Denishawn school
[1] Some of the school's more notable pupils include Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Lillian Powell, Charles Weidman, Jack Cole, and silent film star Louise Brooks.
St. Denis was preparing for a tour of the southeastern region of the United States, and needed a male partner to help present new ballroom dances.
[3] Their "honeymoon" consisted of a second joint tour - accompanied by a small company of dancers - from Saratoga Springs, New York to San Francisco, California.
At a performance in Portland, Oregon, a theater manager promised eight box seats to whoever could dream up the most creative name for the latest St. Denis-Shawn ballroom exhibition.
[2]Denishawn disintegrated in 1931 after Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis separated, though the pair never divorced and continued to promote dance education through their respective endeavors.
When taking technique classes, students danced in bare feet and wore identical one-piece black wool bathing suits.
Shawn typically taught during the first block of time, leading students through stretches, limbering exercises, ballet barre and floor progressions and free-form center combinations.
Author and former Denishawn pupil Jane Sherman recalls an everyday class, laden with ballet terminology:"A typical Denishawn class began at the barre; first came stretching, petits and grands battements, a series of plies in the five positions, sixteen measures of grande rondes de jambes, and thirty-two measures of petites rondes de jambes.
The Denishawn pas de basque was distinguished by arms held high and parallel overhead as the body made an extreme arch sideways toward the leading foot.
After a slow swinging of the body into ever-increasing circles, came head, shoulder, and torso rolls, with the arms sweeping from the floor to the ceiling followed by a relaxed run around the circumference of the studio, ending in a back fall.
Other exercises included Javanese arm movements, and hand stretches to train the dancers Western fingers into going backward into some semblance of Cambodian dance flexibility.
Ted felt it important that the technique was not all too rigid, like classical ballet, and contained some less-structured forms, which brought classes on Dalcroze eurythmics as well as Delsarte laws of expressionism into the curricula.
Ruth, on the other hand, emphasized the origins of dance from the foreign countries of the East, the history behind these techniques, and the method of what she called "music visualization", and added to the curricula based on these standards.
It had an indoor room that was perfectly sized to fit smaller classes, a swimming pool and a tennis court for additional endurance training and/or leisure time, and the estate was filled with eucalyptus trees.
Their second school location in Los Angeles was in an old house in West Lake Park and shared similar characteristics to the St. Paul Street estate.
[9] The Denishawn Dancers took advantage of many performance opportunities – in colleges, concert halls, vaudeville theaters, convention centers and outdoor stadiums.
In terms of movement, however, the differences were obvious – no pointe shoes, no pas de deux lifts, no exact format for patterning solos and ensemble pieces.
These included three revival premieres, namely, Shawn's "Invocation to the Thunderbird"(1916), last danced by Denishawn dancer John Dougherty, and "Death of Adonis" (1922).
Her signature solo, "The Incense", will also be performed by Cynthia Word of Washington, D.C. During its developmental years, the first pupils to join the Denishawn school played a large role in building it up from the ground, and have even been described as "foundation stones of the system that was to spread over the country".
Lillian even worked separately with St. Denis and Ruth when she and Rosie Dolly learned a dance from the two that was to be featured in their upcoming movie The Lily and the Rose (1915).
Other notable movie stars of the time include: Louise Brooks, Ina Claire, Ruth Chatterton, Lenore Ulric, Mabel Normand, Florence Vidor, Colleen Moore, and Myrna Loy.
