The Dance Magazine, March 1930
Ted Shawn and Ruth St, Denis, The Dance Magazine, March, 1930
Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Tamris, Dance Repertoire Theatre, The Dance Magazine, March, 1930
[There are two photos from this magazine which belong here.]
Except maybe for Tamris, former members of the Denishawn Troupe, 1930
The Dance Magazine, March, 1930
The Dancer's Bookshelf
W. Adolphe Roberts Every Soul is a Circus, Vachel Lindsay, The MacMillan Company, New York, $2.75, The Dancer's BookshelfThe Dance Magazine, March, 1930
The poet who created such ringing original rhythms in The Congo and General William Booth Enters Heaven has turned his attention to the dance. His new book, he state in an interesting preface, was written "for precious children of all ages," but especially for those around eleven or twelve years old. The poems are intended primarily to be danced, and Linday states emphatically that there must be no musical accompaniment or singing. He wishes solo performers and classes to interpret them as they are read aloud from the side lines. Each movement of the body is to be improvised about half a second after the words which have suggested it. "Dance one syllable at a time," he instructs, "thinking only of the music of the poem and not the meaning."
Having never seen anything of the kind done, the reviewer hesitates to express an opinion as to whether it would be effective. Lindsay declares that he trained a group of schoolchildren in Spokane, Wash., along these lines, with excellent results.
The verse included in this volume does not impress me, considered simply as poetry. It is jazz in words, than which I ask no better when the the trick is effectively turned. However, the present examples are staccato and loud, without having any of the gorgeous thunder that was characteristic of Vachel Linsay's earlier work.
About the best piece I find to quote is the following, written, Lindsay merrily avers, "for Ruth St. Denis to dance on the top of a watch-crystal:"
Kind friend, see the word-signs
On the butterflies' wings!
Red Indian hieroglyphics
On the butterflies' wings!
The bee buzzes,
The orchard bird sings,
But the picture-writing
On the butterflies' wings
Read, read the long story
On the butterflies' wings!
The idea of dancing to verse is well worth a trial, and this book undoubtedly shows how it can be done. Teachers and poetically minded children should look into Every Soul is a Circus. Used as Lindsay intends them to be used, the poems may be far, far better than I think.
-[p. 52]-
Mary Watkins Dance Events Reviewed [pp. 27 and 60]
Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. Assisted by Messrs. Sol Cohn and Hugo Bergamasco and the Misses Mary Campbell and Muriel Watson. Two weeks' engagement. The Forest Theatre, New York.
Program:
1. From the Yang-Tse-Kiang . . . Goosens
2. White Jade (Ruth St. Denis) . . . Vaughn
3. Spear Dance-Japanesque (Ted Shawn) arr. Louis Horst
4. Waltz and Liebestraum (Ruth St. Denis) . . . Brahms and Liszt
5. Ramadan Dance (Ted Shawn) . . . Fuleihan
6. Bas Relief Figure (Ruth St. Denis) . . . Berge
7. Minuet . . . Valensin
8. Duet Suite (Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn) . . .
a. Tillers of the Soil . . .Meyerowitz
b. Idyll . . . Stoughton
c. Nocturne . . . Debussy
Death of the Bull God (Ted Shawn) . . . Giffes
Nautch Dance (Ruth St. Denis) . . . Nevin
Flamenco Dance (Ted Shawn) . . . Native Mss.
Serimpi-Javanese Court Dance (Ruth St. Denis) . . . Vaughn
Concert Waltz (Cohen) . . . Sid Cohen
The Cosmic Dance of Siva (Ted Shawn) . . . Strickland
Gavotte . . . Lully
Josephine and Hippolyte (Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn) . . . Drigo
These two outstanding artists and their work are so well-known and so widely beloved that comment and criticism upon their performance is almost gratuitous. The engagement however is so unique and so indicative of the important place which the dance is assuming in this city that a detailed account of it belongs to our readers. It is the first time that a theatrical manager has booked a dance attraction for a prolonged run on Broadway, without any "alleviating" assistant [p. 61] performers, and thus, true to their own traditions, the Denishawns are once more pioneers. As such, they must suffer the trials as well as reap the glories and we regret to report that every audience was not of the capacity variety which their work so richly deserves, although enthusiam was unbounded upon every occasion we attended.
The initial program might almost be subtitled "resume of past triumphs," for it included almost all those dances which have won these two artists international renown during a decade of effort. Beginning with Miss St. Denis' White Jade, ending with the popular duet, Josephine and Hippolyte, and presenting in between such classics as Mr. Shawn's Japanese Spear Dance, his Flamenco Dances, the justly famous Cosmic Dance of Siva, and Miss St. Denis' Waltzs by Brahms and Liszt, her Bakawali Nautch, her Javanese Court Dance. Among the less familiar numbers were two outstanding hits of the evening, Miss St. Denis' sprightly and bewitching re-creation of a little Khmers ballerina, dead and vanished a thousand years ago, and Mr. Shawn's virile and poetic Ramadan Dance, or Algerian Earth and Moon Ritual. The new, or newly adapted duet suite, was the least admirable of all the offerings, having in the course of three numbers Tillers of the Soil, Idyll and Nocture, many moments of lyric beauty and imagination, but proving on the whole somewhat cloyingly sentimental, and vastly inferior to the less abstract and more dynamic creations in the familiar repertoire.
The musical accompaniement was unusually good, but the musical substance was not always chosen with the same brilliant sense of fitness and qualtity which marks the choice and working out of the actual dance themes.
The second program was at least in the case of Miss St. Denis, amost entirely a glorification of the Orient. Hence it represented the best of the great dancer's achievements in her happiest vein, beginning with the Japanese Goddess of Mercy, and including the classic Japanese Flower Arrangements, the Black and Gold Sari, an engaging and querulous dance of Burma, and a new compostion, or rather one not seen by us before-the Tagore Poem to music by Carpenter, which concluded with the heartbroken and poignant speaking of lines from the poem. This was an extremely beautiful dance, full of the much abused thing called "atmosphere," and remarkable for its skilled manipulation of the exaggerated lengths of a rose-colored dekkan sari and its resolving plastic pose.
Mr. Shawn's numbers were also from his best, the Spear Dance, the American Indian's stirring Incantation to the Thunder Bird, and the almost overwhelmingly tragedy and despair of his Prometheus Bound. His slight but perfect Gnossienne of Satie, his Siva, and above all, from a popular standpoint, his Spanish dances, won him salvos of applause. Miss Ernestine Day, who was to have assisted Mr. Shawn in the Cuban La Rumba, was prevented by illness, and so the dancer substituted one of his original tangos, and was compelled to add not one but three encores in similar vein.
The evening again concluded with Hippolyte and Josephine.
Second Program
Fountains of Acqua Paolo . . . Giffes
Death of Adonis (Ted Shawn). . . Ted Shawn
Waltz and Liebestraum (Ruth St. Denis) . . . Brahms and Liszt
Hymn to the Sun (Ruth St. Denis) . . . Rimsky-Korsakoff
Bas Relief Figure from Angkor-Vat (Ruth St. Denis) . . . Berge
Prelude in C Minor . . . Chopin
Revolutionary Etude (Ted Shawn and group) . . . Chopin
Legend of the Peacock (Ruth St. Denis) . . . Roth
Duet Suite (Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn)
Tillers of the Soil . . . Meyerowitz
Idyll . . . Stoughton
Nocturne . . . Debussy
Mevlervi Dervish (Ted Shawn) . . . Fuleihan
Tanagra (Ruth St. Denis) . . . Schumann
Two American Sketches . . . Eastwood Lane
Around the Hall (Ted Shawn and Regenia Beck)
The Brino Tango (Ted Shawn and Ernestine Day)
Spanish Shawl Plastique (Ruth St. Denis) . . . Granados
Concert Waltz (Cohen) . . . (Sol Cohen)
Death of the Bull God (Ted Shawn) . . . Griffes
-[p. 61]-