  
Modern Dance ◽  
Training Programme ◽  
Faculty Members ◽  
College President ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
University Of Wisconsin ◽  
Art Form ◽  
American Modern Dance ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University

Bennington School of the Dance served as a highly influential training programme, creative laboratory and performance venue for early modern dance. Founded by Martha Hill, Mary Josephine Shelly and Bennington College President Robert Devore Leigh in 1934 on the college campus in south-western Vermont, the school thrived over nine, six-week summer sessions from 1934 to 1942, including one term held at Mills College in California in 1939. Designed to promote and consolidate knowledge of the nascent art form of American modern dance, the Bennington School also became an incubator for the production and presentation of new works by modern dance’s most distinguished exponents: choreographers Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman and Hanya Holm were among its earliest and most consistent faculty members. Dance critic John Martin, composer and advisor Louis Horst, and stage and lighting designer Arch Lauterer were also important faculty members. The programme’s guiding philosophy proposed that to be viable, a dance education must be associated with exposure to its best artists, sharply distinguishing itself from the competing model formulated by Margaret H’Doubler at the University of Wisconsin, where the study of dance was viewed as an educational end in itself. The Bennington School gave way to the Connecticut College School of Dance and eventually the American Dance Festival.

Denmark-Norway as a Potential World Power in the Early Seventeenth Century

Itinerario ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Már Jónsson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
The Political ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Huge Amount ◽  
Northern Germany ◽  
Lower Saxony ◽  
One Year ◽  
Council Of State ◽  
Standing Army ◽  
Do So

On 2 January 1625, the English ambassador Robert Anstruther met with King Christian IV of Norway and Denmark and requested his participation in a union of Protestant states against Emperor Ferdinand II and the Catholic League in Germany. Within three days, King Christian proposed to contribute five thousand soldiers for one year, as part of an army of almost thirty thousand men. In early June, despite opposition from the Danish Council of State, reluctant to put a huge amount of money into foreign affairs, Christian decided to join what he called “the war for the defence of Lower Saxony”. He then headed an army of mercenaries southwards through Lower Saxony, secured all crossings over the river Weser and prepared to confront the Catholic forces. On 29 November, it was decided that Denmark would be in charge of military operations in Northern Germany, whereas England and the United Provinces would provide a monthly subsidy. The political and military prospects for Denmark were excellent, to say the least. It had the fourth strongest navy in Europe (after Spain and the two new allies), and only a few years before the Danish warships had been described by a French observer as “merveilles de l'océan”. A small standing army of two regiments had recently been established and Denmark was the fourth European state to do so after France, Spain and the neighbouring Sweden.

Thank you to our contributors

1991 ◽  
Vol 29 (26) ◽  
pp. 104.1-104
Keyword(s):  
Pharmaceutical Industry ◽  
General Practitioners ◽  
Advisory Council ◽  
Consensus View ◽  
One Year ◽  
The Many ◽  
Do So

Articles in the Bulletin have been unsigned since it began. This is because they aim to present a consensus view which incorporates contributions from many people, including specialists, general practitioners and members of the pharmaceutical industry, as well as the Bulletin’s Advisory Council. We are very grateful to them all, but although we have often been asked who they are, we cannot name the many hundreds who have helped us in any one year. However, we can at least name those not listed in our tailpiece who have taken a major share in the production of articles published in the last year, and do so now.

scholarly journals MATERIAL LIABILITY OF SENTENCED PERSONS – REALITIES AND PROSPECTS OF IMPROVING AND APPLICATION

2019 ◽  
pp. 153-156
Author(s):  
D. E. Levchanovskyi ◽  
S. V. Tsariuk
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Material Damage ◽  
Practical Activity ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Integral Component ◽  
Penal Institution ◽  
Mandatory Rules ◽  
Educational Influence

The significance of the sentenced person's liability has been investigated. It applies to a convicted person in prison for a term of imprisonment, as an integral component of the educational influence on such person to correct and re-socialize him. The society is accustomed to perceive the State Criminal Enforcement Service of Ukraine as an institution, which by its function is intended to serve the sentences of a court, but the legislation also imposes on it the task of correcting and re-socializing the sentenced person using the methods and means of educational influence that go hand in hand with the execution of punishment. The liability of the convicted person is at the same time a criterion for evaluating the use of remedies and re-socialization and acts as an element of the same educational influence. Therefore, it is problematic for staff members of the Penal Institution to realize the need to apply the disciplinary and material responsibility of prisoners in the exercise of educational influence differently. The content of the article reveals the need to apply the liability of the convicted person as a normative-legal category, through the lens of educational influence on the convicts. It encourages creation of appropriate methodological recommendations and improving the mechanism of their application in the practical activity of the units of the Penal Institution. Аnd the need for appropriate changes at the legislative level regarding the mandatory rules on compensation for material damage caused to a sentenced institution while serving a sentence, which in turn will help to consolidate the foundation of one of the methods of educational influence. It is noted that the purpose of educational influence through material liability is realizing by the isolated person the fact of wrongdoing, legal and material consequences, as well as rethinking his act. This is important because convicts are not required to compensate for material damage. Therefore, there is a need to go to court for material damages, which can lead to a loss of value and "demand" for such educational influence from the staff of the institution.

scholarly journals MOOD CHANGES FOLLOWING MODERN-DANCE CLASSES

2003 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 453-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Lane ◽  
Ruth Hewston ◽  
Emma Redding ◽  
Gregory P. Whyte
Keyword(s):  
Repeated Measures ◽  
Mood State ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
Significant Interaction Effect ◽  
Mood Changes ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Mood Scale

Full-time dancers typically spend a large proportion of time participating in dance classes. The present study examined mood state changes following two contrasting modern-dance styles on a sample of full-time dancers. Twenty-three dancers completed the Brunel University Mood Scale (Terry, Lane, Lane, & Keohane, 1999) to assess anger, confusion, depression, fatigue, tension, and vigor before and after two different dance classes. One class taught was the Jose Limon technique style, characterized by light flowing movement, and the other class taught was the Martha Graham technique style, characterized by bound movements. Results showed that participants reported a positive mood profile before and after both dance classes. Repeated Measures Multivariate Analysis of Variance results indicated a significant interaction effect (Pillai's Trace 6, 15 = .32, p < .01), whereby Vigor increased following the Limon class but remained stable after the Graham class. Future research is also needed to investigate mood changes over a sustained period to evaluate more fully mood states responses to the demands of dance classes.

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