Word: shawne
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...they acknowledged five tumultuous curtain calls, it was hard to believe that Ruth St. Denis is 87 years old, that Ted Shawn is 72. Yet the dance they performed, choreographed by Shawn, taken from a poem by St. Denis, was in honor of their 50th wedding anniversary. It was the latest of countless new works that have been premiered at Jacob's Pillow, the sylvan retreat in Massachusetts' rolling Berkshire hills that Ted Shawn founded 31 years...
Grand Acclaim. To mark the event, scores of famed artists and friends packed Shawn's rustic theater. No matter that Papa Shawn and Miss Ruth had been "esthetically separated" - he lives in Florida, she in California - for more than 30 years now. Their Indian-inspired duet, entitled Siddhas (Angels) of the Upper Air, was an act of celebration and remembrance...
...Shawn, life changed forever in 1910. A pious, bookish student at the University of Denver, he was studying to be a Methodist minister when an attack of diphtheria left him paralyzed from the waist down. Ballet lessons were prescribed to aid his recovery. Private therapy was one thing. But dancing in public? When Shawn actually danced a waltzy pas de deux at an arts ball, faculty members were shocked and fraternity brothers sniggered. "Men," he was quietly informed, "don't dance." Shawn quit the university, and has viewed his art ever since as a logical "continuation of my sense...
Summer Cycle. Shawn points out that when he began, "dance choreography was predominantly feminine; it was like music with nothing but strings and woodwinds. It needed the brasses and drums of the male role." So in 1933 he set out to supply them. Picking his first all-male crew for sheer muscle-they included football players, trackmen, gymnasts-he installed them at Jacob's Pillow, a rundown, 150-acre 18th century farmstead he had bought three years before. There each summer he honed the troupe with dancing all morning, farm chores all afternoon. "I wanted to see," he says...
Miss Ruth's influence during all those years was chiefly as a performer and innovator. Last week's premiere marked the first time that she and Papa had danced together in ten years, and it was a faultless performance. When it was all over, Ted Shawn's thoughts turned characteristically to the future. "Things go in cycles," he said, "like the seasons of the year. I feel this present renaissance of the dance is just about early summer. Before autumn and decadence set in, it may be another 200 years...