Oklahoma!

Agnes de Mille’s dance innovations in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s groundbreaking musical Oklahoma! (1943) altered the function of dance on Broadway. This chapter will consider de Mille’s project in relation to Broadway dance in the 1930s and her role as a proponent of Americana dance. A reassessment of her contributions as a modernist, women’s advocate, and a dramaturgically astute dance maker who manipulated librettos to convey her point of view will be offered. De Mille’s early Broadway failures, her tenacity, and how she made Broadway a place to present expressive, narrative dance are considered. Her employment of modern dance methodologies primarily taken from techniques developed by Martha Graham and Louis Horst, with whom she was closely associated, made the commercial theater a venue for dance innovation.

Nietzsche's Looming Presence in the 1930s Dance Polemics of John Martin and Lincoln Kirstein

Some of the most perplexingly antagonistic comments about the differences between modern dance and ballet can be found strewn throughout the works of two pioneering twentieth-century American dance writers: John Martin (1893–1985) – The New York Times's first permanent dance critic, champion of modern dancers and early supporter of Martha Graham ( Kisselgoff et al. 1988 : 44) – and Lincoln Kirstein (1907–1996), the prodigious author, impresario, and balletomane, who cofounded with George Balanchine the New York City Ballet. Looming behind a significant number of Martin's and Kirstein's appraisals and condemnations of modern dance and ballet are Friedrich Nietzsche's aesthetics, particularly his Apollonian-Dionysian conceptualisations. This essay investigates the reception of Nietzsche in the context of the 1930s writing of these two dance critics, particularly in respect to their treatment of gender. Foundational for this essay's development are the analyses of Nietzsche's reception by earlier twentieth-century dance figures in the works of Susan Jones (2013 , 2010 ), Susan Manning (2006) and Kimerer LaMothe (2006) .

Níveis de Flexibilidade e Força Muscular Abdominal em Bailarinas Submetidas à Técnica de Dança Moderna de Martha Graham

ResumoO objetivo do presente estudo foi analisar os níveis de flexibilidade e força muscular abdominal em bailarinas submetidas à técnica de dança moderna de Martha Graham. A pesquisa se caracterizou por um delineamento quase-experimental, onde foi utilizado como amostra 50 bailarinas, com idade média de 18 ± 5,29 anos, de um grupo de dança do Colégio Gentil Bittencourt, localizado no Bairro Nazaré, em Belém, Pará. A amostra foi submetida ao programa de dança moderna de Martha Graham durante 12 semanas. Para a avaliação das variáveis foram utilizados: a goniometria (na avaliação da flexibilidade) nos movimentos espacate antero-anterior/flexão, espacate antero-anterior/extensão, espacate latero-lateral, extensão, elevação frontal e elevação lateral da articulação do quadril, o máxima de 1 minuto (na avaliação da força muscular abdominal). Foi realizada a análise estatística descritiva com o objetivo de estimar as medidas de tendência central (média e mediana) e variação (desvio-padrão e erro-padrão) além da distribuição de frequências, absolutas e relativas. E a análise estatística inferencial por meio do teste de Shapiro Wilk para a análise da normalidade da amostra; o teste de Wilcoxon (não-paramétrico) e o teste t de Student (paramétrico) para comparação entre as médias dos dois diferentes momentos de testagem (antes e depois do treinamento). Nos resultados pôde-se observar aumentos significativos, no pós-teste, nas variáveis: flexibilidade (para todos os movimentos - espacate antero-anterior/flexão (?=4,43 graus; p=0,039), espacate antero-anterior/extensão (?=5,02 graus; p=0,004), espacate latero-lateral (?=12,91 graus; p=0,014), extensão (?=8,40 graus; p=0,000), elevação frontal (?=15,57 graus; p=0,000) e elevação lateral (?=10,11 graus; p=0,000), e nos níveis de força abdominal ((? = 2,70 repetições; p=0,000). Desta forma, pôde-se concluir que a intervenção da dança moderna pode gerar aumentos na amplitude de movimento articular, nos níveis de flexibilidade e na força muscular abdominal em sujeitos jovens.AbstractLevels of flexibility and abdominal muscle strength in dancers submitted to Martha Graham's modern dance technique The aim of the present study was to analyze the levels of flexibility and abdominal muscle strength in dancers submitted to Martha Graham's modern dance technique. The research was characterized by a quasi-experimental design, where 50 dancers, with an average age of 18 ± 5.29 years old, from a dance group at Colégio Gentil Bittencourt, located in Bairro Nazaré, in Belém, Pará, were used as a sample. The sample was submitted to Martha Graham's modern dance program for 12 weeks. For the evaluation of the variables, the following were used: goniometry (in the assessment of flexibility) in the anteroposterior / flexion movements, antero-anterior splits / extension, latero- lateral extension, frontal elevation and lateral elevation of the hip joint, the maximum of 1 minute (in the evaluation of abdominal muscle strength). Descriptive statistical analysis was performed in order to estimate measures of central tendency (mean and median) and variation (standard deviation and standard error) in addition to the distribution of frequencies, absolute and relative. And inferential statistical analysis using the Shapiro Wilk test to analyze the sample's normality; the Wilcoxon test (non-parametric) and the Student t test (parametric) for comparison between the means of the two different testing moments (before and after training). In the results, it was possible to observe significant increases, in the post-test, in the variables: flexibility (for all movements - antero-anterior splitting / flexion (? = 4.43 degrees; p = 0.039), antero-anterior splitting / extension ( ? = 5.02 degrees; p = 0.004), laterolateral splits (? = 12.91 degrees; p = 0.014), extension (? = 8.40 degrees; p = 0.000), frontal elevation (? = 15, 57 degrees; p = 0.000) and lateral elevation (? = 10.11 degrees; p = 0.000), and in the abdominal strength levels (? = 2.70 repetitions; p = 0.000). that the intervention of modern dance can generate increases in the range of articular movement, levels of flexibility and abdominal muscle strength in young subjects.

Identity and the Neoclassical Ideal in Martha Graham and Carlos Chávez's Dark Meadow

If the ideal artistic collaboration is one of shared vision, open communication, and exquisite professionalism then Martha Graham and Carlos Chávez strayed far from it in the making of Dark Meadow (1946). As this article documents, their relationship was full of antagonism, misunderstanding, disdainful gossip, and regret on both sides. Three sources of conflict are examined: 1) a misunderstanding between the two collaborators on the meaning and utility of Greek allusions in art created conflicting aesthetic expectations for a dance with a plot derived from Greek mythology; 2) both artists defied the modernist community's expectations about how each of them should perform their gender identity as artists; and 3) similarly, the press's consistent Othering of Chávez in racist, nationalist terms was contagious, influencing Graham's beliefs about what Mexican music could or should be. Despite significant obstacles, Chávez and Graham produced a work that continues to represent the mid-century Modernist aesthetic.

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

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.

The Aging of a Star in Camelot

“It takes me ten years to make a dancer,” Martha Graham declared, and by 1961, at age sixty-seven, she had created a generation of stars. Her technically powerful company trained with the matriarch of modern dance, its “Picasso,” as they readied to tour for a new, young president, John F. Kennedy, and his sophisticated wife, Jackie. He needed to show sophistication and gravitas; in 1962, Graham and her twenty glowing dancers toured Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Poland, Sweden, West Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, and Norway, traversing a complex geographic puzzle of territories contested between East and West, engaging with “containment,” the “Iron Curtain,” old-fashioned wartime European neutrality, and Bandung’s issues of nonalignment, all refashioned by the changing Cold War. Yet the tour would start in Israel, again courtesy of private funding. Greece and Turkey had been named by Truman in his “containment” policy, led by George Kennan; Graham performed as Clytemnestra for the Greeks. Kennan sponsored Graham as she went “behind the Iron Curtain” to Yugoslavia and Poland, where religious works were foregrounded to fight the Soviet “atheists.” As in 1957, she would perform in West Germany, a Cold War hotspot. In Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, and Norway, she engaged with European neutrality, nonalignment, and the Non-Aligned Movement that demanded softer power. As Graham aged, she presented increasingly sexually charged works with the cover of modernism and myth. Yet her alcoholism took hold and compromised her work. Many suggested this should be a “farewell tour.”