Ted Shawn
For anyone interested in the early history of modern dance, here is a fascinating film snippet from 1937. Ted Shawn, the dancer and choreographer who founded Jacob’s Pillow in the 1930s, was on a mission to forge a new performance style for men, and to prove that dancing could be an honorable profession for the American male.
Later describing the lifespan of this groundbreaking company as “seven magic years,” Ted Shawn selected his original all-male core group of dynamic performers from the athletes he taught at Springfield College.
The company performed over a thousand times in more than 750 different cities around the U.S. and Canada, as well as overseas in London and Havana. They played major concert halls and danced with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1936. The troupe’s star dancer was Barton Mumaw, whose performing career continued for decades.
Another enduring byproduct of the Men Dancers’ activities was the establishment of Jacob’s Pillow, where they first performed on July 14, 1933 and gave their final “homecoming” concert on August 31, 1940.
This is the original film of Kinetic Molpai, with added soundtrack, recorded at Jacob’s Pillow in 1937.
The post Ruth Leon recommends… Kinetic Molpai – Ted Shawn’s Men Dancers appeared first on Slippedisc.
