Dance Magazine Articles

Katherine Dunham
(See Magazine, 1945)

Katherine Dunham (1909 – 2006) was an African-American dancer and choreographer, producer, anthropologist, author and Civil Rights activist – enjoying throughout the decades one of the most successful dance careers a dancer could ever hope for. Attached is a profusely illustrated review of her 1945 production, Tropical Revue. It implies that much of the audience came away recognizing her originality and genius – while others simply thought she was a burlesque artist.

Martha Graham’s Art
(New Masses, 1944)

A review of Martha Graham’s sell-out Broadway performance from January, 1944:

Martha Graham’s art has always been characterized by constatnt experimentation with new forms and new contents.

A Profile of Isadora Duncan
(Vanity Fair, 1915)

Isadora Duncan (1878-1927), said to be the birth mother of Modern Dance, is profiled in the attached VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE article written by Arthur Hazlitt Perry:

She is truly a remarkable woman. She never dances, acts, dresses, or thinks like anybody else. She is essentially the child of another age, a Twentieth Century exponent of a by-gone civilization. She missed her cue to come on, by twenty-three hundred years.

Dancer Mia Slavenska
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

Here is a 1945 article about the Croatian-born American ballerina Mia Slavenska (1916 – 2002) and her popularity. The article divides its column space between telling us about the dancer and providing a brief history of ballet – and how it was once joined at the hip with opera.

Modern Dance: Spreading the News
(Literary Digest, 1933)

Quoting the apostles of Modern Dance quite liberally, this article presents for the reader their impassioned defense as to why the era of a new dance form had arrived and why it was deserving of global attention and much needed in America’s schools. The column centers on the goings-on at Teacher’s College, N.Y.C., where a certain Mary P. O’Donnell once ran the roost at that institution’s dance department; it was O’Donnell’s plan to send her minions out in all directions like the 12 Apostles of Christ, spreading the good news to all God’s creatures that Modern Dance had arrived.

Music’s Debt to the Ballet
(Literary Digest, 1916)

Some of our music critics look askance at the Russian Ballet, and apparently, only deign to notice it at all because the music employed is such as falls within their province to review. Having the task forced upon them, they relieve their feelings by deploring the forced association of, for example, Schumann and patterning feet…

Serge De Diaghilev’s Balet Russe
(Vanity Fair, 1915)

A one page review by Edward Louis Bernays (1891 – 1995) writing under the nom du flak Ayhern Edwards in order to remove all suspicion that he was in reality the P.R. man who had been hired by Serge De Diaghilev (1872 – 1929) to smooth the way for his troupe as they toured the fruited plain throughout 1915. Strangely, he had nothing terribly critical to point out.

Lincoln Kirstein and George Balanchine
(Delineator Magazine, 1935)

Attached is one of the first articles to be written about balletomanes Lincoln Kirstein (1907 – 1996) and his efforts with George Balanchine (1904 – 1983) and philanthropist Edward M.M. Warburg (1910 – 1992) to form the first American ballet company (the corps was later called the New York City Ballet).

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