During the years 1943–1946, the Chicago choreographer and ballet director Ruth Page created a compact, innovative vehicle for touring, a concert she called Dances with Words and Music. The programme consisted of solo dances accompanied by the poems of Dorothy Parker, Ogden Nash, e. e. cummings, Federico García Lorca, Langston Hughes, Hilaire Belloc, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and others. Page performed her danced poems, speaking the words herself and dialoguing with them in dance, in New York and Chicago, and at Jacob's Pillow. She also toured extensively to smaller cities scattered throughout the Midwest and South, sponsored by colleges and universities, as well as civic associations, independent producers, women's clubs, and USOs. I argue that Page's marriage of poetry and dance was not just a stopgap measure designed to keep her choreographic footing during the lean years when male dancers were enlisted. It was a deliberate strategy to position herself as a front-runner on the American scene – an architect of the American ballet with a sensitive ‘vernacular ear,’ a worldview, and, crucially, a perspective sympathetic to the psyches of young women and children.
A questão da mulher e a ordem social: o humor em Dorothy Parker