Pneumatic Dancing Girls

2020 ◽  
pp. 145-188
Author(s):  
Anya P. Foxen
Keyword(s):  
Modern Dance ◽  
New Thought ◽  
Isadora Duncan

Chapter 4 examines American Delsarteism as a form of harmonialism, positioning it between harmonial breath and movement practices being advocated within the broader New Thought movement and the development of modern dance. It focuses on the work of Genevieve Stebbins, whose use of esotericism closely connects her to prominent proponents of New Thought such as Warren Felt Evans, but whose influence on women such as Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis makes her something of a grandmother of modern dance. It then traces the innovations within American Delsarteism exemplified by Stebbins into Duncan’s work, which exhibits a strong esotericist influence and a harmonial subcurrent. In this context, it points out the lack of Asian content in these formulations as they culminate in Duncan’s strong Hellenic neoclassicism. Finally, it positions St. Denis as a contrast to Duncan’s Hellenism by focusing on her engagement with a resurgent and popularly explosive Orientalism.

Wiesenthal, Grete (1885–1970)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Kolb
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Body Image ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Ballet Dancer ◽  
Art Nouveau ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Isadora Duncan ◽  
The Aesthetic

The Austrian dancer and choreographer Grete Wiesenthal was a transitional figure at the crossroads of ballet and modern dance. Initially trained and employed as a ballet dancer at the court opera in Vienna, she soon became disillusioned with the aesthetic traditionalism of ballet and in 1907 embarked on an independent career. Performing with two of her sisters and later as a soloist, she devised a new dance style and technique that emphasized bodily expressivity with motivational impulses provided by music. In the context of Viennese modernism, Wiesenthal’s work offered a novel interpretation of the Viennese waltz as a theatre dance form, oscillating between art nouveau and symbolism. She was groundbreaking in the Austro-German dance scene, exploring female creativity and individualism while contravening balletic principles. Although her career began in Vienna, she toured extensively across much of Europe and overseas, notably in New York, and hence extended her influence internationally. Wiesenthal shared with female contemporaries Anna Pavlova and Isadora Duncan a natural grace, expressive artistry, and flexibility of hands and arms. However, unlike Pavlova, Wiesenthal transgressed the confines and repertory of ballet – for instance, eschewing pointe work. Like Duncan, her body image was liberated, but she was less daring in her choice of costumes – for instance, dancing in sandals rather than barefoot – and drew inspiration from local cultural traditions and not from Greek antiquity.

scholarly journals “Feeling” in Modern Dance Print Media: Loïe Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Maud Allan

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Doran
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Print Media ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Regular Feature ◽  
Traditional Dance ◽  
Isadora Duncan ◽  
Modern Dancers ◽  
Style Of Writing ◽  
Loie Fuller

Between 1890 and 1920, modern dancers such as Isadora Duncan, Loïe Fuller, and Maud Allan presented a new performative aesthetic in dance. Breaking from the narrative storytelling that dominated nineteenth-century vaudeville and ballet, these dancers advanced non-narrative movement, thereby encouraging a new aesthetic engagement from the audience, namely, one that was rooted in notions of corporeal sensation rather than narrative telos or (melo)dramatic pathos. These new responses, this dissertation argues, are reflected in the new tactics for writing the dancing body, which at once render problematic the putative objectivity of journalistic criticism and reveal the limits of traditional dance criticism’s focus on intricate technique and plot line. This dissertation pursues its argument by studying over 300 print reviews of dances performed by Fuller, Duncan, and Allan between 1890 and 1920 culled from North-American archives and representing a spectrum of print media—from mainstream national media, such as The New York Times, to regional newspapers, to more specialized theatre magazines—to reveal compelling insight into hermeneutic entanglements of language and movement. Informed by the work of recent performance studies (e.g. Phelan; Schneider; Taylor), this dissertation approaches this body of dance reviews from an inverse perspective from that represented by traditional dance history scholarship. That is, instead of reading reviews as documentation in order to understand these dances, the study explores how reviewers perform criticism, thus framing our understanding of modern dance in specific ways. This dissertation engages with the correlation between media and performance as either documentary or performative, arguing that writing performance offers promises for both types of engagement with the live event. Collectively, these reviews reveal that dance criticism involved a metacritical reflection on the significance of the critical writing act itself, and advanced a style of synesthetic metaphor to describe novel kinesthetic experiences of spectatorship. Ultimately, the new tactics to modern dance criticism not only revealed a crisis in articulation but prompted a performative style of writing dance criticism that went in tandem with the development of the dance review genre itself, whose placement in popular print media was mounting to become a regular feature by the 1930s.

scholarly journals “Feeling” in Modern Dance Print Media: Loïe Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Maud Allan

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Doran
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Print Media ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Regular Feature ◽  
Traditional Dance ◽  
Isadora Duncan ◽  
Modern Dancers ◽  
Style Of Writing ◽  
Loie Fuller

Between 1890 and 1920, modern dancers such as Isadora Duncan, Loïe Fuller, and Maud Allan presented a new performative aesthetic in dance. Breaking from the narrative storytelling that dominated nineteenth-century vaudeville and ballet, these dancers advanced non-narrative movement, thereby encouraging a new aesthetic engagement from the audience, namely, one that was rooted in notions of corporeal sensation rather than narrative telos or (melo)dramatic pathos. These new responses, this dissertation argues, are reflected in the new tactics for writing the dancing body, which at once render problematic the putative objectivity of journalistic criticism and reveal the limits of traditional dance criticism’s focus on intricate technique and plot line. This dissertation pursues its argument by studying over 300 print reviews of dances performed by Fuller, Duncan, and Allan between 1890 and 1920 culled from North-American archives and representing a spectrum of print media—from mainstream national media, such as The New York Times, to regional newspapers, to more specialized theatre magazines—to reveal compelling insight into hermeneutic entanglements of language and movement. Informed by the work of recent performance studies (e.g. Phelan; Schneider; Taylor), this dissertation approaches this body of dance reviews from an inverse perspective from that represented by traditional dance history scholarship. That is, instead of reading reviews as documentation in order to understand these dances, the study explores how reviewers perform criticism, thus framing our understanding of modern dance in specific ways. This dissertation engages with the correlation between media and performance as either documentary or performative, arguing that writing performance offers promises for both types of engagement with the live event. Collectively, these reviews reveal that dance criticism involved a metacritical reflection on the significance of the critical writing act itself, and advanced a style of synesthetic metaphor to describe novel kinesthetic experiences of spectatorship. Ultimately, the new tactics to modern dance criticism not only revealed a crisis in articulation but prompted a performative style of writing dance criticism that went in tandem with the development of the dance review genre itself, whose placement in popular print media was mounting to become a regular feature by the 1930s.

scholarly journals India and the Translocal Modern Dance Scene, 1890s–1950s

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-59
Author(s):  
Gabriela Vargas-Cetina
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Rabindranath Tagore ◽  
Ted Shawn ◽  
Isadora Duncan ◽  
Indian Dance ◽  
Variety Show ◽  
Delsarte Method

At the end of the nineteenth century and during the first half of the twentieth, lead dancers from different countries became famous and toured internationally. These dancers—and the companies they created—transformed various dance forms into performances fit for the larger world of art music, ballet, and opera circuits. They adapted ballet to the variety-show formats and its audiences. Drawing on shared philosophical ideas—such as those manifest in the works of the Transcendentalists or in the writings of Nietzsche and Wagner—and from movement techniques, such as ballet codes, the Delsarte method, and, later on, Eurythmics (in fashion at the time), these lead dancers created new dance formats, choreographies, and styles, from which many of today’s classical, folk, and ballet schools emerged. In this essay, I look at how Rabindranath Tagore, Isadora Duncan, Anna Pavlova, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, Uday Shankar, Leila Roy Sokhey and Rumini Devi Arundale contributed to this translocal dance scene. Indian dance and spirituality, as well as famous Indian dancers, were an integral part of what at the time was known as the international modern dance scene. This transnational scene eventually coalesced into several separate schools, including what today is known as classical and modern Indian dance styles.

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.

Why Dance? Towards a Theory of Religion as Practice and Performance

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimerer LaMothe
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Valuable Resource ◽  
Theory Of Religion ◽  
Isadora Duncan ◽  
Phenomenology Of Religion ◽  
American Modern Dance ◽  
And Performance

AbstractThis article engages the dancing and writing of the American modern dance pioneer, Isadora Duncan (1877-1927), and the phenomenology of religion and dance authored by the Dutch phenomenologist, theologian, and historian of religion, Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890-1950), in order to argue that "dance" is a valuable resource for developing theories and methods in the study of religion that move beyond belief-centered, text-driven approaches. By setting the work of Duncan and van der Leeuw in the context of the emergence of the field of religious studies, this article not only offers conceptual tools for appreciating dance as a medium of religious experience and expression, it also plots a trajectory for the development of a theory of religion as practice and performance. Such a theory will benefit scholars eager to attend more closely to the role of bodily being in the life of "religion."

scholarly journals “More than in a Costume”: “Barefoot” Dancers and Russian Ballet Costume at the Beginning of the 20th Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 366-385
Author(s):  
I.A. Voytova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Complex Method ◽  
Ballet Dancers ◽  
Isadora Duncan ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Loie Fuller

The beginning of reform in Russian ballet of the 1900s is connected by the most part of researchers with the first performances of Isadora Duncan in Russia (1904–1905). Her great influence on Russian ballet choreography and costume is explored well enough and indisputable. Nevertheless, free dance or “modern dance” became popular in the USA and in Europe because of Duncan’s predecessor, another American dancer Loie Fuller. It was a major tendency included creativity of such different performers as Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Maud Allan, Mata Hari and many others. The author of the presented article uses the complex method to analyze the reforms of dancing costume carried out by so called “barefoot” dancers and their influence on Russian ballet costume at the beginning of the 20th century, revealing general transformations and some direct parallels between costumes of “barefoot” dancers and Russians ballet dancers.

Dancing in the Modus of Self-Identification

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 638-647
Author(s):  
Elena E. Drobysheva
Keyword(s):  
Modern Dance ◽  
Main Idea ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Creative Activity ◽  
Artistic Activity ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Postmodern Dance ◽  
Isadora Duncan ◽  
Directed Thinking ◽  
Identification Procedures

The main idea of the article is to address the phenomenon of dancing as a type of creative activity in the modus of self-identification. Sociocultural (self-)identification within the framework of art is taken as the process and space of forming an outline — personal and collective — in relation to certain groups of values, norms and traditions, as a way to discover the boundaries of reflexivity and the possibility of their representation in an artistic act. Basing on the interpretation of reflection as self-directed thinking, this article solves the problem of showing the potential of art in general, and dancing in particular, in the aspect of formation and preservation of identity parameters. The identity is considered as the result of constructing metaphysical supports and methods of self-representation in the widest range: national, religious, ideological, gender, but above all — the actual artistic-stylistic one. In addition to the obvious value of beauty and harmony, the article highlights expressiveness and authenticity as the main axiological guidelines for the art of choreography. The author analyzes the high communicative potential of dancing as a type of artistic activity both at the professional and amateur levels. The article focuses on the specifics of self-identification procedures in the space of modern dance, interpreted in this context in a wide chronological field — from the emergence of “free dance” by Isadora Duncan to current trends in postmodern dance, “contemporary dance” and performative practices. The study concludes that dancing has a high axiological potential as an artistic activity that combines physical and metaphysical practices.

Costumes and Choreography from Bodenwieser's Trunk: The Coat as Affective Memory

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-110
Author(s):  
Rachel Fensham
Keyword(s):  
Modern Dance ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Creative Thought ◽  
Cain And Abel ◽  
Embodied Research ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Selection Of

The Viennese modern choreographer Gertrud Bodenwieser's black coat leads to an analysis of her choreography in four main phases – the early European career; the rise of Nazism; war's brutality; and postwar attempts at reconciliation. Utilising archival and embodied research, the article focuses on a selection of Bodenwieser costumes that survived her journey from Vienna, or were remade in Australia, and their role in the dramaturgy of works such as Swinging Bells (1926), The Masks of Lucifer (1936, 1944), Cain and Abel (1940) and The One and the Many (1946). In addition to dance history, costume studies provides a distinctive way to engage with the question of what remains of performance, and what survives of the historical conditions and experience of modern dance-drama. Throughout, Hannah Arendt's book The Human Condition (1958) provides a critical guide to the acts of reconstruction undertaken by Bodenwieser as an émigré choreographer in the practice of her craft, and its ‘materializing reification’ of creative thought. As a study in affective memory, information regarding Bodenwieser's personal life becomes interwoven with the author's response to the material evidence of costumes, oral histories and documents located in various Australian archives. By resurrecting the ‘dead letters’ of this choreography, the article therefore considers how dance costumes offer the trace of an artistic resistance to totalitarianism.

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