Shawn, Ted (1891–1972)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul A. Scolieri
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Self ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
Dance Company ◽  
Ted Shawn ◽  
Modern Dancers ◽  
Professional Dancer

The self-proclaimed "Father of American Dance," Ted Shawn attained international prominence as a professional dancer and choreographer. Along with his wife Ruth St. Denis, Shawn founded Denishawn, the first U.S. modern dance company and school. Shawn thus helped to establish dance as a theatrical art in the United States by emphasizing that dancing is a sacred, nationalist, and artistic form of human expression, thereby challenging prevailing attitudes that associated dancing with prostitution, social degeneracy, and commerce. He also led an artistic crusade to legitimize dance as a profession for men. Although he rejected the term "modern" to describe his brand of theatrical dancing, he was essential to the development of modern dance in the United States in that he trained its pioneers Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman, as well as generations of modern dancers both at the Denishawn schools in the 1910s and 1920s and later at his University of the Dance at Jacob’s Pillow, a school and festival that continues today.

Overcoming and Denial: Disability and Modern Dance in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 58-75
Author(s):  
Bailey Anderson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
The United States ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
Ted Shawn ◽  
Representational Form ◽  
Primary Source Documents

Dancers and choreographers have always been navigating disability within an ableist representational form. This article questions the ableist histories of modern dance in the United States and seeks to redefine how disability is conceived of within the field of dance. The article explores five themes found within archival research, including overcoming narratives, symbiotic and inseparability of dance and disability, denial of disability, changing choreographic practices, and disability aesthetics. Examples of these themes are found in primary source documents about and by Martha Graham, Ted Shawn, and Doris Humphrey and contextualized throughout the article with dance and disability studies theorization.

Sokolow, Anna (1910–2000)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Kosstrin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Underserved Populations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
Dance Company ◽  
Jewish Immigrants ◽  
United States Mexico

In her seventy-year career, Anna Sokolow contributed to dance fields in the United States, Mexico, and Israel. A child of Russian Jewish immigrants, Sokolow rose to prominence in the 1930s as a principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company and as an independent choreographer of her own leftist dance group. She infused her formalist compositions with substantive accusations against authoritarian power structures, highlighted Jewish themes, gave voice to underserved populations and marginalized countercultures, and composed lyrical love ballads and tributes to artists and social figures she esteemed. Sokolow’s early choreography exposed societal ills and indicted fascist governments.

Ted Shawn

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul A. Scolieri
Keyword(s):  
Modern Dance ◽  
The Self ◽  
Artistic Value ◽  
Dance Company ◽  
Ted Shawn ◽  
History Of ◽  
Circle Of Friends ◽  
American Modern Dance ◽  
Extensive Body ◽  
Radical Movement

This book is the first critical biography of Ted Shawn (1891–1972), the self-proclaimed “Father of American Dance.” Based on extensive archival research, it offers an in-depth examination of Shawn’s pioneering role in the formation of Denishawn (the first American modern dance company and school), Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers (the first all-male dance company), and Jacob’s Pillow (the internationally renowned dance festival and school located in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts). For many years and with great frustration, Shawn attempted to tell the story of his life’s work in terms of its social and artistic value, but struggled, owing to the fact that he was homosexual, something known only within his inner circle of friends. Though Shawn remained closeted, he scrupulously archived his journals, correspondence, programs, photographs, and motion pictures of his dances, anticipating that the full significance of his life, writing, and dances would reveal itself in time. By exploring these materials alongside Shawn’s relationship with contemporary thinkers who were leading a radical movement to depathologize homosexuality, such as the British eugenicist Havelock Ellis, writer Lucien Price, and sexologist Alfred C. Kinsey, this book tells the untold story of how Shawn’s homosexuality informed his extensive body of writings and choreography and, by extension, the history of dance in America.

A Greater Fullness of Life

2017 ◽  
pp. 204-218
Author(s):  
Michael Huxley ◽  
Ramsay Burt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Group Work ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Dynamic Movement ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Greater Good ◽  
Explicit Discourse

Although there was no explicit discourse about dance and wellbeing during the early decades of the twentieth century, modern dance artists and educators were nevertheless considering this topic in ways that contributed to twenty-first-century discussions. Hanya Holm, Doris Humphrey, Diana Jordan, and Mary Wigman—key figures in dance performance and education in Germany, Britain, and the United States during this period—each argued in different ways that dance was more than just a form of healthy exercise because it responded to deeper needs and enabled a greater fullness of life. Close analysis of Wigman’s solo Pastorale (1929) reveals the way by which dance at the time expressed individual wellbeing through presenting the self as a vibrant human being. Humphrey’s group work New Dance (1935) used dynamic movement to bring individuals together into a group, showing how the individual’s sense of wellbeing contributed to the greater good of society as a whole.

“An Interesting Experiment in Eugenics”

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul A. Scolieri
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Professional Relationship ◽  
Dance Movement ◽  
Dance Company ◽  
Ted Shawn ◽  
Eugenics Movement ◽  
British Physician

The “ethnic dance” movement in the United States is closely associated with Ted Shawn, the “Father of American Dance” (1891–1972). Shawn and his wife and dancing partner, Ruth St. Denis, founded a dance company called Denishawn, whose repertory incorporated Native American, “Negro,” and Spanish folk dances. By the mid-1920s, Shawn viewed American dance in terms of moral and physical purity—a philosophy he based on the discourse of eugenics. This article explores how the eugenics movement informed Shawn’s vision of American dance in the 1920s, particularly with respect to two of his related writings, The American Ballet and “An American Ballet.” It explains how Shawn’s personal and professional relationship with Havelock Ellis, a British physician who was a leading proponent of the eugenics movement in Europe and whom he considered his idol, influenced his views about eugenics. It also examines how Shawn’s anxiety about his own sexual “unfitness” (his homosexuality) shaped his racist, nativist, and xenophobic “experiment” with eugenics in American dance.

How Martha Graham Became a Cultural Ambassador

2020 ◽  
pp. 37-76
Author(s):  
Victoria Phillips
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
Communist State ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Definition Of

Writing about cultural diplomacy the year before Martha Graham left on her maiden tour, the United States Information Agency concluded, “Events should be planned and ‘planted’ to implement propaganda themes.” Unpacking the telling of modern dance history and Martha Graham’s position as both the global dance “Picasso” and the American “First Lady of Modern Dance” reveals how Graham’s tours became useful to the US government. During the interwar period, a formal definition of “modern dance” in the United States began with references to the pre–World War I and interwar Germans, with dancers seeking to create a distinctive medium informed by modernist tenets through a concept of the “free dance.” American Isadora Duncan, a “Mother of Modern Dance,” had performed for Lenin in the newly founded communist state, and then penned, “I See America Dancing.” Graham’s studies with Denishawn included “oriental” references in its new choreography, as well as Americana. With the rhetoric of Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis, Duncan, Shawn, Graham, and others explored a new dance for the United States in writing and practice: Graham used a technique of distillation and abstraction in Lamentation, and then utilized the approach with American pioneers and frontier nationalism. Thus in the United States, post–World War II scholars asserted that modernism could have emerged only from the “land of the free,” and not from totalitarian states such as Germany or Japan, and certainly not the Soviet Union. Freedom and universalism found through an exploration of the human psyche—tenets built into the form by Germans, Japanese, and Soviet followers—became particularly important in the Cold War “psychwar” campaigns once claimed as “distinctly American.”

Seven Magic Years

Ted Shawn ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 285-364
Author(s):  
Paul A. Scolieri
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Shared Vision ◽  
Attitudes Toward Homosexuality ◽  
Gay History ◽  
Dance Company ◽  
Ted Shawn ◽  
Depression Era

This chapter focuses on the “seven magic years” of Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers (1933–40), the first all-male dance company that performed a repertory of hyper-masculine dances throughout the college and sorority circuits in the Depression-era United States. It elucidates the groundbreaking company’s history through details from the correspondence between Shawn and Lucien Price, an editor at the Boston Globe and one of the earliest and most vital supporters of Shawn’s all-male experiment. Price mentored Shawn in the codes of gay history, culture, and literature, all of which made their way into Shawn’s choreography. Based on details from Price’s private journals, the chapter reveals their shared vision and pursuits to liberate societal attitudes toward homosexuality. It also explores Shawn’s ongoing attempts to gain critical attention within the sphere of modern dance, especially from New York Times dance critic John Martin.

St. Denis, Ruth (1878–1968)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uttara Asha Coorlawala
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
Ted Shawn ◽  
Classical Ballet ◽  
Modern Dancers ◽  
A Company ◽  
The U.S

Ruth St. Denis is considered one of the founders of modern dance, even though the genre had not been named as such during her most active years, which spanned from the turn of the century through the 1920s. Looking for an alternative to classical ballet and Broadway glitter, St. Denis created works inspired by images of Oriental dance and informed by her Delsarte training. In 1906 she created an impressionistic version of the Indian goddess in her solo Radha, and the success of the dance launched her solo career in Europe. There she toured extensively from 1906 to 1909 with a repertoire of Indian-themed works. After her return to the U.S., she added works based on other cultures, including Egypt and Japan, to her repertory. In 1914 she met Ted Shawn, and the two founded Denishawn, a company and school that expanded St. Denis’s repertory to include musical visualizations and widely disseminated her methods and ideas. In addition to extensive tours across the U.S., Denishawn toured South and East Asia in 1925–1926, where the company acquired more repertory from local dance celebrities who were willing to experiment with their own forms. St. Denis influenced her contemporaries in Europe and subsequent generations of modern dancers in the U.S. Indeed, the generation of the 1930s that named modern dance included many artists who had come from Denishawn, including Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman.

Schottelius, Renate (1921 – 1998)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Fortuna
Keyword(s):  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
Modern Dancers ◽  
Jose Limon ◽  
San Martín ◽  
Extensive Performance ◽  
Early Training ◽  
The U.S

German-born dancer and choreographer Renate Schottelius was a pioneer of modern dance in Argentina. Following early training in classical and modern dance in Berlin, she immigrated to Argentina in 1936, where she presented original work and in 1944 joined former Denishawn dancer Miriam Winslow’s company based in Buenos Aires. In 1953 Schottelius travelled to the United States, where she studied with Louis Horst, Doris Humphrey, Martha Graham, Agnes de Mille, José Limón, and Hanya Holm. Schottelius’s choreography synthesizes her roots in German Ausdruckstanz and the U.S. modern dance tradition, reflecting not only her personal artistic biography, but also the confluence of modernist styles circulating through Argentina by the mid-20th century. In addition to her artistic contributions, Schottelius was at the forefront of initiatives to support modern dance production in Argentina, most notably the Friends of Dance Association (1962–1972). Over the course of her extensive performance and teaching career Schottelius also worked internationally at the Royal Swedish Opera, the Cullberg Ballet, and the Boston Conservatory of Music, Dance, and Theatre. A keen teacher of dance technique and composition, she mentored many influential Argentine modern dancers, including Oscar Araiz and Ana María Stekelman. Schottelius acted as artistic advisor to the Contemporary Ballet of the General San Martín Municipal Theatre until her death in Buenos Aires in 1998.

Denishawn (1915–1931)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul A. Scolieri
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
The United States ◽  
Silent Film ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Dance Company ◽  
Immoral Activity ◽  
Modern Dancers ◽  
Film Stars

Denishawn, a for-profit enterprise combining a school and dance company, was founded in Los Angeles in 1915 by the internationally acclaimed solo performer Ruth St. Denis and her husband, then up-and-coming dancer and choreographer Ted Shawn. Denishawn paved the way for modern dance in the United States by challenging American perceptions of dancing as a degenerate or immoral activity and presenting dance instead as a theatrical art. The company performed at private society events and women’s clubs, on vaudeville circuits, and eventually on legitimate concert stages, such as Carnegie Hall. In 1925–27, it became the first U.S. dance company to tour Asia, presenting dances to both colonial elites and local audiences. The Denishawn School of Dance and its Related Arts (and later satellites in New York and other major U.S. cities) trained generations of middle-class American adolescents, several of whom went on to become prominent modern dancers and choreographers, including Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman, as well as Hollywood choreographer Jack Cole. Moreover, many aspiring actresses enrolled at the Denishawn school to study the art of physical expression, several of whom later became silent film stars, including Dorothy and Lillian Gish, Margaret Loomis, and Louise Brooks.

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