Word: denishawn
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...Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn open Denishawn, first school of modern dance...
...Graham moved with her family to California when she was 14. Three years later, she attended a Los Angeles recital by the dance pioneer Ruth St. Denis. It was the first dance performance of any kind that Graham had ever seen, and it overwhelmed her; in 1916 she joined Denishawn, the school and performing troupe that St. Denis co-led with her husband Ted Shawn. At 22, dangerously late for an aspiring dancer, Graham had found her destiny...
After seven years with Denishawn, Graham moved to New York City and struck out on her own, giving solo recitals and eventually launching her own company, in 1929. To raise funds, she danced at the opening of Radio City Music Hall, modeled furs and later gave classes in which she taught such actors as Bette Davis and Gregory Peck how to move. (Richard Boone claimed that to die onscreen, he simply did a one-count Graham fall.) But nothing could deflect her from what she believed to be her sacred mission: to "chart the graph of the heart" through movement...
...early dance inspiration was surprising: Ruth St. Denis, who charmed audiences with free-form creations perfumed with the exoticism of the Orient. Entranced, Graham joined the Denishawn company, but left in 1923 to try Broadway dancing. By 1926 she had formed a group, which performed in New York. The masterpieces began to flow, as they would over several decades. There was a cluster of distinctively American works, such as Letter to the World, about Emily Dickinson, and the ever vernal Appalachian Spring. Though a quintessential modernist, she was attracted to doomed classical heroines: Clytemnestra, Medea, Alcestis, Phaedra...
Died. Charles Weidman, 73, pioneer of American modern dance; of a heart attack; in Manhattan. Like Choreographer-Dancers Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey, Weidman studied at the famed Denishawn School in Los Angeles, leaving to found his own company with Humphrey in 1929. Seeking to choreograph the American scene, Weidman created such works as Lynch Town, a depiction of mob violence, and Fables for Our Time, based on a series of James Thurber's stories. A dedicated teacher, he numbered among his pupils José Limón and Choreographer Bob Fosse (Cabaret, Chicago...