Society of Dance History Scholars Proceedings
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Society of Dance History Scholars Proceedings Twenty-Seventh Annual Conference Duke University ~ Durham, North Carolina 17-20 June 2004 Twenty-Eighth Annual Conference Northwestern University ~ Evanston, Illinois 9-12 June 2005 The Society of Dance History Scholars is a constituent member of the American Council of Learned Societies. This collection of papers has been compiled from files provided by individual authors who wished to contribute their papers as a record of the 2004 Society of Dance History Scholars conference. The compiler endeavored to standardize format for columns, titles, subtitles, figures or illustrations, references, and endnotes. The content is unchanged from that provided by the authors. Individual authors hold the copyrights to their papers. Published by Society of Dance History Scholars 2005 SOCIETY OF DANCE HISTORY SCHOLARS CONFERENCE PAPERS Susan C. Cook, Compiler TABLE OF CONTENTS 17-20 June 2004 Duke University ~ Durham, North Carolina 1. Dancing with the GI Bill Claudia Gitelman 2. Discord within Organic Unity: Phrasal Relations between Music and Choreography in Early Eighteenth-Century French Dance Kimiko Okamoto 3. Dance in Dublin Theatres 1729-35 Grainne McArdle 4. Queer Insertions: Javier de Frutos and the Erotic Vida Midgelow 5. Becomings and Belongings: Lucy Guerin’s The Ends of Things Melissa Blanco Borelli 6. Beyond the Marley: Theorizing Ballet Studio Spaces as Spheres Not Mirrors Jill Nunes Jensen 7. Exploring Ashton’s Stravinsky Dances: How Research Can Inform Today’s Dancers Geraldine Morris 8. Dance References in the Records of Early English Drama: Alternative Sources for Non- Courtly Dancing, 1500-1650 E.F. Winerock 9. Regional Traditions in the French Basse Dance David Wilson 10. Valerie Bettis: Finding Form in The Desperate Heart Cynthia Bond Perry 11. Japanese Floating World: The Influence of Ukiyo-e on Early Modern Dance 1890-1930 Jonette Lancos 12. “I Wouldn’t Cross the Street to See That”: Modern Dancers Who Survived the Holocaust in America Judith Brin Ingber 13. Paul Taylor’s Influence on the Development of Dance in Taiwan Juan Ann Tai 14. Walking Miracles: A Process Narrative of an Original Dance/Theater Work Created from Stories Told by Six Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse Barbara Dickinson 15. Encounters across Cultures and Communities: El Grupo Cultural Uk’Ux Pop Wuj de Maya and the Isadora Duncan Dance Ensemble Andrea Mantell-Seidel 16. Dance in Another Dimension: Investigating Lois Greenfield’s Photography Hannah J. Kosstrin 9-12 June 2004 Northwestern University ~ Evanston, Illinois 17. Performing Whiteness: An Ethnographic Case Study of Ballroom Dance in Central Illinois Joanna Bosse 18. “Do You Know What You Saw?” Foreign Liquors and Jewish Matzos in Heinrich Kröller’s and Richard Strauss’s “Whipped Cream” Ballet Wayne Heisler Jr. 19. Infinite Possibilities: The Use of Formal Elements as a Creative Contribution of Dancers in Performance of Nonrepresentational Ballet, with Specific Reference to Suzanne Farrell Tamara Tomic-Vajagic 20. The Invisible Dance: Oscar Wilde’s Influence on the Creation of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes Annabel Rutherford 21. Shepherd and Shepherdess Dances on the French Stage in the Early 18th Century Ken Pierce 22. Spacemaking: The Landscape of Our Experience Felicity Molloy, Debra Laub, and Philippe Campays 23. Katherine Dunham and the Movies, 1939-1964 Claude Conyers 24. Carnal Glory: The Reinscription of the Gay Male in Dance History Linda Sears 25. The “Ruin” of Balanchine’s La Valse Carrie Gaiser 26. From the Belly of the Drum: Transmitting from the Cultural Center to the Body Through the Pedagogy of Chuck Davis and Katherine Dunham Francie Johnson with Patricia Dye 27. The Chicago and Harlem Savoy Ballrooms – Different Cultures – Different Fortunes Terry Monaghan 28. Zab Maboungou: Trance and Locating Other Bridget E. Cauthery 29. Centering the Classical Dance of India in the Body and the World Hema Rajagopalan and Bill Jordan 30. The Displacement of Cumbia’s Center: From Religious Processions, to Social Circle Dances, to Urban Carnival Parades Melissa Teodoro 31. Postfeminist Corporealities and the Choreography of La Ribot Vida Midgelow 32. Interfacing Dance and Technology: Towards a Posthuman Corporeality Isabel Valverde 33. Inverse Contextualization: Writing about Dance from the Inside Out M. Candace Feck 34. Allegory, Parody, and a Taste for the Undesirable in Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Platée: Poor “Thing,” Why Aren’t You Laughing? Susan Tenneriello 35. Upside Down and Inside Out: Ted Shawn’s Gnossienne as Avant-garde Art Elizabeth Drake-Boyt 36. Finding the Margin in the Center: The Dance Sensibility of Peter DiMuro Sherrie Barr 37. Re-Centring the Centre: Nagrin’s Experiments in Interactive Improvisation Diane Wawrejko 2004 PROCEEDINGS Dancing with the GI Bill Claudia Gitelman A recipe of motives—honest altruism, military Joseph Nash was one of the first six GIs to register comradery, and social engineering—led to the adop- for dance classes at ATW. He did not use the living tion of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, allowance GIs were eligible for because he was al- better known as the GI Bill of Rights. The American ready employed. Shortly after his discharge in October Legion lobbied early and hard for veteran’s benefits; 1945, he had auditioned for Helen Tamiris. She cast the administration of Franklin Roosevelt began plan- him in Show Boat, which opened in January 1946. ning for demobilization within a year of United States’ Self-taught before his war service, classes in ATW’s direct engagement in World War II. The legislation Professional Training Program provided Nash his first narrowly survived an attack by an influential con- formal training. He jokes that he needed classes be- gressman, who held the bill in conference because it cause fellow dancers in the show kept asking him offered Blacks the same benefits as Whites. In a drama “who did you study with?” He took ballet with Helene worthy of a movie car chase, a congressman who Platova, a teacher who would accept a Black man, and could break a tie on the committee was hunted down modern dance at the school of Charles Weidman, and flown to Washington just in time to vote the bill where he remembers a large group of veterans and out of committee. It passed both houses of Congress non-GI students working in a variety of fluid and dra- and President Roosevelt signed it into law June 22, matic styles. Those were “happy days,” recalls Nash. 1945. “We moved!” Other musicals came along for Nash What did the G.I. Bill mean for dancers? The story and during slack months he picked up nightclub gigs of the law’s best-known provision, which sent over and his pal, the choreographer Tony Charmoli, also a two million veterans to college, is often told and well veteran registered at ATW, used Nash for specialty known. Little remarked, however, is that a larger num- numbers on TV’s Hit Parade. ber of veterans, 3.5 million of them, used the Bill for Alfredo Corvino, a native of Uruguay, was danc- vocational training. Some enrolled in art and drama ing in Ballet Jooss when the company landed in New schools. York in 1940. (During their stay, Agnes De Mille cho- The American Theatre Wing was well poised for reographed Drums Sound in Hackensack for the com- accreditation by the Veterans Administration and the pany.) While a reduced company toured the United New York State Board of Education to train former States, Corvino studied on scholarship with Anatole soldiers, having administered myriad entertainment Vilzak and picked up performing gigs—one was part- programs during the war. By the summer of 1946 nering Pauline Koner at the Roxy Theater. Then he ATW had designed a Professional Training Program appeared with the Jooss company in New York from for veterans. Agnes de Mille was general chairman for September 1941 to February 1942. When the company dance, Lincoln Kirstein chairman of the ballet divi- returned to England, Corvino stayed in New York to sion, and Hanya Holm head of the modern dance divi- audition for his idol, Leonide Massine, and he danced sion. Seventy-two dancers enrolled for the first term in Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo from January 1943 to and dance critic John Martin reported in May 1947 May 1945. (Ironically, 1942 was Massine’s last year that 335 GI dancers had passed through various with Ballet Russe.) When Uruguay, which had re- classes. mained neutral in the early years of World War II, de- The unusual case of William Thompson netted a clared for the Allies, Corvino was obliged to register paragraph in ATW’s newsletter The Prompt Box. A for the draft and he spent two years in the U.S. army. circus acrobat with Ringling Brothers before serving in After his discharge he registered at ATW in order, he the navy, Thompson was spotted in a class at Ballet says, to “refresh myself.” He took classes with Eliza- Arts by Antony Tudor, who immediately signed him beth Anderson-Ivantzova and other ballet teachers, and for Ballet Theater. Thompson’s first role in the fall to fill in class hours to which he was entitled he stud- 1947 season was as one of the Lovers-in-Experience in ied drumming with Katherine Dunham and notation Tudor’s Pillar of Fire. He danced in the corps de ballet with Lucy Venable. until he disappeared from the company roster in 1949. Like Nash, Corvino did not apply for a living al- 1 Gitelman lowance; he always worked. He danced at Radio City 1946 was undoubtedly welcome. He began using them Music Hall, Jones Beach Theater, a regional theater in immediately for his choreography: for the cast of the New Hope, Pennsylvania, and in nightclubs. In 1949 short-lived Broadway show If the Shoe Fits in 1946; he joined the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, soon becom- the creation of his James Thurber inspired Fables of ing a faculty member at its school.