Ruth St Dennis is considered to be one of the first three pioneers of American modern dance, alongside Loie Fuller and Isadora Duncan. What exactly was her contribution to the development of American modern dance? Her style was very different to that of the other two afore mentioned pioneers. Upon researching this question all I could find was that she helped create an audience for American modern dance. Surely she did more than just this? Another thing that puzzles me is why her oriental style is not reflected in American modern dance?

there is a good selection of writings about St. Denis in English, for starters, you might like to explore the ground covered in the following books:

Sherman, Jane.
Soaring; the diary and letters of a Denishawn Dancer in the Far East, 1925-1926.
Imprint : Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan University Press [c1976]

Mazo, Joseph H.
Prime movers: the makers of modern dance in America.
Imprint : New York, Morrow [c1977]
322 p. illus. 24 cm.
Notes : Bibliography: p. [301]-311.
: Includes index.
CONTENTS. - Loie Fuller. - Isadora Duncan. - Ruth St. Denis. - Ted Shawn. - Doris Humphrey. - Martha Graham. - Merce Cunningham. - Nikolais, Ailey, Taylor. - Twyla Tharp

Kendall, Elizabeth, 1947-
Where she danced.
Imprint : New York, Knopf, 1979.
xiv, 238 p. illus. 25 cm.
Notes : Bibliography: p. [219]-221

Sherman, Jane.
The drama of Denishawn dance. [1st ed.]
Imprint : Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan University Press, c1979.
xi, 185 p. illus. 26 cm.
Notes : Includes first performance notes and descriptions of 56 dances in the repertoire of the Denishawn Dancers, 1914-1926.

Shelton, Suzanne.
Divine dancer: a biography of Ruth St. Denis. 1st ed.
Imprint : Garden City, N. Y., Doubleday, c1981.
xvi, 338 p. illus. 24 cm

Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn can be seen as the "parents" so to speak of a modern dance family tree. They actually established a school and Company with a method of training. Two of their "children" were Martha Graham, and Doris Humphrey, who went on to develop what we today see as classic modern dance. Their grandchildren----- Merce Cunningham, (Graham) and Jose Limon, (Humphrey). Many contemporary dancers can trace their lineage directly back to Dennis Shawn.

While Graham and Humphrey moved on from the ethnic subject matter that Denishawn favored, I do think you can see some Asian influence in the technique that Graham developed, the use of the flexed foot for example.

aaahhhh,

I wasn't going to answer because I think Lady Kay is a little bit naughty not doing her own research, if she were my student, that is if I were a teacher, I'd definitely have her stay late after school for six of the best. But liling's answer was off on the wrong tangent and the OCD in me wouldn't let me lie. so...

Lady kay,

Fuller, Duncan and St Denis can't legitimately be called the parents of modern dance, that accolade goes to Graham, Humphrey and Holm, but they can certainly be called the forerunners.
To understand Fuller, Duncan and St Denis you have to recognise that in the early 20th century there was no dance tradition in the US, also the chief entertainment was Vaudeville Theatre, this was before the days of motion pictures. Vaudeville was a form of mixed review which included circus acts, dance acrobatic acts, novetly acts comedians and it was the arena where Fuller more or less started and ended - Fuller wasn't a dance innovater per se, but her act consisted of wafting/ moving around a stage dressed in voluminous silk, trailing large expanses of silk, which she had cleverly lit so that it seemed to have a life of its own. She was a curiosity, an oddity and probably very beautiful to watch - the "dance" itself was secondary, probably no more taxing than mild Dalcroze eurythmics - but she was a popular act and probably a lovely mover - but her influence, if any on further generations is negligible except as a remnant of a lost era and entertainment form.

Duncan and St Denis is where it starts to get interesting. Duncan didn't see herself as a dancer, indeed she publically stated that she hated all forms of dance - if anything she probably saw herself as channelling a lost era of Sylvian Grecian harmony - it was romantic yet, naive however, by all accounts she was a phenomenal performer. Frederick Ashton cites her along with Pavlova as being his inspiration to become a dancer/choreographer and also one of the greatest performers he ever saw.
Again the technique was highly personal, if you can even call it technique - Duncan had acolytes, but because she resisted all efforts to codify or even record her dance it's been lost.
However, in 1975 Ashton created Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan for Lynn Seymour which Marie Rambert declared was exactly how she remembered Duncan to be:

This is pretty much all there is of Duncan dancing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKtQWU2ifOs

Tamara Rojo in Ashton's Five Brahams Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRaKB7n7XmM...=PL&index=3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvy-p4ljISU...D71&index=4


There is an Isadora Dance Group how believe they carry on her "technique" and perform, yet this is just an echo of an echo, the art of Duncan was being lost even during her lifetime.



Ruth St Denis is perhaps the most intriguing and bizarre and indeed hard to get a grasp on of these three women.
St Denis was born ordinary Ruth Denis and like Fuller began her career within Vaudeville and popular concert dancing - what distinguished her was that she was a great dancer, however a great dancer without a technique or artistic ethos, though she yearned after real importance.

The change came when on tour with a play called Madame Dubarry in 1907, in which she provided some pretty dances or no great importance, merely embellishments, she saw an advertisement for a popular brand of cigarettes of the day called Egyptian Deities Cigarettes. The advert showed the goddess Isis seated in a pool surrounded by irises - and this inspired her belief that dance must be a sacred art form, that a dancer was a conduit for the "other" she then changed her name to St Denis and began her artistic/spiritual path.

And this is what's important to remember, St Denis was inspired by not merely Oriental, but Hindu, Egyptian, Japanese, Javanese dance and art and philosophy - but she never learned about any of these cultures in anything even approaching depth, it was a totally superficial reading. Her dances never attempted to study the original inspirations rather she would see pictures, images, snippets and imagine she understood the whole and create dances on these themes. Though she truly believed she was creating faithful, valid interpretations - it was a middle class woman, on a somewhat skewed mystical spiritual path.

25 seconds of an elderly St Denis dancing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jly99cBvDIo

What saved her from banality and derision was that she was a great great artist. It wasn't merely Oriental dance she "appropriated" - one solo called Incense was a Sari clad hindu temple dancer, lighting incense in a great ornamental holder and then being moved by the "sacred spirit" to dance. Another solo called Spirit of the Sea had St Denis's head poking out of a great expanse of silk, held taught by her dancers at the corners of the stage (hidden) and St Denis rising and falling with the silk, dancing a sea nymph. And then of course there were her forayes into Orientalism, where she's get kitted out in Kimonos, Hopis etc and I daresay believe she was faithfully creating Japanese dances. There were Egyptian Goddess dances - Martha Graham's first role with Denis Shawn was that of a Priestess of Isis.
Later with Ted Shawn there were Spanish dances, Senata Morisca and full length works such as Xochitl, which told the story of an Aztec Princess.

And this is the important thing to remember is that this was dance theatre, dance pantomime saved from ridicule by the very real artisty of St Denis who viewed herself as a sacred creature and indeed until she met Shawn was a virgin. She was hugely respected as a dance artist at that time and was seen as real art, not mere Vaudeville. BUT the Denis Shawn Technique what there was of it, was not a technique as we now view Graham or Cunningham.

As Carolyn Brown, Cunningham's greatest female dancer, whose first dance classes were in the DenisShawn style said: "denis shawn could produce a dancer, but not a modern or ballet dancer".

St Denis's downfall began when she met Ted Shawn, her fame was such that people came to study with her, women & men, and Ted Shawn was a man hankering after stardom, he was also 15 years younger than St Denis and saw in the frustrated spinster a real hankering for sex and love. So he wooed her and married her and inveigled his way into equal billing and importance in the company structure and in 1916 DenisShawn was born with it's school and increased company commitments.

Shawn was also a total homosexual and used his position as Dance Pater Familias of Denis Shawn to basically use the school and company as his own personal gay knocking shop. He was also an exhibitionist, liking to go naked or near as damn on stage and unlike St Denis he was not an artist of any note. St Denis was the calling card and meat of Denis Shawn, a fact Shawn recognised and hated absolutely.

Because there was no dance training serious dance, in the US Denis Shawn in LA became a mecca for serious dance acolytes who were instructed in the curious take St Denis had on world dance, her own rather wafting and insipid techiques and in eastern philosophy and art as filtered through the naive world view of St Denis.

It was to Denis Shawn that Doris Humphrey, Martha Graham, Charles Weidman came and also aspiring movie starlets, the most famous being Louise Brookes - Denis Shawn was something like a finishing school/dance school/ cult. St Denis initially wrote Graham off completely and gave her to Shawn to train, she preferred Doris Humphrey. Though Shawn to his credit did recognise Graham as a serious artist.

St Denis' school and company collapsed for many reasons, St Denis was a poor businesswoman and her view of art was becoming increasingly anachronistic, the motion picture industry began to really take hold and the sham marriage with Shawn couldn't be sustained. With the collapse of the Denis Shawn school and organisation in 1927 Humphrey and Graham went to New York to carve out their own niches.

Graham went back to Vaudeville dancing little ethnic numbers with the Greenwich Villiage Follies but she saw the futility of this course and hankered after her own place in the world.

At first she decided to dance and teach in the DenisShawn style, and wrote to Shawn asking his permission to do so. Shawn wrote back demanding $500 for the rights which there was no way Graham could pay. So she refused and began to carve out her own technique - aided and abetted by Louis Horst, Denis Shawn's one-time music director.

This is important and vital to remember, had Shawn been more generous the whole course of world art would have been radically different. She created her own style and technique because she had to.

The flexed foot of Graham has nothing to do with dainty Oriental adorment - if anything it owes more the the Native American dances were the foot is used to strike and beat the earth, a culture Graham was fascinated by and which she studied in depth.

Graham technique is the antithesis of the Denis Shawn artistic philosophy were everything was surface and superficial approximation. Graham was about wrenching meaning and movement and validity from every moment and body part. The flexed foot of Graham is a dramatic and deadly device, it owes nothing to her training with Denis who if she ever did flex did it for mere adornment.

St Denis was lost because there was nothing there to keep. No technique to train a dancer properly, her dances were superficial oddities and curiosities and the intellectual ethos that underpinned it a lie or rather total misapprehension on St Denis's part. What does save it for the ages is the place of what was a veyr great dancer in dance history.

But her most famous proteges went on to succeed in a longterm way she never did precisely because they reacted against her to create the polar opposite and not because they took her ideas forward.

Simon I enjoyed reading the historical content of your post but was apalled at your reference to Mr. Shawn in a manner that I find had a touch of the gutter and was an unnecessary element in your telling of the story.

It is not okay in my view to cast aspersions publicly on anyones private life on what is after all a website where serious discussions take place about ballet and dance.

It personally has put me off visiting balletalert as I always thought the standards of this site were extremely high.



Amended

Any biography of DennisShawn, any serious one will say the same - perhaps not so bluntly, but what's wrong with bluntness?. Shawn used St Denis and her fame for his own ends, to push his dance, which was roundly criticised as being greatly inferior to his "wife's", his sexuality and the way he used Denis Shawn as a magnet for young men, carrying on affairs literally under St Denis's nose in the marital house. Also he was a rabid exhibitionist, any of the photographs taken of him in poses plastiques bear testament to this, he loved to dress up in scanty g-strings etc and pose on stage or in photos imagining himself to be eros, Osiris, a little woodland nymph etc , and given his soft musculature and rather rubenesque lower half that probably wasn't the best idea.

Graham was often used as a go between ST Denis and Shawn, his lovers and his tantrums, her auto biography and many other accounts including Doris Humphrey's and Agnes De Mille's all bear testatment to this, Shawn's peccadillos and his inferior status as an artist. These aren't aspersions, they're truths.

The only reason why Graham came under his "tutelage" was because St Denis considered her completely untalented and pawned her off on her husband, while she kept Doris Humphrey for herself. And I did say to Shawn's credit he recognised her burgeoning talent.

If anything Shawn's greatest contribution to dance in the longterm was the founding of Jacob's Pillow, BUT while he was alive his vehement criticism and attack of anything he considered NOT dance led him to publically denounce and undermine Graham, Cunningham, Limon and Humphrey.

Because first and foremost Shawn was a second class act and a bit of a Charlatan and it's wrong to paint him as a visionary. There's a story that once when on tour Martha Graham wanted to insert her "Moorish Spanish dance" as imagined by Shawn into a dance extravaganza based around the Mayans or some other ancient civilisation, Shawn forbade her saying it was totally inappropriate and Graham responded "who'll ever know?"

small points and i suppose off-topic, but BalletAlert closed awhile back; the site in question here is Ballettalk.
the combined efforts of St. Denis and Ted Shawn are known in current dance-historical parlance by a one-word term: Denishawn.
St. Denis was born in New Jersey as Ruthie Dennis; David Belasco changed her name to St. Denis because, it is said, she displayed a certain primness that was unusual from what Belasco knew of chorus and/or 'ballet' 'girls.

rg

This is where historical accounts do vary. It was the David Belasco tour of Madame DuBarry where Dennis became St Dennis, some say it was Belasco who changed it, not just because she was saintly but there's another story that he renamed her because she refused his frequent sexual advances. In several other accounts it was after seeing the Isis poster for Egpytian Deities that she took it upon herself to rechristen St Dennis.

I prefer the self naming following the cigarette poster epiphany - it's kind of sad, tawdry and banal and sums up for me what her art was really all about, surface glamour appropriated to pretty up a superficial approach.

What has any of the above got to do with Lady Kay's original question and more to the point what has it got to do with dance. The simple answer is nothing.

I find your posts extremely odd, as they read as if you want to punish this man who has never done anything to you personally.

I think his status will survive your comments.

i don't pretend to be all that well-read on St. Denis, and should have said that the Belasco version of the name-change i indicated above comes from passing, not thorough, knowledge of the subject.
i do thinnk, however, with more accuracy, that once Ruthie Dennis changed her name she was St. Denis (one 'n' - not two, in order to make herself seem more 'exotic').

Leonid and rg,

My sincere apologies for my misleading and prurient posts. I shall in future try to temper my oddities and gutter mentality.

Simon

Ruth Dennis under her own name appeared in three plays on Broadway produced by Belasco in 1901, 1902, 1903. In the "Dubarry" play Miss St. Dennis appeared at the Criterion Theatre Broadway from December 1901 to May 1902 when she was cast as Mlle. Le Grand a dancer from the Grand Opera

You often write very well and I note that you are not lacking in humour.

I think Miss St.Dennis has a place in history and although neither alone as a solo performer or an orientalist dancer, she has made a mark on American dance history and is known of in England.

Leonid,

I never said she didn't have a place in history and I'm in England. She was a curiosity though, a moment in history and had she not had famous students who actually did go on to change the world in terms of dance and dance theatre one does wonder how enduring that legend would have been.

It's wrong however to call her an architect of modern dance, she wasn't. Nor to put forward a theory that hers was a technique which had any kind of lasting impact on the shape of dance, and one defintely cannot say that her dance was that of a dance historian or reconstructionist - it was a hugely personal take on eastern religions and philosophy.

At the DenisShawn school she would try and tutor the pupils in Indian philosophy albeit highly badly as she couldn't read or understand hindi, urdu or sanskrit so what she was giving her students was a bowlderised version of her beliefs with an "eastern" flavour. Moreover when new dancers came to her she catagorised them according to ethnic type she thought they best fitted. The 22-year-old, tiny, dark Martha Graham was written off by St Denis as a total loss, but perhaps she could be fitted into something "Japanese".

St Denis endured and succeeded precisely because she was a legitimate artist and by all accounts very great dancer, despite her rather scatterbrained and hokey spirituality (and let's not forget this Eastern-influenced, quasi mysticism was exceedingly popular amongst many in the upper middle classes in the early 20th century).

But it's also true that Shawn was the love of her life, which is sad as he most certainly could never love her sexually or romantically, and ultimately her downfall. Shawn isn't remembered with anything like the reverance or importance or St Denis.

Moreover, he wasn't the only one who made a legitimate career out of homosexual desire within the dance world. Dance, with its perceived looser morals has always been a magnet for sexual opportunists; but really what's so wrong with that? George Platt Lynes, probably one of the greatest dance photographers of all time was drawn to dance because he was gay, liked photographing naked men and dancers were more sexually liberated than laymen and more willing to get their kit off in the name of art. Ditto Lincoln Kirstein the greatest impresario since Diaghilev, sure he was educated, intellecutal and had an undoubted, profound love of ballet, but he also like sex and the dance and art worlds were a surefire way of having access to gay or sexually ambivalent young men.

I don't see why you're so tetchy about discussing the seedier side of people's motivations especially when like in the case of Ted Shawn, those sexual desires were indeed instrumental for the path their careers took. The DenisShawn school was a magnet for gay men, and Shawn famously took advantage of that, it makes his achievements or life no less than they were, but to suggest otherwise or that he was morally pure and devoted to St Denis is as false as Ruth's notion of spirtual enlightenment and the prefix of St before her surname.

I understand that when Martha Graham took up with Erick Hawkins, Louis Horst moaned, "It's Ruth and Ted all over again, and she swore to me it would never happen in her life." Quote from memory and could be inaccurate in the wording, but that was the gist.



The actress Louise Brooks danced with Denishawn when she was a teenager. I read a biography where the writer said that Brooks must have been a very talented dancer because Ted Shawn, no less, had singled her out - unfamiliar with the internal dynamics of the troupe, he didn't realize that being handed off to Teddy was no great compliment. (I'm sure Brooks was perfectly lovely, though. She danced with Shawn in Xochitl.)

Yes, I remember from the McDonagh how interesting that St. Denis was so dismissive of Graham, and he often pointed out how Graham idolized her. Finally, St. Denis grudgingly said something on the order of 'well, Martha Graham does have a real technique, I'll say that for her." (I don't have the book at hand, that's close enough unless rg has time to make it perfect. So Shawn was very important in terms of Graham. I didn't read the entire thread that carefully, but it wasn't that long ago I watched the snipped of St. Denis's own dancing, very brief, maybe what you linked up there, and maybe 12 or so St. Denis pieces, which I think Simon characterizes well as being 'superficial-Oriental'. I think most 'western orientalisms of the time were like that, weren't they, in all of the arts? Don't know whether you mentioned the Javanese and Balinese in the Graham Notebooks, Simon, maybe so, just adding to what you said about flexed foot of American Indians, although I can't remember if that's especially featured in 'El Pentitente' or not.




No, that's not sad, it was her business. People love people for all sorts of ill-shaped reasons. His exhibitionism is of no importance, except it it CAUSED him to be an inferior artist. Nureyev was certainly an exhitionist (okay, I don't want to argue this, so STRAVINSKY referred to him that way). But what you said about his being of importance to Martha by default still holds, although obviously true St. Denis was lightweight in terms of that she was important more as a presursor to what came from her school.



Agree with you there, and you can't really understand Shawn without this material, it could be things like 'get their kit off'. you know. Okay, if you can use 'their kit', I guess I can use 'my kit' too. Although I do not want to use 'your kit'. Never heard THAT till now, you CORRUPTOR! Anyway, it IS silly season, a term I also never heard used till I came to Ballet Talk. But leonid probably just tired of hearing about endless 'hand relief' stories, you know what I mean? We've heard a LOT of things like that recently here.



It's not just the seedier side number, Simon, it's that you're VULGAR in the way you describe it, as in the Gold Rains Episode. (just kidding, of course, I don't mind it personally, but it's also true, you know you love to say these racy, screamy things.

Partly my fault specifically as a mod - partly August, but we have drifted off-color (you pick which color.) It was all in fun, though risque, but let's try and get things PG again. I give papeetepatrick special commendation for restraint above and beyond the call of propriety when we all knew he wanted to go for the double entendre.

Play nice, everyone. This means you, Simon. There's plenty of interesting information here about St. Denis, let's continue the topic.

I’d also like to suggest as a matter of form that we refrain from calling fellow BTers ‘vulgar,’ a term easily misunderstood.

I'm sorry everyone, I think it's the pugilist in me, I get so caught up in the thrill of the banter I forget myself.

Dirac, I don't mind being called vulgar at all I think I may very well be pathologically so, and patrick and Leigh are right, sometimes i forget myself. I promise I'll try super hard to keep things on a cleaner even keel remembering not every poster here shares my loucher sensibilities.

I think the thing is as well, none of my friends, absolutely none now are involved in dance or have much or any interest in it, so when I talk about it with them and try to engage their interest I do have a tendency to either sex things up or use humour to engage. The problem dance faces is the indifference of the greater population who see it so often as absolutely rarified, elitist and anachronistic - I always try to filter it through my personal sensibilities as I find this helps when I'm trying to communicate my love of the art form to total novices.

Rg, may I just say I wasn't meaning to one up you regarding the genesis of St Denis' name. The Egyptian Cigarette story was the one I liked best, though I do admit it sounds rather hokey, the kind of thing St Denis would have made up, but you know what I think it's far more probable that the Belasco story is closer to the truth but I also wouldn't be surprised if it was more due to her resisting his advances than an outright compliment.

here's a scan of one of the few photocards i have of so-called 'modern' dancers - as those who are well-read on St. Denis know, she did NOT consider herself a practitioner of this 'modern' form of dance - she is quoted as telling Graham when she told Miss Ruth she'd be leaving Denishawn to pursue her own interests, something to the effect of: Now whatever you do, wherever you go, don't go to that modern dance; i have seen that modern dance, and it's ugly.
the precise quote is i think in Don McDonagh's biography of Martha Graham.
St. Denis (and Shawn) considered their art the art of Interpretive Dance.

in any case this undated, and uncaptioned - except for identifying St. Denis - photocard, perhaps dates from around 1906.
it's not all that unusual or rare an item, but the card itself is in good condition.

NYPL credits:
Radha: Chor: Ruth St. Denis; mus: Léo Delibes. First perf. on tour: U.S.: New York City, New York Theatre, Jan 28, 1906, Ruth St. Denis. Later version has music by Jess Meeker.

I wish someone knowledgeable here would talk more about the influence St. Denis' school, and in particular, Louis Horst's influence. I do see traces of St. Denis in Graham & Humphrey, though I believe they took elements of her decorative style and used it almost as costuming on a movement vocabulary imbued with deeper meaning and motivation. Interestingly enough the next generation revolted against that deeper meaning but went on to explore choreographic structure further... so, if St. Denis and her music visualization exercises with her music director Louis Horst teaching dance composition could be seen as a catalyst, you could trace this approach to dance down through to today's choreographers... even contemporary ballet choreographers.... not that they use her choreographic style by any means (and I do think she was best at creating vehicles for her personal performance mystique than at creating choreographic works that survived her retirement), but by employing Horst she started the first serious study of dance composition in this country... the vestiges of which are probably still taught in university dance departments around the world.

Thank you Amy for pulling us back to the centre of the post with your more learned approach.

I have known about Ruth St. Denis since the mid 60's but have only ever read magazine articles and obituaries.

I hope that she is looking down with interest on our assault on her work.

I have found (I have not counted) approximately 100 photographs on the net and they have given me a much wider idea of Ruth St. Denis may have been like, than than I had before. The eighth picture on the first line shows an image of Ted Shawn I had not seen before with him striking a balletic pose.

Turgenev wrote in 1862, "A picture shows me at a glance what it takes dozens of pages of a book to tell."

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Ruth+ST.+Denis

You might also like to check out http://www.flickr.com/search/groups/?q=Dan...0N00&m=pool
for early dancers.

The internet still makes my jaw drop... thanks for the lovely link. Reminds me of how St. Denis tried to leave her costumes to UCLA (I think I have this story right, but my memory is always suspect... I heard it from Karoun Tootikian, but again my memory is like that old party game "telephone")... she left her costumes to the dance department at UCLA, but years later Karoun came in and discovered them thrown all over the floor of the girl's locker room and felt they were not being respected (as is possibly imaginable, UCLA having gone past St. Denis in the direction of world dance) ... and perhaps pulled the archive? Not sure where it now resides, but surely the fibers must be beginning to fail? Silk is strong, but... ? If moderators have to delete this as not official press release info, please leave in my question: Where are the St. Denis costumes now?

Re: Costumes

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls...MES&spell=1

http://www.oac.cdlib.org/search?developer=...mp;x=17&y=7

http://www.coursehero.com/file/115645/DanceFinalStudyGuide/

Lady Kay’s original question.

The Rise of Asians and Asian Americans in Vaudeville, 1880s–1930s Krystyn R. Moon, Ph.D. @ http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/history/faculty...search/moon.htm

Background to oriental dance in USA
http://www.amaradances.com/amara_articles/1999_contemp.html

We must be reading a different thread, leonid.

Actually Leonid,

That's not Lady Kay's original question at all. Her question was "why isn't St Denis's Oriental technique/style not reflected in the American modern dance. By which she means Graham, Holm, Humphrey and then further generations.

The thing you seem to fail to grasp is that St Denis was NOT Oriental dance, it was her idea of what orientalia should be. Those postcards while charming only confirm in my eye what a charlatan she was in terms of legitimately appropriating and assimilating Asian and Eastern dance styles - she was no more than playing dress up.

My assault on St Denis was not at her position as a great dancer everyone attests to this, what they also say however, is that her artistry was completely superficial.

You cannot assess St Denis as an originator of technique, she had none beyond that which she needed for her pretty dances; nor can you claim that her influence on her two great students Graham and Humphrey was a direct case of inspiration. They succeeded by reacting against everything St Denis and Denishawn stood for.

Louis Horst was not employed by Denishawn to the full of his capabilities, he was their accompanist, then when they sacked their conductor he stepped in - it wasn't until leaving Denishawn his studies in Germany and his artistic marriage to Graham that he came into his own as a teacher of music composition and the composition of beats and meter in dance forms.

However, Horst had a deep aversion to modern music, especially Stravinsky, and he held the belief that dance and music were inextricably linked - he was highly censorious of the moderns who sprang up in the 50s of modernism in general. To claim rather breezily and whistfully that his influence is seen througout the current dance world is stretching it a bit - because one thing that modern dance had to do to grow up is get beyond the belief that a step of dance equals a beat of music.

If Lady Kay wants to study St Denis that's great, but to send her off on a wild goose chase down the pathways of Oriental dance and philosophy claiming that St Denis was a great innovator in these forms is a total waste of time.

Which is also what my unlearned first post was trying to do, to introduce St Denis for what she was, an artist yes, a curiosity, an artistic charlatan and a product of a specific time and place in the history of dance and public performance, who was ultimately outdistanced by her "pupils".

Is this one part entirely accurate, Simon--I don't mean the 'originator of technique' part, but rather the 'direct inspiration'? Didn't Graham continue worshipping St. Denis, at least in her own dancing, didn't she want to have that kind of imperious image that she had adored in St. Denis, even though this was unrequited? I think that's what McDonach was saying, anyway. And it occurs to me that, in that one way, she wouldn't have been able to be quite as imperious at least in the statuesque sense, because so small (refresh me on St. Denis's height, though, but surely she was taller than Graham). Anway, Graham was never the same after seeing St. Denis in that Los Angeles theater. I don't mean in the choreography, but I had just gotten the impression that she really always longed for some of St. Denis's brand of magnetic persona in her stage personality.

I still hope someone will say something about westernizing orientalisms in the arts in general, that must have been by the time it was well under way, long after Commodore Perry in Japan (I think, my history is not good here) and Japanese influences on 18th century French and English porceleins, etc., just throwing out a couple of ideas here. In a way, although I agree with the superficiality of St. Denis's orientalisms, could you tell me, Simon, that it SHOULD have been possible even by that time to go much deeper, this was a rather late stage of this kind of importing, and probably some others really did go much deeper. Thanks.

Oh dear, well I'm sure you will attack me for this on one level or another, but all that aside, what an agenda you seem to have, Simon! Your attack in the guise of an assessment carries no weight with me, but I don't suppose that stresses you one bit.

Yes, and you hear this somehow in the music. He is not a great composer outside composing for dance. None of the dances I've seen for Graham--El Penitente, 'Frontier', some others, are nearly as meaningful to me as what she did with Schuman, Copland, Dello Joio, Menotti, Barber, and so on, but they're bright and brisk too, you just wouldn't care to hear them by themselves, or at least I wouldn't.

Patrick,

Yes, absolutely, Graham venerated St Denis as a dancer, she knew she was a great artist and much of her chagrin at Denishawn was being pawned off on Ted Shawn; and she did throughout her life continue to hold St Denis up as a figure of veneration as an artist, but not her art, nor her technique, nor her approach to art.

I think that's what I'm trying but obviously failing to communicate, the great dichotomy of St Denis was that she was a great artist, which was what saved her dance theatre from being completely superficial.

If one can single out any one great thing Graham did, it was in the creation of a technique that can train, create and make a fully rounded dancer. Graham's legacy was of the creation of a whole new legitimate, classical even, art form. Rooted in a school and by school I mean a technique which has travelled the world, is taught througout the world and remade the world. St Denis's legacy is evaporated, there's nothing of it except sepia tinted poses in postcards - and the inspiration she put in her two great students to found an art form with real meat, technique and durable purpose.

pmeja

I'm not attacking anyone, nor am I attacking you. And I think that's a bit rich to accuse me of attack when I've been accused of being of the gutter, unlearned, bringing down the tone and quality of this board.

Why on earth is frank, open discussion and debate considered attack? I have no agenda, and I'm actually getting a bit irritated at having nefarious, prurient ulterior motives put upon me, when believe me pmeja, truly there are none there.

However, if you would like to clarify exactly what my agenda is, I'd be delighted to know, as I am currently mystified as to what it might be.

Okay... I guess what I'm trying to say is my understanding was that Horst started out our mothers of modern dance on a path of analyzing choreography as if it were simple music theory; started them down the pathway of considering the underlying structure of choreography. That Cunningham, etc. totally rejected tying steps to music doesn't mean he totally rejected structure. I believe he actually had to involve a lot of structure to support his chance operations. To say that because someone took the theory several steps further or even in a different direction is not to say that artist was on a totally different non-intersecting path...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Horst

Thanks for getting us back on track Amy.

One further note. Cut the personal comments. If you have something to say about someone's post that goes beyond the content of the post, USE PMs.

If the Moderators think a thread is going off the rails, we will say so. Otherwise, stick to the topic under discussion, please.

Back to Amy's question and clarification.

No one has yet mentioned the extended appearance of Ruth St. Denis in the three-part documentary Free to Dance. In that wonderful film, we hear the correspondence between RSD and Edna Guy, a young African American admirer who was eager to dance with RSD's company. It's on the one hand a tale of overt racism (St. Denis continually refers to Guy as "girlie" and strings her along) but also a complex portrayal of the role of race in early American modern dance (which I consider RSD firmly part of whether she'd like it or not!).

I recommend the entire series if you haven't seen it ready.

I don't think i had seen that clip of St. Denis dancing. Is that the only one? I had thought I'd seen a bit of her old dancing on that video, but must not be, because I don't remember her as big blonde woman. I could be confusing her with Humphrey's old clip before the Ernestine Stoedehl (sp?), which is not very admirable mistake ot make, but I still had thought I saw St. Denis. I guess not, though. I want to watch it some more, she does have a presence, I'm not exactly sure what else to say from such a short bit. Thanks for posting it, Simon.

Yes, it's lovely and fluid, but oh my, she does look like Marilyn Monroe in it, or is that just the old film? I think she's gorgeous, and can see the element that would make Martha want to emulate her.

Simon I was writing in shorthand in response to Amy. They were not statements. They were lines of information directing Lady Kay to websites.

Please try to contribute and not simply contradict. When you contribute you are really very good at it.

I send you calm, peace and blessings.

One more time. The topic of this thread is Ruth St. Denis. . Please keep to the topic.

I believe that St. Denis sported snowy white hair when she was older... perhaps you are misreading "white" as "blonde"? The costume moves beautifully, it seems she was always very careful with the way her costumes moved... (I'm not really on a costume kick, though it's beginning to sound like it...)

The crux of Lady Kay's question was whether St Denis had a legitimate technique based around ethnic dance forms which influenced the following generations of modern dance innovators.

However, this specifically could only be in relation to Graham & Humphrey/Weidman who were the only true dance innovators to have studied with Denishawn. Humphrey's aesthetic & body of work is so unrelated to ethnicity specifically eastern ethnicity that one could argue that if anything the only way St Denis influenced Humphrey was to run as far away as possible from St Denis and everything she stood for.

Graham however is a very different story, as a strong undercurrent of and influence of eastern philosophy and aesthetics does run throughout her work HOWEVER unlike St Denis Graham made a huge, personal and lifelong effort to not just study these religions, cultures and aesthetics as a surface glamour, but to to try and fully understand the genesis and meaning of these cultures to which she was drawn.

Graham's first solo concert was a series of studies in movement in 1926 which she freely admitted borrowed heavily from Denishawn and what she learnt there because she had no point of comparison to anything else. Indeed one piece entitled Study in Lacquer had Graham enshrined in folds of silk kimonos, a full geisha wig on her head, immitating a porcelain Japanese figurine then came the final rift with Denishawn when she was forbidden to teach or perform in the style without paying rights she couldn't afford. It was at this point that you could say Martha Graham began as an artist.

Graham's breakthrough came three years later with the concert in which she performed the solo Dance - in this concert their became apparent the contraction, the release, and the personal aesthetic which was to inform her art and technique.

Graham's interests in ethnic cultures were concentrated on Native American dances, for rain, fertility, war, but she wasn't copying, she studied the cultures attended ceremonies amongst tribes. The way the foot stamps the earth, flexes demanding favours of the gods - this was what Graham was about.

Her studies in the eastern philosphies especially Kundalini weren't about pretty concert pieces, she wasn't interested in these cultures because she could be pretty onstage - she was interested in the deep spiritual side of performance and dance as held by primitive cultures.

Because her first legitimate masterpiece Primative Mysteries in 1931 whilst dealing in wholly Catholic material was the Virgin's grief as if reimagined by a Native American religious order. Graham's art and technique was brutal, visceral and wholly unconcerned with surface - the antithesis of Ruth St Denis for whom spirituality was synonymous with prettiness, beatitude and whimsy. Martha Graham famously said of her admiration of the Native American's brutality "they worship a God who died in torture" - for Graham worship, torture and veneration were the qualities which interested her within ethnic dance and philosophy.

Her solo of 1944 Herodiade her dance at 50 as a farewell to youth, in which a woman confronts her mortality in a mirror was inspired intellectually by Burmese film footage of village priestesses' ritual of kissing the crown of a cobra's head in order to ensure the birth of male children to the village - and although the dance had no re-enaction of the ritual, the power of that primative culture underpinned Herodiade.

Amy, you may be interested in what Lincoln Kirstein said about Horst in eulogy "He believed in art without compromise... the real value of Louis Horst was that he gave a morality to choreography."

And martha Graham wrote in the New York Times " His sympathy and understanding but primarily his faith gave me a landscape to move in. Without it, I should certainly have been lost."

One can't underestimate Horst's influence in the creation of Martha Graham, but there's a flipside to Kirstein's evalutation, though Horst was without compromise, he rarely compromised on his own beliefs of what choreography and dance should be and morals are utterly personal to the individual. With Graham he had his life's work and that sadly obliterated his valuing a modern dance landscape which was ephemeral and shifting radically throughout his life. Cunningham, Taylor, Limon, all were second class artists, talents, God knows what he thought of the Judson Church Group, there's the famous story of his review of Paul Taylor's solo concert in which he stood still for ten minutes doing nothing, Horst responded with a blank 3 inches of column space with his name at the bottom. For Horst the beat and the movement were synonymous. But that was his morality and he stuck to it, passionately.

Horst also loathed Shawn, he revered St Denis as a great dancer, but not her dance as being great, and he found her Vaudevillian dances distasteful - he had no belief in Denishawn as a significant or enduring legacy of art.

This is quite an interesting quote by Agnes De Mille about St Denis's technique of dance and creating dances:



And there's another one in which she sums up St Denis's legacy which is harsh, but very tragic and moving and probably quite true:



Denishawn as a venture was overextended from the start, they couldn't afford the school, or the huge rounds of double tours one led by Shawn the other by St Denis. The whole enterprise was the hubris of Shawn and St Denis can hardly be blamed for succumbing to the attentions of a much younger man - this was a woman who had lived 20 or more years under the mantle of assumed Sainthood. Humphrey, Weidman, Graham all left her Horst only stuck around because he was having an affair with Graham and new she was the real deal, as soon as she left he did. And Shawn needed to live free of the middle aged woman he was married to, to pursue his life as a homosexual. Certainly his all male dance group was a short lived venture in the annals of modern dance history. Though he did continue to support her financially throughout her life.

In this clip I felt the costume was somehow as important as her dance. Second time of viewing I concentrated on the costume as it takes on a flowing sculptural form which I found very interesting as Miss Ruth manipulated it with her movements.

From the complexity of designs for dresses that she employed, to my mind, it seems to appear she was not just dressing up to conjure a particular theme or style, she was also a sculptress in silks.

Very interesting, I've got to tell somebody about this with whom I've been discussing the Mallarme and the Graham, but this cobra ritual is not in the Mallarme, of course. I find 'Herodiade' to be the most disturbing dance I've ever seen in some ways, much more so than 'Night Journey', 'Cave of the Heart', and others. There's that mention of Burma as well when she speaks on the old PBS video of 'Martha Graham Dance Company', when she's talk about a Bumese telling her that 'Cave of the Heart' reminded him/her of 'an elephant gone mad, run amok' (may not be exact quote, close to that). I know this is a little off-topic except for the matter of Graham going more deeply into the Eastern cultures than St. Denis (by a long shot), but is there a term for that movement that Herodius does (and I've seen it in other Graham pieces as well, I think Oedipus does a less frenzied version of it in 'NJ'), when she seems to be about to go forward, but she can't go forward, she stays in place. There's a long one of these maybe in the last 7 minutes or so when she is doing this, trying to move. What's amazing is that with every thrust forward, she does convince you (this is the Japanese dancer, I can't remember the name, but not the earlier Yuriko) that she'll be able to, and I think there really is no movement forward at all, unless it's necessary to move just a bit to get the effect.

Horst...............he came into his own as a teacher of music composition and the composition of beats and meter in dance forms.

........................ To claim rather breezily and whistfully that his influence is seen througout the current dance world is stretching it a bit - because one thing that modern dance had to do to grow up is get beyond the belief that a step of dance equals a beat of music.

Simon, I don't know where you got the idea that Louis Horst taught that a step of dance equals a beat of music. Certainly not from Louie! He would come down hard on a student who mickey moused the music.

Louis Horst's method of teaching dance composition evolved into three courses. Pre classic forms in which the movement qualities as well as the formal structures of gigues, sarabands etc.were explored. Modern Forms consisted of earth primitive, air primitive, Medieval (religious & secular ) cerebral, americana etc. Craft was primary ( for example, if the form was ABA, God help you if one eye blink you did in A showed up in B ) , There are books out that explain these, in detail, but the work used the structural techniques used in music, theme and variations, theme and devolvement sonata form etc.

And finally for those who survived those, Group forms. While the object of the classes was to learn craft, Louie had no patience with students who showed cliched or derivative movement. He valued originality, and of course Graham being his standard, he was constantly disappointed. He had an eagle eye, a sardonic wit, and a great gift for nurturing talent. Through his teaching, and written criticism in his magazine Dance Observer, Louis Horst served his belief, that dance was not a frivolous entertainment, but a serious art form that deserved respect. To answer Amy, I'd like to believe his influence is still felt.

Liling,

Sorry, I did indeed express that cackhandedly, what I meant that Horst believed that music and dance were inextricably linked. Though the fact is that dance is absolutely independent of music, both as an art form and performance discipline, there is no need for dance to co exist with music. Two of my teachers in London were Jane Dudley & Nina Fonaroff, both Horst's protege's and Dudley's Graham and composition classes in particular followed many of Horst's formats - i don't need to read a book, I got a course in it from someone who learned and performed at the horse's mouth, as is were and Belinda Quirey taught us for Baroque and historic dance forms.

And yes, even though Graham was his absolute ideal and that against which all others fell short, there is the possibility that others were greater than Graham, something he refused to entertain. For me, just as St Denis was far outdistanced by Graham, she was outdistanced by Cunningham, certainly a choreographer the antithesis of Horst's ideal and ideals of choregraphy.

I meant no disprespect to Horst or his memory and fully recognise the huge impact he had on the progression of modern dance, but I do stand by my statement that it is kind of overstating and romantic to believe that Horst is still alive and well within the current dance landscape.

didn't Horst encourage Graham to create her dances independent of music, knowing he could provide/add music to what she had created after the fact?

I think St. Denis taught Humphrey a great deal about the manipulation of fabric as an element of the dance... and there are several Humphrey works that show this influence: Air for the G String, Grieg Concerto (which I regularly mix up with With My Red Fires), Valse Caprice?, Quasi Waltz, and of course Soaring... You see no Denishawn influence? Noy orientalism but fabric manipulation. Remember, St. Denis was originally a skirt dancer. Also, I suspect St. Denis taught them a great deal about how to bear themselves elegantly... I think this was what the Hollywood starlets were sent to her to learn... carriage.

Carriage, deportment and swishing fabric don't make a dancer or dance technique, nor do they make a lasting body of work.

Are we talking about dance or cheap sentiment here?

He worked with her, by her, for her. Creating, editing, composing, advising - and the music was made for the dance and sometimes vice versa. With the case of Herodiade Hindemith composed it first after discussing the dramaturgy with Graham, who then composed the dance for the music.

But that wasn't what I was saying or talking about at all in terms of dance being a seperate art and wholly itself independent of music.

I think that would depend on the focus. Dance doesn't have to be in a leotard to be a valid piece of art, and yes there is technique involved in fabric manipulation.

One of the oddest surprises for me was to hear that when St. Denis toured the Far East with her dancers was that she was very successful there. I thought that with the real thing available, the public would have shied away from a Western take on it... but have been informed that at the time very few of the general population actually got to see the temple dancers and indian classical dancers, and they were delighted to be entertained by St. Denis.

Have to run before finishing this thought...

Hi Amy,

Can I just amend the "cheap" aspect, I don't think it's cheap to be sentimetal about one's teacher, and I'm not at all denigrating St Denis and her work, which was of its time.

I have no doubt as I've said before that St Denis must have been an entrhalling and compelling dancer and it's interesting that she had a huge, huge inferiority complex when it came to Duncan.

Graham too had an incredible influence on fabric, costume and the way it was used for dramatic effect within her dance theatre.