Word: denishawn
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...Dance Is Religion. The couple formed a school, Denishawn, which lasted some 16 years, until Ted and Miss Ruth separated (though not legally) in 1931. Shawn next flouted the opposition of backers and booking agents to rescue male dancers from general scorn as sissies and mere props for female dancers. From 1933 to 1940 he successfully toured the country with his troupe of male dancers. But with World War II the draft made short work of this project. Shawn himself danced and directed shows at Keesler Field, Miss. Since the war he has devoted himself to building up Jacob...
...native of the midwest, Mr. Weidman began his dance career with the company of Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. Following a period of study at the Denishawn School in California, Mr. Weidman and Miss Rita Humphrey formed a concert group of their own in New York...
Slender, faun-faced Dancer Weidman, 46, is the son of a Lincoln, Neb. fireman. He joined Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis famed Denishawn group in 1920. On a tour of the Orient with them, it suddenly came over him how absurd it was for a group of Americans to perform classic Oriental dances for the Orientals. "I said to myself, 'Why am I here trying to do their dances. . . . They must wonder how we dance ourselves. How do we?' " In 1929 he teamed up with another Denishawn star, Doris Humphrey, and set out to supply an answer...
Then St. Denis turned mystic, dreamed vaguely of a Christian dance church in which body rhythms would replace orthodox hymns and sermons. Shawn was more interested in Indian lore and athletic male dancers. They disbanded their Denishawn partnership. "Ted and I are not divorced," she said, "only esthetically separated. I am full of temples and he is full of boy ballets...
...left a lucrative job with the then-popular Ruth St. Denis company to brood and prance alone in a Manhattan studio. Results of this brooding, Graham's Manhattan concerts in 1926-29, were the first doses of modernist dance Manhattanites had ever taken. Soon, however, two other former Denishawn dancers, Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, joined the procession. When famed German Modernist Dancer Mary Wigman visited the U. S. in 1930-31, the U. S. home-grown modernist dance had already taken root. But Wigman's U. S. tours added a trail of disciples to "the modernist ranks...