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.

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.

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.

Female Power and Gender Transcendence in the Work of Martha Graham and Mary Wigman

2008 ◽  
Vol 40 (S1) ◽  
pp. 28-35
Author(s):  
Catherine Cabeen
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Gender Representation ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Female Power ◽  
Binary Gender ◽  
Gender Ambiguity

This paper contrasts the iconic embodiments of empowered femininity characteristic of Martha Graham's choreographic work and the gender ambiguity found in Mary Wigman's early solos. These modern dance pioneers both emancipated the female body from dominant Western culture's insistence on binary gender definitions. However, their differing approaches to how a liberated female body looks, moves, and dresses provides an opportunity to examine modern dance as a forum for diverse shifts in gender representation. This research draws on my personal experience dancing with the Martha Graham company and historic research investigating Wigman's solo concerts in Germany from 1917 to 1919. This paper makes the claim that modern dance, as a conscious fusion of body and mind, can embrace the fluid complexity of personal identity and encourage both conceptual and embodied transcendence of hegemonic male/female paradigms.

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."

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.

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.

Referral Patterns for Youths Identified at Risk for Suicide by Trained Gatekeepers

Crisis ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael S. Rodi ◽  
Lucas Godoy Garraza ◽  
Christine Walrath ◽  
Robert L. Stephens ◽  
D. Susanne Condron ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Suicide Prevention ◽  
Demographic Characteristics ◽  
Service Access ◽  
Referral Patterns ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Lee Smith ◽  
Prevention Behavior ◽  
Key Variables ◽  
And Gender ◽  
To Receive

Background: In order to better understand the posttraining suicide prevention behavior of gatekeeper trainees, the present article examines the referral and service receipt patterns among gatekeeper-identified youths. Methods: Data for this study were drawn from 26 Garrett Lee Smith grantees funded between October 2005 and October 2009 who submitted data about the number, characteristics, and service access of identified youths. Results: The demographic characteristics of identified youths are not related to referral type or receipt. Furthermore, referral setting does not seem to be predictive of the type of referral. Demographic as well as other (nonrisk) characteristics of the youths are not key variables in determining identification or service receipt. Limitations: These data are not necessarily representative of all youths identified by gatekeepers represented in the dataset. The prevalence of risk among all members of the communities from which these data are drawn is unknown. Furthermore, these data likely disproportionately represent gatekeepers associated with systems that effectively track gatekeepers and youths. Conclusions: Gatekeepers appear to be identifying youth across settings, and those youths are being referred for services without regard for race and gender or the settings in which they are identified. Furthermore, youths that may be at highest risk may be more likely to receive those services.

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