This article was downloaded by: [University of Toronto Libraries]

On: 28 December 2014, At: 16:31

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,
37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Journal of Dance Education

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujod20

Strategies for Teaching Dance History: Gaining a Feel

for the Past
a
Karen Eliot
a
Department of Dance , Ohio State University , Columbus, Ohio
Published online: 18 Mar 2011.

To cite this article: Karen Eliot (2002) Strategies for Teaching Dance History: Gaining a Feel for the Past, Journal of Dance
Education, 2:1, 7-14, DOI: 10.1080/15290824.2002.10387201

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15290824.2002.10387201

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained
in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no
representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the
Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and
are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and
should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for
any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever
or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of
the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic
reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any
form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://
www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
 Strategies for Teaching
Dance History
Gaining a Feel for the Past
Karen Eliot, Ph.D.
Downloaded by [University of Toronto Libraries] at 16:31 28 December 2014
Abstract
Given the paucity of dance scholarship and the
evanescence of historical resources, how do we best
prepare dance historians for an increasingly tech-
nology-driven future? This article examines strat-
egies for engaging students in historical research
that involves their imaginations and kinesthetic
responses. Especially important in this process is
teaching students to ground their research in solid
and well-established data and to learn to write
clearly and analytically. The article describes a
number of strategies for marrying technology and
writing so as to increase dance literacy and de-
velop students’ historical awareness and empathy.
M
ovement that disappears the instant it
is executed is not readily immobilized
into the permanence of the written
historical past. Dance history is often presented
as an examination of artistic elements surrounding
the dance itself, of the external phenomena
embedding its creation, function, or performance,
but the critical apparatus to analyze and write
about dance and the body in the dance remain
deficient. Concerns about the paucity of dance
scholarship relative to that of other disciplines,
Karen Eliot, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in
the Department of Dance, Ohio State University,
Columbus, Ohio.
Correspondence and reprint requests: Karen Eliot,
Ph.D., Department of Dance, Ohio State Univer-
sity, 1813 North High Street, Columbus, Ohio
43210-1307.
and the difficulties in writing about dance of the
recent, let alone the distant past, have enlivened
debates among dance historians, critics, and
movement analysts for the last few decades.1-3 In
light of such concerns, the question remains: how
do we prepare dance students to participate in the
newly expanding critical dialogue and historical
scholarship in dance?
The problems and frustrations of teaching dance
history, particularly at the undergraduate level, are
not new. Reference books have long seemed inad-
equate to the task of teaching this multi-sensory and
evanescent form which involves moving bodies, mu-
sic, time, space, lighting, machinery, stage designs,
and costumes, and implicates issues of money, aes-
thetic principles, cultural contexts, social value sys-
tems, and political and performance agendas. As an
aural, oral, and visual discipline that is inherently
ephemeral and is only in part a written practice, the
teaching of dance history is greatly facilitated by the
increasing accessibility of technological resources in
education. Creative uses of available educational
tools (such as CD and DVD, course web sites, and
Internet sites) offer promising alternatives to the
more traditional armamentarium of overhead pro-
jectors, slides, videos, and illustrations.
Paradoxically, though, the availability of technol-
ogy heightens the urgent need to develop literate
approaches to teaching a kinesthetic, body-centered
dance history. As twenty-first century trends in edu-
cation propel us inextricably into the realm of the
virtual and the ethereal, so we must increasingly
instantiate our teaching of dance and its history. In
the face of the immediate evaporation of dance ma-
terials, we need to teach ourselves and future histo-
7
 8 Journal of Dance Education Volume 2, Number 1
rians strategies for writing about dance and writing
the body into dance history. Writing dance and es-
tablishing its historical permanence is a process that
entails closely observing movement, capturing it in
kinesthetic awareness, and imaginatively retrieving
it in order to write about it. The process requires
marrying technology and writing, uniting the multi-
perceptual possibilities of dance technology with
writing exercises that enable students to ground
their learning in their kinesthetic awareness. It is
critical that we enable history students to learn rig-
orous research methods while, at the same time, they
learn to engage in historical inquiry through their
imaginative perceptions and the kinesthetic aware-
ness of their bodies. Technological resources, used in
conjunction with creatively designed writing exer-
Downloaded by [University of Toronto Libraries] at 16:31 28 December 2014
cises, can further this goal.
Acknowledging the Subjective Stance
In his Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of
the Word, Walter J. Ong examines the intimate con-
nections between literacy and the capacity to orga-
nize thought patterns, between the ability to write
and the shaping of the subjective human conscious-
ness. Ong claims that, “Literacy can be used to re-
construct for ourselves the pristine human conscious-
ness which was not literate at all – at least to
reconstruct this consciousness pretty well, though
not perfectly (we can never forget enough of our fa-
miliar present to reconstitute in our minds any past
in its full integrity).”4 Ong proposes that it is always
possible through literate means, to gain insight into
the past, but that in doing so we can never divorce
ourselves from our subjective perceptions of the
world. Imagine, for instance, the process of fully un-
derstanding an oral culture: one that does not per-
ceive words in a visual field, that does not store its
memories in written text, that relies entirely on
mnemonic devices to pass on its history. Existing as
we do, in a literate culture, says Ong, it is impossible
for us to fully experience the lack of reliance on an
explicative text. The lack of text, though, is precisely
the phenomenon characterizing the study of much
pre-twentieth-century dance. As dancers and schol-
ars, we have no recourse but to rely, at some level, on
our subjective and bodily understandings of the
dance that preceded ours.
The study of dance history is important because
it links current consciousness and current body prac-
tices to thinking and moving bodies in the past, and
subjectivity necessarily becomes involved in this
learning.5 The subjective element of history is not
limited to scholarship in dance, though, and has been
widely acknowledged by a number of feminist cul-
tural historians since the 1970s and ‘80s. In the 1993
English translation of her Fragile Lives: Violence,
2002
Power and Solidarity in Eighteenth-Century Paris,6
French historian Arlette Farge suggests that “emo-
tion” plays a role in historical inquiry. Far from con-
tributing to sloppy scholarship, writes Farge, allow-
ing “emotion” into the research (or what Amanda
Foreman describes as developing intuition and sym-
pathy for the past)7 fosters “development of a reci-
procity with the object, by which access is given to
meaning.” In this sense, Farge writes, empathy, emo-
tion, and sympathy for the past “animate” the re-
trieval and analysis of historical data. The study of
dance propels research even more precariously into
the realm of subjectivity, for in the effort to construct
a greater physical connection with dancing bodies
of the past, historians inevitably tap into knowledge
stored within their own bodies.
Such learning confronts the tensions between es-
tablishing grounded research and relying on subjec-
tive and kinesthetic experiences. Given this chal-
lenge, it is imperative that the instructor announce
her critical stance: I make it clear that I view the
past as a complex interweaving of multiple voices
and stories, and that many “stories” live within the
narrative of what we choose to call “history.” The se-
lection of course texts implicitly aligns the instruc-
tor within the parameters of one or another theo-
retical stance: mine is primarily a feminist position.
Subjectivity cannot be avoided for even the attempt
to elude it announces our politics.
My choices say much about who I am and how
and what I choose to teach. In requiring my students
to read Lynn Garafola’s Rethinking the Sylph: New
Perspectives on the Romantic Ballet,8 it is my hope
that they will gather new insights into a variety of
approaches and methodologies in the practice of his-
tory. Garafola’s text proposes that there are linger-
ing questions about the nineteenth-century Roman-
tic Ballet, issues that have not yet been addressed
and old assumptions that need to be challenged and
rethought. Sally Banes’s Dancing Women: Female
Bodies on Stage “retell[s] the story of Western theat-
rical dancing from a woman-centered perspective.”9
Brenda Dixon Gottschild’s Digging the Africanist
Presence in American Performance,10 and Ann Coo-
per Albright’s Choreographing Difference: the Body
and Identity in Contemporary Dance,11 widen the
perspective and help to articulate points of view and
stories previously unexpressed in standard dance
texts. These books, along with Deborah Jowitt’s Time
and the Dancing Image,12 also serve to demonstrate
detailed, rigorous scholarship combined with rich,
engaging language: for students, these are writers/
historians to model.
The following sections of this paper describe sev-
eral written exercises which – combined with the
use of a course web site – guide students to ground
 Journal of Dance Education
their subjective and kinesthetic understandings in
thorough, rigorous examinations of data. Strategies
such as those proposed below may enable students
to gain greater dance literacy, and may help future
historians build a literate movement vocabulary,
practice critical observation, and gain increased
awareness of dance and dancers of other cultures
and eras.
Using a Course Web Site to Facilitate
Thoughtful Communication
The dance history course under discussion is offered
once a year, is open to upper-level undergraduate
and graduate dance majors, and covers Western
European and American theatrical dance from the
late eighteenth century to the present. The class
Downloaded by [University of Toronto Libraries] at 16:31 28 December 2014
population is diverse and the syllabus covers a vast
amount of material within the ten-week term. A
course web site permits rapid progress through in-
troductory material and facilitates the updating and
modification of materials from one year to the next
(Fig. 1). The site also gives students access to a vari-
ety of other course-related materials, including
supplementary reading lists, links to informational
web sites (including historical performance groups,
contemporary dance companies, various dance or-
ganizations, and archives and libraries), pictures, and
other forms of dance iconography, such as costume
designs, performance photographs, lithographs, and
instructional diagrams found in teaching manuals.
Lists and links such as these help students further
their projects by discovering how to identify and fo-
cus their research, and by guiding them toward use-
ful resources. Visual sources, too, are helpful in stimu-
lating the interests and imaginations of students who
find themselves in an increasingly visual culture,
enabling them to develop a greater sense of histori-
cal “empathy.”
Writing Strategies
The web site includes a threaded discussion page
and a colloquy drawn from the week’s readings, lec-
tures, and discussions and/or video viewing, and
which relates to students’ understandings of contem-
porary dance. Topics are posted weekly and the stu-
dents may respond directly in informal, thoughtful,
journal writings (Fig. 2). Students are encouraged
Figure 1 Various resources may be made available on
the dance history web site.
Volume 2, Number 1 2002 9
to use the colloquy to communicate their thoughts
with each other and to continue these discussions
as they move through their other dance courses. The
topics raised in dance history thus remain alive and
vital in their related composition, technique, nota-
tion, and production classes. The colloquy also al-
lows the instructor to address both graduate and
undergraduate levels within the confines of one
course. Individual students are afforded opportuni-
ties to confront topics at their own levels of interest
and maturity and to chat among themselves about
particular questions that come up around the pe-
ripheries of class lectures. Particularly stimulating
for students in recent years has been a lively debate
about the so-called appropriation of cultural mate-
rials, arising in discussions of Ruth St. Denis,
Josephine Baker and the vogue for national dances
during the nineteenth-century Romantic Ballet. The
issue has proven relevant in a number of instances
when recent student choreographic projects sparked
debates about the ethics of “borrowing” from what is
perceived to be another group’s cultural heritage and
movement tradition.
Writing exercises such as those offered in the col-
loquy section serve not only to facilitate communi-
cation, but may be used to supplement course lec-
tures and readings (Fig 3). In teaching the
pre-Romantic period, for instance, the following col-
loquy topic was designed to prompt student recog-
nition of possible contrasting aesthetic principles:
Many of the eighteenth-century dance manuals
and writings about art and aesthetics indicate
that the role of dance and all the art forms is to
“imitate nature.” That is, the function of art is to
paint a picture of the world in its most idealized
forms. Comment on this aesthetic perspective
in relationship to work you see today. Does this
principle seem to underlie the works of choreog-
raphers you admire? To what extent does it mo-
tivate your own creative work?
The topic asks students to grapple with the ques-
tion of what is deemed “natural” in any given time
period. When students look at the pictures on the
web site (such as those thought to represent
Hilverding’s stage sets found in the “Durazzo Col-
Figure 2 A colloquy permits students to engage in in-
formal debate on topics of relevance to the class.
 10 Journal of Dance Education Volume 2, Number 1
Downloaded by [University of Toronto Libraries] at 16:31 28 December 2014
Figure 3 A topic of interest may be proposed weekly
by the instructor or a student.
lection”)13 they inevitably encounter a different,
more elaborate sense of stage design than they
are accustomed to seeing, and must consider the
posed, and seemingly “unnatural” stage picture of
the late eighteenth-century ballet d’action.
An upper-level undergraduate student re-
sponded to this topic by writing:
Art forms of the eighteenth century func-
tioned to imitate nature on a much narrower
scale than artists of today portray in their work.
Many of the ballets of the eighteenth century
portrayed nature solely in its most perfect forms.
They sought to show pure beauty, often through
characters that possessed unworldly qualities.
The choreographers of today still seek to imi-
tate nature, but the picture of the world they
paint is not always in idealized forms. Choreog-
raphers of today are much more interested in
the realities of the world. They strive to reveal
the beauty of the world, as well as all displeas-
ing and offensive realities of our human condi-
tion.
The choreographers I admire go beyond
pleasing an audience, to make one confront the
reflections of society. I look for inspiration in
choreographers such as Blondell Cummings, who
show the world in raw form…. In my creative
process I continue to try and reveal how beauty
can be found in what some might first see as
awkward. I think the imitation of nature will
continue to influence my creative process, as well
as other choreographers. The change that will
occur may be how a new generation of artist
chooses to depict the many forms of nature.
In studying the Romantic Ballet, the students
are directed to write observations about one or
more nineteenth-century lithographs so as to come
2002
up with their own physical descriptions of Roman-
ticism. Another undergraduate student noticed a
preponderance of “bent or curled arms.” She ob-
served that the ballerinas were “light and fluttery,”
that they were posed “high on the balls of their
feet,” and that their limbs were “kept quite close to
the body. These forms,” she continued, “seem like they
close off or hide the body.” Others noted the unreal-
istically petite feet and buxom bodies balanced over
slender, tapering legs. Students noted that the bal-
lerinas of the 1830s and 1840s seemed “softer” than
their later counterparts, used less turnout than con-
temporary dancers, and that they did not extend
their legs as high as they themselves strove to do in
their own daily technique classes. The first student
wrote that “the posture of the dancers was also kind
of slouchy with bent legs as well.”
A simple exercise in listing adjectives may assist
students in developing their observational skills, in
building a vocabulary to talk about movement, and
in honing their own writing strategies. After watch-
ing the video entitled, Paris Dances Diaghilev,14 stu-
dents were asked to draw up a list of five adjectives
describing one of the ballets. They then wrote a sec-
ond list of movements, patterns of movement, or ges-
tures that occurred within the ballet. A fourth-year
undergraduate contributed the following response
on Nijinsky’s 1912 L’ Après-midi d’une Faune:
List 1 – Adjectives
1. Insinuating
2. Rigid
3. Simple
4. Sensual
5. Rich (the scenery)
List 2 – Movements, Patterns, and Gestures
1. Upward/backward tilting of the neck,
shoulders and head with an open mouth
(the Faune).
2. Sideways twist of body while feet walk in
parallel, arms are kept in Archaic Egyp-
tian motif posture (the Nymphs).
3. Same posture but with a slight tip of torso,
this time instead of walking, the dancers
move in a swooning locomotor step (the
Nymphs).
4. With similar “archaic” posture to the
nymphs but with a more graceful, playful
skipping gait, a more syncopated use of
music and more use of plié in the knees,
essentially a variation on a theme of the
same posture but used to move in a more
sensual and natural way (Faune).
After studying the early modern period of
American twentieth-century dance, the following
topic was proposed:
 Journal of Dance Education
Much of the modern dance vocabulary came
out of the individual artists’ imperatives to
find their own voices. Which choreographers
in the first part of the twentieth century
seemed particularly driven to construct their
own movement vocabularies? Why might this
have been an important agenda? Do you see
artists today who have similar concerns? If you
choreograph, where do your movement ideas
usually come from?
Another undergraduate responded, in part:
There were many choreographers in the
early twentieth century who were intent upon
(or came into) creating their own movement vo-
cabularies. To different degrees, I would say all
Downloaded by [University of Toronto Libraries] at 16:31 28 December 2014
of the following artists codified movements that
became associated with their own specific styles:
Bronislava Nijinska; Vaslav Nijinsky; Isadora
Duncan; Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn [(whose)
school taught an eclectic range of styles to train
dancers for their very stylized choreography];
Doris Humphrey; Martha Graham; Katherine
Dunham; Merce Cunningham.
All of these artists seemed to be reacting
against their predecessors’ styles. For Nijinsky
and Nijinska, their departure from the classic
ballet idiom paved the way for a new type of
dance: a modern one. Duncan was interested in
generating movement from a different source
(her solar plexus) than ballet vocabulary allowed
for. Humphrey and Graham set out to develop
their own movement proclivities after working
in Denishawn’s exotic style and tutelage.
Cunningham created work that was diametri-
cally opposed to the dancing he did in Graham’s
company. His dancers, therefore, had to be
trained accordingly.
I find contemporary choreographers to be
less concerned with creating their own distinct
techniques, and more concerned with making
work that expresses their point of view in the
most effective way possible. While artists such
as Bebe Miller, Doug Varone, and Doug Elkins
are making work that is distinctly their own,
each person generally uses a variety of tech-
niques (i.e., release, Alexander, hip hop, capoeira,
etc.) to “train” their dancers.
Speculating on the elements of Cage/
Cunningham aesthetics that are now taken for
granted and are frequently employed in composi-
tion classes, a graduate student in the composi-
tion sequence wrote:
I am becoming increasingly aware of his in-
Volume 2, Number 1 2002 11
fluence on the evolution of dance, and I am
noticing how certain Cunningham ideas pop
into my head more frequently as I choreo-
graph. I am also noticing how choreographic
methods I have used in the past could possi-
bly be traced back to him. The ideas that I am
currently most drawn to are:
1. Not having a star dancer. Everyone is just
as important as everyone else.
2. Not having certain areas of the stage more
important than others.
3. Letting the dancers’ movements have
chance relationships with each other. Here
I have a different approach than
Cunningham. I usually use chance in the
formation of a dance . . . first I let the rela-
tionships happen naturally, then I locate
the ones that I feel are especially impor-
tant to me and I set them.
Developing Historical “Empathy”
A lengthier written exercise, based in part on Susan
Foster’s substantive essay entitled “Dancing Bod-
ies,”15 helps students negotiate the tension between
grounding their research in historical data, and ex-
panding their learning through modes which are
more creative, empathic, and sensory. The exercise
requires that the students first answer a series of
questions about their own sensory/kinetic experi-
ences while dancing. During the course of the term,
they are asked to select one other historical figure
in dance to whom they must address the same ques-
tions, and then to draw conclusions about the two
physical approaches to dance. In recent years, stu-
dents have produced fictional interviews with such
figures as Isadora Duncan, Lester Horton, Martha
Graham, Margaret H’Doubler, a Cunningham
dancer, a Balanchine dancer, Alvin Ailey, Yvonne
Rainer, and Ruth St. Denis. Their preparations en-
tail examining data such as pictures or lithographs
– some of which are included on the web – costume
and set designs, teaching manuals, biographies, re-
views and critical writings, as well as videos and
music recordings when available. This exercise reads:
Susan Foster has written that as a dancer
“working with, in, and through the body,” she
experiences her body as a “body-of-ideas.” She
writes further, “The daily participation of a
body in any [particular technique] makes of it
a body-of-ideas. Each discipline refers to [the
body] using select metaphors and other tropes
that make it over. These tropes may be drawn
from anatomical discourse or the science of
kinesiology; or they may liken the body to a
machine, an animal, or any other worldly ob-
 12 Journal of Dance Education Volume 2, Number 1
ject or event.” What are the “ideas” by which
your body is cultivated and shaped in tech-
nique class?
Answer the following questions:
1. What have you done to train your body?
2. What do you do with your mind when you
dance? Do you think when you move?
3. Do you have a different body when you’re
not dancing?
4. How do you talk to yourself when you are
in dance class? What are the signals you
send your body to get it to do what you
want it to do?
5. Do you ever feel yourself dancing the way
you dance in your dreams?
6. What is the ideal body for the dancing you
Downloaded by [University of Toronto Libraries] at 16:31 28 December 2014
do? Is your body ideal?
Over the course of the quarter, each of you
will choose to answer the same questions from
the point of view of one other dancing body in
history. You may choose your subject, but
choices might include:
1. A Romantic ballerina
2. A Classical ballerina
3. A ballerina trained by George Balanchine
4. Mary Wigman
5. Isadora Duncan
6. Ruth St. Denis
7. Doris Humphrey
8. Martha Graham
9. A dancer trained by Merce Cunningham
10. Yvonne Rainer
11. Steve Paxton
12. A contact improviser
13. Trisha Brown
14. Garth Fagan
Some students choose to treat the second part of
the exercise as a straightforward research topic,
and explicate their chosen subjects’ probable re-
sponses in objective, third person formats. One
relies in part on her reading of Wigman’s The Phi-
losophy of Modern Dance,16 The Language of the
Dance,17 The Mary Wigman Book,18 and Dianne
Howe’s 1987 article entitled, “The Notion of Mys-
ticism in the Philosophy and Choreography of
Mary Wigman, 1914-1931.”19 This student weaves
deftly between a third person scholarly voice, and
direct quotes taken from Wigman’s writings on the
subject of her mysticism. She writes, “The mani-
festation of… intellectually liberated movement
in Wigman’s work was seen by some as a connec-
tion to mysticism. Such mysticism was at the core
of her creation and embodiment of dances that
were free from logical thought.” The student con-
tinues:
2002
Wigman herself acknowledges a link between
the personal and the divine when… she says
how she would repeatedly give herself “up to
the intoxication of this experience, to this al-
most lustful destruction of the physical being
a process in which for seconds [I] almost felt a
oneness with the cosmos.”
In the first, subjective portion of the exercise
the same student addressed the question, “What
do you do with your mind when you dance,” by
responding on her own behalf, “Dancing is one of
the few activities I’ve found in which my mind and
body can really synchronize. When I’m particularly
engaged in a class or a performance, my mind isn’t
thinking, exactly, but is more like a fluid muscle
organizing and appreciating what my physical
body is doing.” After her work on Wigman, she then
thought through Wigman’s probable answer:
Though it’s difficult to infer how Wigman
would talk to her body during a dance class
(or send it signals to do what she wanted it to
do), the movement repetitions Laban required
her to perform during their work together is
as good an indication as any of how Wigman
embodied the systematic technique Laban was
developing. “It was also hard work for me!
Every movement had to be done over and over
again until it was controlled and could be ana-
lyzed, transposed, and transformed into an
adequate symbol.”
Certainly it is impossible for her to gauge
Wigman’s probable internal experience in a move-
ment class, but the act of conducting research lead-
ing to a kinesthetic engagement with history is a
worthwhile learning endeavor. It is important to
include the body, its sensitivities and its subjec-
tivity, into historical discourse otherwise the sub-
stance, weight, and bodily presence of the histori-
cal past evaporate from consciousness. Students
are frequently surprised at “how hard the danc-
ers of the past worked.” They must be encouraged,
not to imagine the past freely, but to be aware of
their connectedness to tactile and visceral human
presences of the past. They must be trained in re-
search methodologies so that dance of the past may
excite their imaginations and fulfill its relevance
in their own lives.
In conducting their research, students are en-
couraged to tap into their own learned body knowl-
edge and to use personal movement experiences
to inform their written projects. One student has
studied with hop hop artist Rennie Harris, and
chose to include her physical experiences along
with quoted references to writers Brenda Dixon
 Journal of Dance Education
Gottschild and Suzanne Carbonneau. This student
writes:
[Harris’s] type of dance is all about improvi-
sation and letting go and being able to do what
you feel should come next, so [Harris] needs
to be aware of his surrounding environment.
Taking class from him for two summers helped
me to understand this concept. He would get
frustrated with our class because we were all
“formally” trained ballet and modern dancers
who concentrated way too much on the move-
ment and tried to perfect it…. While his move-
ment requires a lot of coordination and
strength, all attributes that come along with
being a formally trained dancer. He wanted
Downloaded by [University of Toronto Libraries] at 16:31 28 December 2014
us to forget about the “ballerina” or modern
dancer inside our heads and be who we really
were. We were dancers expressing our experi-
ences and ourselves.
Other students submitted essays in which, on
the basis of outside research, they imagined re-
sponses through their subjects’ points of view, or
clearly framed the fictionalized portions of their
work. One senior described her efforts this way,
“Although my knowledge about Trisha Brown is
limited, I find her intriguing. Most of my fascina-
tion lies in trying to understand how her move-
ment style has remained so interesting to audi-
ences…. In considering what I have read, I have
fabricated what I believe would come close to
Trisha Brown’s responses if asked the following
questions in an interview.” In formulating her re-
sponse, she used Deborah Jowitt’s Time and the
Dancing Image20 and a select few videotapes of
Trisha Brown’s early and more recent work. To
the question, “What have you done to train your
body?” the student, writing as Trisha Brown, says,
My movement included an attempt at not
“showing off,” but rather, this “fearless and
exuberant use of the body engendered a new,
unpolished sort of virtuosity.”20 It was still
necessary to remain in shape and maintain
technique in order to execute this nonchalant
movement as well as to explore pieces of “reck-
less physicality” without appearing fatigued.
I’ve come to realize, however, that I appreci-
ate and embrace my body and what it has be-
come as an individual.
To the question, “Do you ever feel yourself danc-
ing the way you dance in your dreams?” a gradu-
ate student, writing as Ruth St. Denis answers,
“When my dance allows me to come in contact with
my divine self I am dancing the way I dance in my
dreams…. I have never held back any of my
Volume 2, Number 1 2002 13
dreams of the east, love, or spirituality in my
dance.” She credits her embodiment of St. Denis’s
responses to reading Suzanne Shelton’s Ruth St.
Denis, A Biography of the Divine Dancer,21 as well
as viewing videotapes such as Trailblazers of Mod-
ern Dance.22
Some approach the assignment with evident
delight in the opportunity to combine research
with creative writing. One graduate student wrote
a fictionalized interview with Josephine Baker for
The Lantern, the OSU student newspaper. His
headline reads “‘A Frenzy Took Possession of Me’:
An Interview with Josephine Baker,” and the ar-
ticle is dated March 8, 1930. The student quotes
Ms. Baker as saying:
I like to stay limber, so every now and then I’ll
do the splits or stretch out my calves. Not that
I’m lazy, mind you – Josephine Baker is one
hard-working performer – but my bones and
muscles and the rest of my body, they seem to
take care of themselves….
A junior, writing as Isadora Duncan, answers
the questions this way:
My dancing body is different than my every-
day body. Simple routine movements require
a different source of energy and focus. While
dancing, my body becomes a spiritual expres-
sion. Its movement and mere existence is sa-
cred.
One first-year graduate student became in-
trigued by the writings of Théophile Gautier and
revised the questions in order to conduct her in-
terview with the flamboyant critic of the Roman-
tic Ballet. She gets at the heart of Gautier’s obser-
vations by noting his tendency to characterize
ballerinas according to what were perceived to be
national or “racial” characteristics. Speaking on
behalf of Gautier, she writes, “I have enjoyed the
dancing of many different types and races of Bal-
lerinas; French, Italian, Danish, Russian, even
American! I have seen the dances of many races
including Asians and, my heart’s delight, the Span-
iards.” In answer to the question that she poses
about the disappearance of the male dancers from
the stage of the Romantic Ballet, her subject re-
sponds:
TG: Although I have seen men of other races
dance with strength, grace, and spirit com-
bined (the Spaniards . . . come to mind), I would
rather be spared the sight of my inane, feeble…
countrymen bounding foolishly about the
stage. Harmony and grace are not usually
added to a performance by the male dancer.
 14 Journal of Dance Education Volume 2, Number 1
He may be needed to advance the scenario, but
I seldom enjoy the masculine presence on
stage, although Lucien Petipa and a few oth-
ers are not too awful.
RB: What training do you think a Ballerina
should possess?
TG: The ballerinas from the Paris Opéra have
several levels of training, from the marcheuses,
who are little more than washer-women
dressed in costumes, to the finest of balleri-
nas, who must train in the classes of the Opéra
school in order to perfect their pas and their
pantomime. The dancers who add a bit of
couleur locale from exotic destinations (as does
the incomparable Mme. Fanny Elssler – the
German with a convincingly Spanish
Downloaded by [University of Toronto Libraries] at 16:31 28 December 2014
Cachucha) must also study the sensibilities of
the foreign races they play on the stage.
Conclusion
Walter J. Ong wrote that “without writing, human
consciousness cannot achieve its fuller potentials,
cannot produce other beautiful and powerful cre-
ations. …Literacy… is absolutely necessary for the
development not only of science but also of history,
philosophy, explicative understanding of literature
and of any art.”23 Ong’s is a warning that dance schol-
ars would do well to heed. We can achieve the fullest
potential of our art form only by remembering and
reconstructing our past. If the predominant trends
in education and popular media propel future gen-
erations of dancers away from kinesthetic and bodily
awareness and toward the computer screen, away
from the past and toward the future, it is all the
more critical that we enable younger scholars to de-
velop their interest and skills in researching an
embodied history. While new technological resources
enhance our potential for teaching history, such new
strategies will also ideally include an emphasis on
writing and the development of historical empathy
with the past.
Acknowledgment
I gratefully acknowledge the support of Traci Temple,
Director of the Emerging Technology Studio, College of
the Arts, Ohio State University, in creating, helping
design, and maintaining the web site.
References
1. Siegel M: Visible secrets: Style analysis and dance
literacy. In: Gay Morris (ed): Moving Words: Re-writ-
ing Dance. New York: Routledge, 1996, pp. 29-42.
2. Desmond J: Embodying difference: Issues in dance
and cultural studies. In: Desmond J (ed): Meaning
2002
in Motion. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997,
pp. 29-54.
3. Tomko L: Dancing Class: Gender, Ethnicity, and
Social Divides in American Dance, 1890-1920.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.
4. Ong W: Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of
the Word. New York: Routledge, 1982, p. 15.
5. Satin L: The legs of the theorist. Dance Research
Journal 32(2):120-124, 2000/2001.
6. Farge A: Fragile Lives: Violence, Power and Soli-
darity in Eighteenth-Century Paris. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1993.
7. Foreman A: Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire. Lon-
don: Harper Collins, 1999.
8. Garafola L: Rethinking the Sylph: New Perspectives
on the Romantic Ballet. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan
University Press, 1997.
9. Banes S: Dancing Women: Female Bodies on Stage.
New York: Routledge, 1998.
10. Gottschild BD: Digging the Africanist Presence in
American Performance. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996.
11. Albright AC: Choreographing Difference: the Body
and Identity in Contemporary Dance. Hanover, NH:
University Press of New England, 1997.
12. Jowitt D: Time and the Dancing Image. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1988.
13. Winter MH: The Pre-Romantic Ballet. London: Pit-
man Publishing, 1974.
14. Paris Dances Diaghilev, Director: Colin Nears. Paris
Opera Ballet, Elektra Entertainment, 1990.
15. Foster S: Dancing Bodies. In: Desmond J (ed): Mean-
ing in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance.
Durham: Duke University Press, 1997, pp. 235-257.
16. Wigman M: The Philosophy of Modern Dance. In:
Copeland R, Cohen M (eds): What is Dance? Read-
ings in Theory and Criticism. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1983, pp. 305-307.
17. Wigman M: The Language of the Dance. Middletown
CT: Wesleyan Univeristy Press, 1966.
18. Wigman M: The Mary Wigman Book. Middletown
CT: Wesleyan Univeristy Press, 1975.
19. Howe D: The notion of mysticism in the philosophy
and choreography of Mary Wigman, 1914-1931.
Dance Research Journal 19(1):19-24, 1987.
20. Jowitt D: Time and Dancing Image. New York, Wil-
liam Morrow, 1988.
21. Shelton S: Ruth St. Denis: A Biography of the Di-
vine Dancer. Austin: University of Texas Press,
1981.
22. Trailblazers of Modern Dance, Director: Emile
Ardolino. Writer: Elizabeth Kendall. WNET 13,
1977.
23. Ong W: Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of
the Word. New York: Routledge, 1982, pp. 14-15.