Ruth St. Denis

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Ruth St. Denis (1878?-1968), American dancer and choreographer, was one of the founders of modern dance. Her work was characterized by its religious and Far Eastern content.

Ruth St. Denis, whose name was originally Ruth Dennis, was born in Newark, N.J., on January 20, probably in 1878, the daughter of an inventor father and a physician mother. At the age of 10 Ruth started dancing and gave her first solo performance in 1893 in a play produced by her mother.

Professional dance at this time presented two equally uninspiring alternatives: the world of vaudeville and the moribund classical ballet of opera. Miss St. Denis was delivered from this dilemma when she discovered an advertising poster for Egyptian Deities cigarettes showing the goddess Isis sitting on a throne. Immediately she saw the possibility of developing a dance on an Egyptian theme. While doing research on the culture and dance of Egypt, she discovered the dances of India.

With the help of some Indian friends, Miss St. Denis danced the radha, a freestyle Indian dance. She was the first in the Western world to introduce to a legitimate audience Oriental and Eastern dancing. The dances were accompanied by European music performed on Western musical instruments. American audiences were hostile to her experiments, labeling her the "Jersey Hindoo" and comparing her with the belly dancers at the local burlesque houses.

Miss St. Denis toured in Europe from 1906 to 1909, and her dances proved a great success. Like the dancer Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis was also preoccupied with mysticism and was not concerned with steps but with the expressive movement of the body. But her style was more exotic and more lavishly theatrical - combining lights, scenery, costumes, music, and story in one unified experience - and her dances were much more religious.

In 1910 Miss St. Denis became the first solo dancer to play a New York theater as the evening star attraction. She continued to experiment with new dance forms. In 1913 she presented her Egypta dances and gave the first performance of O'Mika, a Japanese ballet based on her study of Japanese No theater.

In 1914 Miss St. Denis married her dancing partner, Ted Shawn, and they set up the Denishawn School of Dancing, the first serious school of dance in America with a standard curriculum. From 1915 to 1931 it was the training ground for America's leading dancers and choreographers. Thirteen Denishawn tours of America helped create a basic audience for modern dance and establish dance in America as an accepted art form. The school's approach was eclectic and experimental. In 1925, for example, Miss St. Denis created Tragica, the first dance without music. In 1930 she and Shawn separated, and the school disbanded.

As a result of her study of Oriental systems of thought, Ruth St. Denis extended the religious implications of her dancing. In 1931 she founded the Society of Spiritual Arts to establish the dance as an instrument of worship. In 1947 she formed a Church of the Divine Dance in Hollywood, where she conducted dance masses and rituals. She continued to dance and experiment until her eighties. She died on July 21, 1968.

Further Reading

Ruth St. Denis's own account is An Unfinished Life: An Autobiography (1939). The authorized and most comprehensive biography is by a lifelong friend and dance critic, Walter Terry, Miss Ruth: The "More Living Life" of Ruth St. Denis (1969). An early appraisal was written by Ted Shawn, Ruth St. Denis: Pioneer and Prophet (1920). See also Walter Terry, The Legacy of Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis (1959).

Additional Sources

Shelton, Suzanne, Divine dancer: a biography of Ruth St. Denis, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981.

St Denis, Ruth (originally Ruth Dennis;b Somerville, NJ, 20 Jan. 1879, d Hollywood, Calif., 21 July 1968). US dancer, teacher, and choreographer who is considered one of the pioneering influences in American modern dance. She began her dance career in the music hall having studied mime, social dance, and recitation with her mother, but was inspired to create her own oriental-style dance productions in 1904 after seeing a cigarette advertisement depicting the Egyptian goddess Isis. The ethnic authenticity of these works was always dubious; her first ‘Hindu ballet’, Radha (1906), was set to music from Delibes's Lakmé, and her style mixed ‘exotic influences’ like snaking arm movements and mobile hips with popular dance steps and gymnastics. But she was highly successful in both the US and Europe, where she toured for three years. In 1909 she created Egypta for a major US tour and the Japanese ballet O-Mika (1913). St Denis aspired to a profound moral seriousness in her work. She once described herself as a ‘rhythmic and impersonal instrument of spiritual revelation’, and many of her works centred on the drama of spiritual awakening or the beauty of the inner life. Her choreography was also an attempt to make an exact translation of music into dance. Yet this never prevented her from being an extremely adroit entertainer, using drapes, jewellery, and lighting to create gorgeously memorable stage pictures as well as to flatter her own highly flexible body. In 1914 Ted Shawn became her partner and in 1915 they set up the Denishawn Dance School in Los Angeles where they trained dancers for their company. Humphrey, Weidman, and Graham all began their careers at Denishawn. Major productions included A Dance Pageant of Egypt, Greece and India (mus. W. Myrowitz, Horst, and A. Nevins, 1916) and their 1918 staging of Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice. Denishawn was disbanded after her separation from Shawn in 1931 but she went on to found the Society of Spiritual Arts and the New York School of Natya with La Meri in 1938. She continued giving recitals and demonstration performances until she was 87. In 1932 she published a volume of poetry, Lotus Light, and in 1939 her autobiography, An Unfinished Life. There are several films about her work, including Ruth St Denis and Ted Shawn (NBC, 1958) and the 1941 film Radha, which was edited in 1973. There has been much recent interest in reconstructing her dances.

Ruth St. Denis

After seeing an image of the Egyptian god Isis in a cigarette ad, St. Denis began to investigate Asian dance. She and her husband, Ted Shawn, were known for their "oriental" productions.^[1]

Ruth St. Denis (January 20, 1879 – July 21, 1968) was an early modern dance pioneer.

Contents 1 Biography 2 See also 3 References 4 Further reading 5 External links

Biography

Ruth St. Denis founded Adelphi University's dance program in 1938 which was the one of the first dance departments in an American university. It has since become a cornerstone of Adelphi's Department of Performing Arts.

Her early works are indicative of her interests in exotic mysticism and spirituality. Many companies currently include a collection of her signature solos in their repertoires, including the programme, “The Art of the Solo,” a showcase of famous solos of modern dance pioneers. Several early St. Denis solos (including “Incense” and ”The Legend of the Peacock”) were presented on September 29, 2006, at the Baltimore Museum of Art. A centennial salute was scheduled with the revival premiere of St. Denis' "Radha," commissioned by Countess Anastasia Thamakis of Greece. The program's director, Mino Nicolas, has been instrumental in the revival of these key solos.

One of her more famous pupils was Martha Graham, who attended Ms. St. Denis' school of dance, Denishawn, that she had started with her husband, Ted Shawn. Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman also studied at Denishawn, and Graham, Humphrey, Weidman and the future silent film star Louise Brooks all performed as dancers with the Denishawn company. Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn were also instrumental in creating the legendary dance festival, Jacob's Pillow.

For many years, Denis taught dance at a studio in Hollywood, California just north of the Hollywood Bowl. In 1963 she teamed with Raymond DeArmond Bowman to bring the first full-length Balinese Shadow Puppet play to the United States. The performance was held at her studio and lasted more than 8 hours.

See also

• Sada Yacco
• Rue Saint-Denis (Paris)

References

1. ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=q2_E_gl9BbYC&pg=PA134&lpg=PA134&dq=%22ruth+st+denis%22+egyptian+isis&source=web&ots=Ai1OSPPkAG&sig=PoP2Ilta069nr4x9x-gLjYL_PSU

Further reading

• Ruth St. Denis: pioneer & prophet; being a history of her cycle of oriental dances, by Ted Shawn. Printed for J. Howell by J. H. Nash, 1920.
• St. Denis, Ruth. An Unfinished Life: an Autobiography. Dance Horizons Republication, Brooklyn, New York, 1969.
• Terry, Walter. Miss Ruth: the "more living life" of Ruth St. Denis. Dodd, Mead, New York, 1969.
• Schlundt, Christena L. Into the mystic with Miss Ruth. Dance Perspectives Foundation, 1971.
• Vito Di Bernardi, Ruth St. Denis. Palermo, L'Epos, 2006. ISBN 88-8302-314-5

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ruth St. Denis

Dance portal

• Chapter 2: The Solo Dancers: Ruth St. Denis (1879-1968) from "The Early Moderns Web Tutorial" at the University of Pittsburgh
• Jacob's Pillow Dance festival
• Ruth St. Denis at Flickr

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