Dancing Americanness: Jane Addams's Hull House as a Site for Dance Education

Abstract

This paper explores the role and influence of dance education in Jane Addams's Hull House from its opening in 1889 through roughly 1900. I contend that the ideology of middle- and upper-class women of the Progressive Era, asserted through channels like Hull House, privileged particular forms of dance over others. In effect, they denied the validity of American vernacular dance as a legitimate movement vocabulary. To illuminate these Progressive postures, I investigate the trajectory of American dance education in relation to Jane Addams's attitudes toward diversity, the role of art, and the value of dance at Hull House. I draw from women's, race, and cultural studies for this project and employ historiographie analysis. By contextualizing the elements above, I suggest that as a site of socialization and education Hull House assisted in maintaining the separation of “acceptable” and “unacceptable” dance in the United States.