Early Modern Dance: The Denishawn Collection

Dance occupied a back seat in the theatre of the performing arts in the latter part of the nineteenth century, but it began to come to prominence with the craze for the cakewalk starting in 1896. Loie Fuller's Serpentine Dance of twirling scarves and lights entranced audiences from 1902 and in 1906 Ruth St. Denis presented herself in a full length work Radha.

But it was in the second decade of the twentieth century that dance took center stage. Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn established the Denishawn School in 1915 whose dancers explored the modern repertoire for years to follow.

These selections are from the Denishawn Collection in the Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

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items are from 15 Dec 2008.