Dance

DANCE

DANCE. The history of American dance is as varied as the numerous dance forms that compose it. Dominated by competing senses of athleticism and grace, the American dance form came of age during the twentieth century, perfecting a combination of European and African roots. In colonial America dancing was popular wherever religious sanctions did not prevent freedom of expression. Primarily primitive in nature, colonial American dance reflected the juxtaposition of numerous immigrant groups and Native American tribes. Nevertheless, it was a blending of traditional western European and western African dance forms that provided the backbone of American dance in the twenty-first century. This amalgamation began at the end of the colonial era and continued slowly until the end of the nineteenth century with the dawning of the jazz era.

From the mid-eighteenth century to the latter part of the nineteenth century, American dance progressed from minuets and country-dances to cotillions and quadrilles. These dances were almost ritualized; they required grace and knowledge of the complex steps. Regional or country-dances, such as the Irish step dances, the Scotch-Irish jigs, or German reels, reflected the cosmopolitan nature of American dance. Incorporated into this category were the various African dance forms, such as the religious ring shout, funeral and processional strut dances, and seasonal dances. Thus, American dance combined old-world technique with new environmental and social trends to create a new hybrid of dance and music.

Perhaps the best example of this hybridization is the "jig," a step dance that was popular first in Europe, and then in America. This foot-stomping dance extended beyond class boundaries and, when combined with the African step dances, became the precursor to the twentieth-century American dance form, tap. This hybridization became the hallmark of American dance, combining a sort of individualism and improvisation that was distinctly American.

Incorporating this distinctly American style was the first "ballet" style dance. Using techniques similar to pantomime, this ballet was presented in 1735 by Henry Holt, a British dancing instructor who had opened a dancing school in 1734 in Charleston, South Carolina. The first classical performers in America were English, French, and Italian touring companies, which presented operas, operettas, and pantomimes. Dancing also made its way into circuses and variety shows, where the first notable American dancer, John Durang, made his debut. As a blackface comic, he combined comedy, acting, acrobatics, and rope dancing—again, a uniquely American style. Durang began his career in Philadelphia with the Old American Company, one of the earliest theatrical touring groups. His popularity paved the way for the joint debut in Philadelphia of two American ballerinas, Augusta Maywood, who danced primarily in Europe, and Mary Ann Lee, who danced the first American Giselle in Boston in 1846. However, these dancers were exceptions, as European dancers dominated the American scene in the nineteenth century.

Theatrical dancing, including ballet, pageantry, and melodrama, peaked in 1866 with the production at Niblo's Gardens in New York of The Black Crook, which became a fixture on the American stage for the remainder of the nineteenth century. Prior to this performance, William Henry Lane, whose stage name was Master Juba, was the only black singer-dancer to perform in white minstrel shows. The ingenuity of his improvised dance steps created a sense of interaction between dancer and audience, and his footwork originated the form known as tap dance.

The cakewalk, a black American social dance, became the first indigenous African American dance fad to spread to Europe. The cakewalk presumably began around 1850 on the plantations of the South, and its high-kneed strut was meant to parody the solemn decorum of the white masters as they promenaded in the formal marches that opened their balls. The white masters, apparently oblivious to the actual meaning, encouraged the development of this dance form.

Dance became more of a public affair in the mid-nineteenth century. In the early 1800s the popularity of the waltz, an import from Europe, and round dancing, including the polka, quadrille, and mazurka brought by new waves of eastern European immigrants, reflected the new public representation of dance. More public

---

ballrooms were built, and dances became egalitarian events, in contrast to the smaller, more private parties of the preceding century, which had demanded a sort of ballroom etiquette. Dance manuals published in the late nineteenth century devoted less space to ballroom etiquette, and more information to the images detailing the actual dance technique itself.

At the turn of the century a rash of "animal" dances became popular. Dances like the Turkey Trot, the Kangaroo Hop, and the Grizzly Bear continued the trend in couple dances by incorporating gestures and steps from African animal dances. All body appendages could be used; elbows would flap, and heads bob, as the dancers hopped around the dance floor like bunnies. The Charleston, which had originated in black neighborhoods around 1910, made it to the white stage in Runnin' Wild in 1922. This dance craze represented a complete break from all European elements. With its African American dance elements, including the flying kicks, shimmying shoulders, and swaying hips, the Charleston made a star overseas of its protégé, Josephine Baker.

The turn of the century also inaugurated an entirely new form of dancing: the expressive or interpretive dance, known as modern dance. With the popularity of such dances as the cakewalk or the Charleston, intensity of expression became extremely important in the world of American dance. Perhaps the best-known proponent of interpretive dance was Isadora Duncan. Born in 1877 in San Francisco, California, Duncan tried the commercial stage but found it restrictive and uncreative. In 1903 in Berlin she delivered a speech entitled "The Dance of the

---

Future," in which she argued, "the dance of the future will have to become again a high religious art as it was with the Greeks. For art which is not religious is not art, is mere merchandise." When she returned to the United States, she went where no other solo dancer had dared to go; by dancing to the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Frédéric Chopin, and Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky, she transformed the public arena of the stage. Her performances were poorly received by dance critics, who questioned her physical interpretation of symphonic music, as well as her simplistic approach to costumery. Duncan sponsored many young American dancers, and trained them in her expressive, "naturalistic" style of dancing. Her uninhibited approach to art set the foundation for the success of modern dance in America.

Similarly, the uninhibited dance style of Ruth St. Denis, originally a vaudeville dancer, ignited the imagination of her followers. She became very interested in the dance of eastern cultures and, inspired by an image of the goddess Isis in an advertisement for Egyptian Deities cigarettes, created her own unique form of dance. She began her career as a solo artist in 1905 with the dance "Radha," the story of the mortal maiden loved by the god Krishna. Like Duncan, she never felt she would receive the attention she craved in the United States, so she moved to Europe, where she built her reputation as an exotic dancer with a classical style. She returned to the United States, where she began to work with Edwin Meyers "Ted" Shawn, a stage dancer who later became her husband. Together they founded the Denishawn Company, which soon dominated the modern dance arena.

One of the protégés of the Denishawn Company, Martha Graham became one of the most influential figures of the first half of the twentieth century. She learned to discard the strict choreography and footwork that had restricted her desire for innovation. She formed her own company in 1925; her programs featured exotic solos, and her dances attempted to draw attention to the plight of the human condition. She worked closely with Louis Horst, a major figure on the American dance scene in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, who encouraged her to work with contemporary composers rather than with eighteenth-and nineteenth-century music, as had previously been done. By 1930 Martha Graham had identified a method of breathing and relaxation she called "contraction and release," in which the movement originated in the tension of a contracted muscle and continued in the flow of energy released from the body as the muscle relaxed. This method gave Graham's dancers an angular look, one completely incongruous with the smooth dance styles of her predecessors. Before her death in 1991, she was often accused of making dance an "ugly" art form, but she ignited an interest in freedom of expression.

With the 1916 arrival in New York of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, ballet actually began to be taken seriously in the United States. However, it was not until the Russian dancer George Balanchine and the American Lincoln Kirstein formed the New York City Ballet in 1948 that American ballet became a recognized and valid entity. Initially based in New York's City Center, it moved to the New York State Theater at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in 1964. Balanchine extended the range and symbolism of American ballet; by infusing traditional and classical steps with contemporary techniques and energy he created a uniquely American ballet. While the New York City Ballet attempted a return to neoclassicism, reveling in its simplicity, dancers Lucia Chase and Richard Pleasant in 1940 formed the beginnings of a company that incorporated a variety of choreographic techniques. The Ballet Theatre, which became the American Ballet Theatre in 1957, provided a stage for such works as Agnes de Mille's Fall River Legend and Antony Tudor's Romeo and Juliet, as well as for classic works of the nineteenth century such as Giselle and Swan Lake. The main focus of the American Ballet Theatre was to provide a forum for both classical and contemporary works.

Concurrently, in the post–World War II era, another group of dancers focused on choreography that emphasized idiosyncrasy and physicality, a formula that became the modern dance of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Acting independently, these were modern dance choreographers such as Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Alvin Ailey, Glen Tetley, and José Limón. Cunningham in particular began to use chance devices to structure the movement and program the timing of movement of the performing space, which gave the dance stage a new set of possibilities. Alvin Ailey created his own touring troupe in 1958, when the idea of a modern dance company, and specifically a black modern dance company, was practically inconceivable. At the time, Broadway theaters were not hospitable to the concept of modern dance, nor were modern dance companies stable enterprises. However, Ailey encouraged the enjoyment of dance as a vibrant form of theater, and his company's style focused entirely on physicality. His dancers seemed to slide across the stage with an emphasis on ecstasy. Ailey noted that he wanted to create a black folkloric company that would combine bawdy humor, earthy emotion, and honesty with the intense physicality of pelvic thrusts and long body-lines.

New dance forms are continually evolving, particularly in terms of self-expression, thanks in part to the groundbreaking work of Martha Graham, George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and their contemporaries. For example, choreographer Mark Morris attempted to challenge preconceived notions, just as did his predecessors. He is perhaps best known for his 1988 work, L'Allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato, set to the Handel score. He also continued in the tradition established by Martha Graham of combining well-known composers and musicians with choreographers, working with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and composer Lou Harrison. Modern dance seeks a social context, and even ballroom dancing, which has evolved as a sport in its own right, incorporates the dances popular in the nineteenth century, such as the waltz, foxtrot, and quickstep, with a contemporary pulse.

In the latter part of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first century, dance acquired a sense of athleticism and was touted for its health benefits. Dancing in clubs only increased in popularity with American youth; movements are centered in pelvic rotations, swiveling hips, bobbing heads, and stomping and sliding feet. Popularized by the syncretic choreography of "boy bands" such as the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync, popular dance was very much infused with the musical performance. The focus was as much on the music as on the choreography. Similarly, Oriental dance (commonly known as "belly dancing"), square dancing, Latin rhythms such as the merengue and samba, and such popular forms as

---

jazz and tap, each focus on the combination of "feeling the music" and the choreography itself. Many popular films, including Dance with Me or Center Stage, also prompted an obsession with dance in modern culture. Dance in America is closely synonymous with everyday life, and is inspired by social and cultural issues.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carbonneau, Suzanne. "Dance at the Close of the Century." USIA Electronic Journal 3, no. 1 (1998).

Cohen, Selma Jeanne. Dance as a Theatre Art: Source Readings in Dance History from 1581 to the Present. New York: Harper and Row, 1976.

Garafola, Lynn. Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Mazo, Joseph. "Ailey and Company." Horizon 27, no. 6 (1984): 18–24.

Parks, Gary. "Critical Mass: Vintage Reviews: A Look at the Dance World through Seventy Years of Dance Magazine Reviews." Dance Magazine 71, no. 6 (June 1997): 14–35.

Riis, Thomas L. Just before Jazz: Black Musical Theater in New York, 1890 to 1915. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.

Thorpe, Edward. Black Dance. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1990.

Jennifer Harrison

See also Alvin Ailey American Dance Company ; American Ballet Theatre ; Ballet ; Discos ; Martha Graham Dance Company ; New York City Ballet .