Dance We Must

Ruth St. Denis (1879-1968) and Ted Shawn (1891-1972) pioneered modern dance in the United States with their company Denishawn, founded in 1914. A generation of modern dancers and choreographers, including Martha Graham, trained and first performed with the company. Artists who were inspired by or worked with St. Denis and Shawn include Auguste Rodin, John Singer Sargent, Katherine Dreier, Marcel Duchamp, and Joseph Cornell, among others. While there is a large body of literature on the relationship between the visual arts and dance in early twentieth-century Europe, there is no equivalent scholarship on Denishawn, America's answer to the Ballets Russes. Original research in this book makes an important contribution to the literature on modern dance, as well as American Modernism in the arts broadly. This heavily illustrated catalogue includes artwork, sets, ephemera, and especially costumes, many of which haven't been seen since they were worn in the 1930s. A significant portion of the visual materials and costumes, and of St. Denis's and Shawn's choreography, borrow from East and South Asian and Native American cultures; this publication interrogates the legacy of cultural appropriation and colonialism in dance. The materials also demonstrate St. Denis's and Shawn's stylistic and personal connections to American and European modernists, broadening an understanding of dance in the United States within the context of early Modernism--