America Dancing – Megan Pugh

It was with Graham that Taylor began to catch the dance world’s attention, first as a soloist in her company and later as her rebellious child, branching out to make his own work. And it was from Graham that he learned what it meant to have what he has described as a “devotion to dance—almost religious in a way.”27 Film footage from Taylor’s years with Graham is relatively scarce, but there is a recording of Taylor in a 1957 performance of Night Journey, directed by Alexander Hammid.

Graham had premiered the piece a decade previously, and here Taylor played Tiresias, the blind seer who tells Graham’s Jocasta that her husband, Oedipus, is also her son. Taylor wears a long cape and carries a big stick; before the music begins, he plunges it into the circle of rope that Jocasta—who will later hang herself—holds before her.

As the scene continues, Taylor waves the stick through the air and whacks at bits of the Isamu Noguchi set. In a later section, after Jocasta and Oedipus have entwined themselves into a kind of full-body cat’s cradle, Taylor travels across the stage by repeatedly thumping the stick on the ground and hopping up behind it, see-sawing as if he’s working a handcar down railroad tracks. But when Taylor loses the prop, he gains a new fluidity. His long arms and muscled legs sweep him into a series of arabesques.

He crumples to the ground and walks forward on his knees. Even with his lower body stunted and buglike, his arms keep rowing forward. You can sense the old swimming training here, with air providing the resistance that water used to, smoothing and strengthening his movements. The other dancers remain still for dramatic effect while this is going on, which seems perversely practical: why bother giving them something to do when all eyes would have been on Taylor’s hulking grace?

By the time Taylor performed Night Journey, his own work was already heading in a different direction.

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Excerpt from “Dances Before the Wall,” from The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara, by Frank O’Hara, copyright © 1971 by Maureen Granville- Smith, Administratrix of the Estate of Frank O’Hara, copyright renewed 1999 by Maureen O’Hara Granville-Smith and Donald Allen.

Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Meridien and Futura types by Westchester Publishing Services.

Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2015939313 ISBN 978-0-300-20131-4 (cloth : alk. paper) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 1kitap1.com/en for my mother 1kitap1.com/en CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction: An American Style 1 The Cakewalk, America’s First National Dance 2 Bill Robinson’s Dream 3 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Pick Themselves Up 4 Agnes de Mille’s Square Dance 5 Paul Taylor’s Bugle Boy 6 Michael Jackson’s Moonwalk List of Dance Films and Videos Notes Index 1kitap1.com/en ACKNOWLEDGMENTS One of the perks of writing this book was that watching dance counted as work.

If I felt stuck, I could pull up a YouTube video, slide a DVD into my laptop, or head to a concert hall and watch other people move. In the pages that follow, I refer primarily to recorded dances, but live performances by the Paul Taylor Dance Company, San Francisco Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, and New York City Ballet—including productions of many of the pieces I discuss—also kindled my thoughts and excitement. When I was still in college, Elizabeth Dillon made me want to understand the complexities of American performance, and Fred Strebeigh made me want to write better prose.

Since then, many other teachers have helped me keep those goals in mind. Bryan Wagner has been deepening my thinking about this book since before I knew what I was thinking about. He has consistently encouraged me to keep the big picture in mind, on the page and off. Scott Saul provided advice, encouragement, and a model for what scholarship could look like; this book and I are better for it.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 04c4306ec83e5577
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 8,868,070 bytes (8.457 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9780300201314
• Pages: 343
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 568.55 minutes
• Total Words: 113,710
• Total Characters: 694,040
• Average Words per Page: 331.52
• Average Characters per Page: 2023.44

Most Frequent Words

dance (984), new (579), black (449), american (420), york (337), one (331), taylor (329), dancing (314), robinson (304), dancers (276), jackson (272), ballet (268), white (263), like (257), see (221), also (219), astaire (202), mille (179), steps (168), fred (167), music (165), even (162), times (159), time (157), michael (154), bill (149), america (139), dances (137), paul (134), years (130), back (130), jazz (130), tap (127), company (123), press (122), first (119), dancer (118), show (116), two (115), way (110), cakewalk (109), university (109), performance (109), made (108), work (107), ginger (105), later (102), world (101), history (98), people (98), modern (95), men (95), robinson’s (94), man (92), it’s (92), rogers (91), part (89), another (89), country (88), old (88), together (86), story (86), stage (85), americans (84), art (83), arms (83), life (81), little (81), piece (81), set (79), audience (79), performed (78), audiences (77), rodeo (77), still (76), make (76), body (76), agnes (74), video (74), shows (74), around (74), john (73), blackface (73), came (73), across (72), move (72), african (72), williams (71), big (70), film (70), balanchine (70), moonwalk (69), jackson’s (68), much (68), harlem (67), girl (67), though (67), many (66), war (66), square (65).

PDF Download