Early Modern Dance Research Articles

Outsider art: contesting boundaries in contemporary culture

Introduction Part I. Traditional Outsiders: 1. Asylum art: the social construction of an aesthetic category Anne E. Bowler 2. The centrality of marginality: naive artists and savvy supporters Steve C. Dubin 3. African legacies, American realities: art and artists on the edge Vera L. Zolberg Part II. Career Strategies of Outsiders: 4. Art production and artistic careers: the transition from 'outside' to 'inside' Henry C. Finney 5. Pop art: ugly duckling to swan Joni Maya Cherbo 6. Playing with fire: institutionalising the artist at Kostabi World Andras Szanto 7. Outsider art and insider artists: gauging public reactions to contemporary public art Nathalie Heinich Part III. Living in the Cracks: 8. Art as social service: theatre for the forgotten Judy Levine 9. Multiculturalism in process: Italo-Australian bilingual theatre and its audiences Maria Shevtsova 10. In the empire of the object: the geographies of Ana Mendieta Irit Rogoff Part IV. Genre Switching: 11. Colleges and companies: early modern dance in America Leila Sussman 12. How many does it take to tango? Voyages of urban culture in the early 1900s Juan E. Corradi.

Review: Alien Bodies: Representations of Modernity, Race, and Nation in Early Modern Dance by Ramsay Burt

Review: Alien Bodies: Representations of Modernity, Race, and Nation in Early Modern Dance by Ramsay Burt

Early Modern Dance in Spain: Tórtola Valencia, Dancer of the Historical Intuition

Spain's contribution to the evolution of theatrical dance is acknowledged within the categories of ballet and ethnic dance. Spanish folk dance elements have been incorporated into the classical ballet vocabulary, and exotic adaptations of dances from Spain have enriched the established ballet repertory: Fanny Ellsler's Cachucha, Petipa's “Spanish Dance” divertissement in Swan Lake, and Leonide Massine's Tricorne (The Three Cornered Hat) are wellknown examples. Soloists such as Pastora Imperio, La Argentina, José Greco, and Carmen Amaya have popularized around the world what has become known as the Spanish style of dance (for example, fandango, bolero, seguidillas, flamenco). However, Spain has not been associated with the history of early modern dance, a phenomenon largely attributed to a handful of American and German dancers.Tórtola Valencia (1882–1955) claimed Spain as her country of origin, and made a flamboyant contribution to early modern dance in western Europe, Spain, and Latin America from 1908–1930. Her vast, eclectic repertory of Oriental, classical, and Spanish themes echoed the preoccupations of her contemporaries with whom she was favorably compared—in particular, Isadora Duncan, Maud Allan, Ruth St. Denis, Mikhail Fokine, and Anna Pavlova (1). In her time she received critical acclaim as one of the most famous dancers in Europe, yet she is not cited in the English language history of dance (2). This is only part of the mystery that weaves through the fabric of Tórtola Valencia's intriguing life and career.

Dancing and mixed media: early twentieth-century modern dance theory in text and photography

During the first third of the twentieth century, innovators and developers of modern dance evolved exercise systems, established schools, and published books on dancing illustrated by numerous photographs. Some of the books are by dancer-authors: Isadora Duncan, Raymond Duncan, Mary Beegle, Helen Moller, Margaret H'Doubler, Eleanor Elder, and Margaret Morris. These media - books and photographs - are also used by art critics, Charles Caffin and John E. Crawford Flitch and photographer, Arnold Genthe in books on dancing and dancers during this period; analysis of their works adds other dimensions to this study. The social, political, and cultural movements for radical utopianism, idealization of nature, rational recreation, anti-Victorianism, and the adulation of ancient Greek culture contribute to understanding the forces which influenced the newly emerging art forms of modern dance and photography.

Havelock Ellis's Essay “The Art of Dancing”: A Reconsideration

Since its publication in 1923 Havelock Ellis's essay, “The Art of Dancing,” found in his book The Dance of Life (pp. 34-63), has had a special place in the hearts of dance lovers from all walks of dance life. In the past several years Ellis's essay has been reprinted in three anthologies: Dance, in the quarterly periodical Salmagundi (1976:5-22), edited by Martin Leonard Pops; The Dance Anthology (1980:238-254), edited by Cobbett Steinberg; and What Is Dance? (1983:478-496), edited by Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen. Their collections, claim the anthologists, contain the best available writing on dance; thus, they include Ellis's essay. In their introductory remarks Steinberg as well as Copeland and Cohen emphasize Ellis's comprehensive view of dance. Both their books contain a section entitled “Dance and Society” where Ellis's essay is presented. Only Pops accurately identifies Ellis, along with most of the other authors in his collection, as an enthusiastic amateur.Since its publication, ideas from Ellis's essay have been quoted by many writers on dance: critics Walter Terry in The Dance in America (1971), Walter Sorell in Dance Through the Ages (1967), John Martin in America Dancing (1936), and Carl Van Vechten in his essays “The Land of Joy” and “Spain and Music” (1974:135-167); educators Margaret H'Doubler in Dance: A Creative Art Experience (1940), Elizabeth Selden in A Dancer's Quest (1935), Roderyk Lange in The Nature of Dance: An Anthropological Perspective (1975), Frederick Rand Rogers in Dance: A Basic Educational Technique (1941), Richard Kraus in History of Dance in Art and Education (1969), and Sondra Fraleigh in Dance and the Lived Body: A Descriptive Aesthetic (1987); historian Selma Jeanne Cohen in Next Week Swan Lake (1982); and philosophers Theodore M. Greene in The Arts and Art Criticism (1940) and Francis Sparshott in Off the Ground: First Steps in a Philosophical Consideration of Dance (1988). Early modern dance pioneers Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn imply in their writings that, because Ellis once again identified dance as an art, his status and erudition validated their own ideas about the value of dance (Terry 1976:43). These artists and authors regard Ellis as an authority. To introduce this reconsideration of Ellis's ideas about dance, the ideas these authors select to quote or cite from Ellis's essay will be examined.

Isadora Duncan – A Preliminary Analysis of her Work

My doctoral research started with a question to which I could not find an answer. The question arose during the study of the history of modern dance in the UK from the early twentieth century to the mid-1930s. I could postulate the influence of Isadora Duncan on British dancers of the time, such as Madge Atkinson, Ruby Ginner and Margaret Morris, and in some instances I could demonstrate and describe it. However, there seemed to be no detailed material evidence to support the notion that Duncan as a modern dance innovator was instrumental in initiating a distinctive British style within the early modern dance genre. The British dancers mentioned worked independently of each other, and while some, for example Ruby Ginner, denied that the particular dance form they developed was akin to that of Duncan, others, such as Margaret Morris, acknowledged the initial influence of Duncan.