COURSE TITLE:

PFA 326 (DANCE ANALYSIS

AND CRITICISM 1)

PROJECT:
A DETAILED ANALYSIS /
DOCUMENTARY ON THE
LIFE AND
CHOREOGRAPHY STYLE
OF “TED SHAWN”

GROUP MEMBERS
 ADEOYE OLUMIDE – 18/15CF014
 IBE NAOMI – 18/15CF080
 OLANREWAJU ABRAHAM – 18/15CF006
 TED SHAWN

Ted Shawn (born in 1891 – 1972 when he died )

was a key figure, and the only major male figure,
in the founding period of modern dance. With his
wife, Ruth St. Denis, he was half of the pioneer
modern dance production company and school
"Denishawn," whose notable pupils include
Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles
Weidman and silent film star Louise Brooks.
Shawn had a successful film career for his day,
appearing in the classic films Intolerance in 1916,
Don't Change Your Husband in 1919, and the first-
ever major dance film, Dances of the Ages in
1912, which he conceived and choreographed.
Shawn's dance retreat in Becket, Massachusetts,
became the renowned Jacob's Pillow Dance
Festival. It was the home base for his all-male
dance company which toured internationally,
shattering the stereotype that male dancers had to
be dainty and effeminate. Shawn's choreography
was strongly masculine and exhibited the intense
athletic quality of the art form.
Today, Jacob's Pillow is the longest-running dance
festival in the U.S., drawing over 80,000 visitors a
year. This ten-week-festival is a summer home for
training and exhibiting dancers with an eclectic
style and repertoire.

BIOGRAPHY
Ted Shawn was born as Edwin Myers Shawn on
October 21, 1891, in Kansas City, Missouri, but
grew up in Denver. While studying to become a
minister, Shawn suffered a bout of diphtheria
which left him paralyzed when he was 19. His
physician advised him to take up dance as a form
of physical therapy. Dancing cured Shawn's
paralysis and spurred him on to leave divinity
school and pursue the art of dance as a life-long
profession.
While Shawn did not have the ideal body type of a
male dancer—he was over six feet tall and
weighed 175 lbs.—he achieved some success
starting out. His first professional dance
experience was with a Metropolitan Opera
ballerina as his partner, and he garnered a few fans
as part of an exhibition ballroom team. In 1912, he
moved to Los Angeles and opened a dance studio.
There, he would be instrumental in making one of
the first dance motion pictures Dances of the Ages.
Soon after, his dancing partner, Norma Gould,
embarked with their company of interpretive
dancers upon a cross-country tour and reached
New York City after 19 performances.
In New York, he met Ruth St. Denis (1878-1968)
and married her almost immediately, on August
13, 1914. Their union would set his artistic life in
even greater motion as the pair formed the
Denishawn studios and dancers. Shawn also
served in a stint in the United States Army, first as
an enlisted man, then as an officer during World
War I, before devoting himself completely to
dance.
During the next 15 years, the activities of the
couple's Denishawn company and school changed
the course of dance history. It was the first
American institution to combine performance and
touring with dance curriculum. It was also
considered the only dance school to which parents
could safely send daughters. Most of today's
modern dancers trace their ancestry to Denishawn.
It was Shawn who first recognized Martha
Graham's potential. He was also instrumental in
shaping the early careers of Charles Weidman,
Doris Humphrey, and Jack Cole. While St. Denis
provided most of the creative sparks, Shawn had
the business sense to make Denishawn a coast-to-
coast success.
Denishawn aimed to demonstrate that modern
dance could be a serious art, while maintaining the
interest of mass audiences through the use of
costume, spectacle and entertainment. Its varied
repertory incorporated spiritual exotica in solo,
duet and group form, as well as large-scale
presentations such as the Dance Pageant of India,
Greece, and Egypt (1916). Premiering at this event
was the couple’s signature duet, Tillers of the Soil,
a stylized rendition of an ancient Egyptian couple
harvesting the earth. Shawn contributed to these
spectacles but also choreographed nearly 200 of
his own works, ranging from the comedic Betty’s
Music Box (1922) to the ethnic Japanese Spear
Dance (1919). His infatuation with ancient Greek
philosophy and physical ideals led him to create
such dances as Death of Adonis (1924), in which
Shawn, nude and painted white, embodied a
moving classical sculpture.

JACOB'S PILLOW DANCE

FESTIVAL

During the darkest days of the Great Depression

(1929-1939), Ted Shawn bought an abandoned
farmhouse in western Massachusetts known as
Jacob's Pillow (named after a large pillow-shaped
rock behind the house). By the time Shawn
acquired the Pillow in 1930, his stormy marriage
to Ruth St. Denis had ended, which also brought
on the dissolution of their financially successful
company, Denishawn.
Jacob's Pillow became Shawn's summer dance
retreat. He slowly began to lay the groundwork
both for his revolutionary company of men
dancers and America's oldest dance festival. The
Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival began as a series of
tea concerts given by Shawn's company for the
local ladies of the community. The men, dressed in
white bathrobes, served sandwiches to the patrons,
then stripped to flesh-colored trunks and danced.
The concerts were an unqualified hit.
In March 1933, "Ted Shawn and His Men
Dancers" gave their first, historic, all-male
performance in Boston. By May 1940 when
Shawn disbanded the group, the company had
danced for over a million people in all of the
United States, in Canada, Cuba and England.
Having challenged the dance world to accept male
dancing as a legitimate addition to the art form, the
troupe irrevocably changed the course of
American dance.
For the final three decades of his life, Shawn
became a major impresario, bringing dance to
mainstream America through the theater and
school at Jacob's Pillow. To promote his principle
of the importance and universality of dance,
Shawn introduced countless foreign companies to
American audiences, provided opportunities for
promising young artists, and trained a myriad of
students in a full range of dance styles. Shawn
orchestrated premieres by both the established and
emerging talents of his day including Agnes de
Mille, Anton Dolin, Pearl Lang, Merce
Cunningham, Anna Sokolow, Alvin Ailey and
Robert Joffrey.
Today, Jacob’s Pillow is a National Historic
Landmark located in the town of Becket,
Massachusetts. It addition to the festival itself, it
encompasses a professional dance school, rare and
extensive archives, an intern program, and year-
round community programs.

A former divinity student, Shawn was introduced

to dance as therapy after an illness. Soon after
beginning his dance career, he met and married
Ruth St. Denis in 1914; together they founded
Denishawn. Shawn taught and promoted many
different ethnic and theatrical styles of dance and,
with St. Denis, choreographed the Denishawn
company’s entire repertoire. Together, Shawn and
Ruth St. Denis established an eclectic grouping of
dance techniques including ballet (done without
shoes), and movement that focused less on rigidity
and more on the freeing of the upper body. To add
to St. Denis' mainly eastern influence, Shawn
brought the spirit of North African, Spanish,
American and Amerindian influence to the table.
The Denishawn Company, founded by Shawn and
St. Denis in 1914, ushered in a new era of modern
American dance. Breaking with European
traditions, their choreography connected the
physical and spiritual, often drawing from ancient,
indigenous, and international sources. St. Denis's
and Shawn's Orientalism and cultural
appropriation raise questions of imperialism,
colonization, and racism. He and St. Denis ended
both their marital and their professional
association in 1931, though they never divorced.
From 1933 to 1940 he built a group of male
dancers, for whom he choreographed numerous
dances, including Labor Symphony, Olympiad, and
Kinetic Molpai. By drawing from such sources as
labourers’ movements, dances of American
Indians, and U.S. folk and popular dance, he was
able to create a vigorous, masculine dance
technique that greatly enhanced the attraction of
dance as a career for men.
In 1933 he founded Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival
near Lee, Massachusetts, as a summer residence
and theatre for his dancers. After the group’s
dissolution, Shawn developed Jacob’s Pillow into
an internationally important dance centre.
Although his own choreography was generally
nonballetic, he believed that dance as a whole is
composed of many valid styles and so presented
ballet as well as modern and ethnic dancers at
Jacob’s Pillow. Shawn continued to make
occasional appearances as a dancer, reviving his
solos, choreographing new ones, and performing
in works created for him by Myra Kinch, notably
Sundered Majesty (1954), based on Shakespeare’s
King Lear. He also lectured extensively and wrote
several books. A biography, Father of American
Dance, by Walter Terry was published in 1976.

The site of Jacob's Pillow in Becket,

Massachusetts was originally settled in 1790 by
Jacob Carter III (1745-1831). Because of the
zigzagging road leading to the hilltop property, it
became known as "Jacob's Ladder", after the
Biblical story, and a pillow-shaped rock on the
property prompted the farm to acquire the name
"Jacob's Pillow".
The farm was purchased in 1931 by modern dance
pioneer Ted Shawn as a dance retreat. Shawn and
his wife, Ruth St. Denis, led the highly regarded
Denishawn Company, which had popularized
dance forms rooted in theater and cultural
traditions outside European ballet. They were
influential in training a host of dance pioneers,
including Martha Graham, Charles Weidman,
Doris Humphrey, and Jack Cole. Shawn's
objective was to establish a dance organization for
American men. The early corps of his all-male
company built many of the structures on the
Jacob's Pillow campus. This effort came to an end
in 1940 with the advent of the Second World War;
Shawn's company disbanded and most of its
members joined the military.

"I believe that dance communicates man's deepest,

highest and most truly spiritual thoughts and
emotions far better than words, spoken or
written."

— attributed to Ted Shawn, 

in Outback and Beyond
Due to Shawn's marital problems and financial
difficulties, Denishawn closed in the early 1930s.
Subsequently, Shawn formed an all-male dance
company of athletes he taught at Springfield
College, with the mission to fight for acceptance
of the American male dancer and to bring
awareness of the art form from a male perspective.
The all-male company was based out of a farm
that Shawn purchased near Lee, Massachusetts. On
July 14, 1933, Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers
had their premier performance at Shawn's farm,
which would later be known as Jacob's Pillow
Dance Festival. Shawn produced some of his most
innovate and controversial choreography to date
with this company such as "Ponca Indian Dance",
"Sinhalese Devil Dance", "Maori War Haka",
"Hopi Indian Eagle Dance", "Dyak Spear Dances",
and "Kinetic Molpai". Through these creative
works Shawn showcased athletic and masculine
movement that soon would gain popularity. The
company performed in the United States and
Canada, touring more than 750 cities, in addition
to international success in London and Havana.
Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers concluded at
Jacob's Pillow on August 31, 1940, with a
homecoming performance.
Shawn had a romantic relationship with one of his
dancers, Barton Mumaw, from 1931 to 1948. One
of the leading stars of the company, Barton
Mumaw would emerge onto the dance industry
and be considered "the American Nijinsky". While
with Shawn, Mumaw began a relationship with
John Christian, a stage manager for the company.
Mumaw introduced Shawn to Christian. Later,
Shawn formed a partnership with Christian, with
whom he stayed from 1949 until his death in 1972.
With this new company came the creation of
Jacob's Pillow: a dance school, retreat, and theater.
The facilities also hosted teas, which, over time,
became the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. Shawn
also created The School of Dance for Men around
this time, which helped promote male dance in
colleges nationwide.

Shawn taught classes at Jacob's Pillow just months

before his death at the age of 80. In 1965, Shawn
was a Heritage Award recipient of the National
Dance Association. Shawn's final appearance on
stage in the Ted Shawn Theater at Jacob's Pillow
was in Siddhas of the Upper Air, where he
reunited with St. Denis for their fiftieth
anniversary.
Saratoga Springs is now the home of the National
Museum of Dance, the United States' only
museum dedicated to professional dance. Shawn
was inducted into the museum's Mr. & Mrs.
Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in
1987.
Ted Shawn wrote and published nine books that
provided a foundation for Modern Dance:

1920 – Ruth St. Denis: Pioneer and Prophet

1926 – The American Ballet
1929 – Gods Who Dance
1935 – Fundamentals of a Dance Education
1940 – Dance We Must
1944 – How Beautiful Upon the Mountain
1954 – Every Little Movement: a Book About
Francois Delsarte
1959 – Thirty-three Years of American Dance
1960 – One Thousand and One Night Stands
(autobiography, with Gray Poole

LATER YEARS AND LEGACY

Shawn's greatest legacy was to show America that
men could choose modern dance as a legitimate,
masculine profession. Shawn purposely hired and
trained virile-looking men, many of whom had
been star college athletes, to dance with his
company.
"[The] photographs work incredibly well as
homoerotic images in the year 2002," wrote David
Gere, a professor of dance history at the University
of California, Los Angeles, in the foreword to the
2000 edition of the book by Barton Mumaw, who
was both Shawn's leading dancer and clandestine
lover for many years. Because it would have been
impossible during the Depression to obtain
professional credibility as gay men, Shawn and
Mumaw kept their relationship closeted.
Shawn rejected any softness in his choreography.
He was adamant about portraying a kind of
hypermasculine image, rejecting the notion of
effeminacy of the dancer characteristic in ballet.
The company forged a new, boldly muscular style
in dances celebrating Pawnee braves, toiling Black
sharecroppers, and Union machinists.
The prejudice in America against men dancing
professionally was a powerful roadblock in the
evolution of the art, but Shawn, driven by
necessity, challenged the status quo and became a
closeted pioneer for the rights of men, both gay
and straight. When his all-male company
disbanded, Shawn claimed a major victory in the
battle against prejudice. After the war, Jacob's
Pillow became a welcoming retreat where dancers
could go for the summer to study, work, and
perform.
Shawn made some powerful enemies in his later
years, including former pupils Agnes de Mille and
Martha Graham. Both said and wrote a great deal
to damage the pioneer's reputation. Still, he was a
courageous and relentless advocate for dance.
Shawn was honored with the Capezio Award
(1957), the Dance Magazine Award (1970), and he
was knighted by the king of Denmark for his
efforts on behalf of the Royal Danish Ballet.
Posthumously, Shawn was named as one of
America's "Irreplaceable Dance Treasures" by the
Dance Heritage Coalition in 2000.
In spite of declining health, Shawn remained at the
helm of Jacob's Pillow until his death in 1972 at
the age of 81. For most of his career he
encouraged his students to call him "Papa" and his
legacy as the artistic father for generations of
dancers and teachers suggests that "Papa" was a
very apt name indeed.
There are a number of "firsts" achieved by Ted
Shawn during his lifetime:
* He was the first American man to achieve a
world reputation in dance.
* He conceived, choreographed and appeared in
one of the first dance films, the Thomas Edison
Company's Dances of the Ages in 1912.
* He was first American dancer to be awarded an
honorary degree by an American college.
* He was the first male dancer to be listed in
Who's Who in America.
PICTORIAL REPRESENTATION OF
TED SHAWN’S JACOB’S PILLOW