Table Of Contentthis book was published with a lift from
Figure Foundation
Sharyn Rohlfsen Udall
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Udall, Sharyn Rohlfsen.
Dance and American art : a long embrace / Sharyn R. Udall.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-299-28800-6 (cloth : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-299-28803-7 (e-book)
1. Dance in art. 2. Art, American—Themes, motives. I. Title.
N8217.D3U33 2012
704.9'4979280973—dc23
2011042650
Rita Dove’s poem “American Smooth” first appeared in The New Yorker
(February 3, 2003) and was subsequently collected in her poetry book
American Smooth, W. W. Norton, New York, © 2004 by Rita Dove.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
Book design and composition: David Alcorn, Alcorn Publication Design
For Sasha and Jacqueline
We were dancing—it must have
been a foxtrot or a waltz,
something romantic but
requiring restraint,
rise and fall, precise
execution as we moved
into the next song without
stopping, two chests heaving
above a seven-league
stride—such perfect agony
one learns to smile through,
ecstatic mimicry
being the sine qua non
of American Smooth.
And because I was distracted
by the effort of
keeping my frame
(the leftward lean, head turned
just enough to gaze out
past your ear and always
smiling, smiling),
I didn’t notice
how still you’d become until
we had done it
(for two measures?
four?)—achieved flight,
that swift and serene
magnificence,
before the earth
remembered who we were
and brought us down.
—Rita Dove, “American Smooth”
Contents
List of Illustrations viii
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Chronology xvii
Introduction 3
Part One. Art, Dance, and American Consciousness
1 Expressing the Real or Imagined Heritage of a Nation 13
2 African American Dance and Art: A Confluence of Traditions from
Minstrelsy to the Harlem Renaissance 53
Part Two. Dance and the Legacies of Romanticism in American Art
3 Revisiting Arcadia: America’s Longing for the Natural, the Pagan,
and the Passionate 95
4 Romantic Imports: American Art’s Love Affair
with European Dance 108
5 The Ballets Russes and the “Exotic” East: Folklore and
Modernist Primitivism Invade American Art 133
Part Three. “The Complete Actual Present”: Dancers and Visual Artists
Explore the Immediate Cultural Moment (Expressions of Modernity)
6 Loïe Fuller, Art Nouveau, and the Technological Present 177
7 Social Dance: Visual Artists Take the Pulse of
Twentieth-Century America 187
8 American Vernacular: Visual Art and the
Dancing Mechanized Body 199
Part Four. Terpsichore Transformed: Dance, the Liberated Body, and
America’s Artistic Revolutions
9 Class, Vice, and the Revolt against Puritanism 223
10 Dance, Visual Art, and America’s Countercultures 253
Conclusion 265
Notes 271
Bibliography 303
Index 321
Illustrations
Figure 1 Theodor de Bry, The Dances at Their Great Feasts, 1590,
engraving after watercolor by John White 14
Figure 2 Reproduction of The Flyer [The Sorcerer], by John White,
c. 1587–88 15
Figure 3 Currier & Ives, Shakers near Lebanon: A Square-Order Dance,
after 1825 18
Figure 4 Attributed to Joseph Becker, Shaker Religious Exercises in
Niskeyuna, Wheel within a Wheel Dance, 1885 19
Figure 5 Asher B. Durand, Dance on the Battery in the Presence of Peter
Stuyvesant, 1838 20
Figure 6 John Quidor, Antony van Corlear Brought into the Presence of
Peter Stuyvesant, 1839 22
Figure 7 Anonymous, First Opening of New York’s Metropolitan
Museum of Art in the Former Dodworth Dancing Academy on
Fifth Avenue, 1871 23
Figure 8 Joseph Cornell, photomontage of Allen Dodworth,
1940s 24
Figure 9 Lewis Hine, Music and a Little Dance while Waiting at Ellis
Island, n.d. 25
Figure 10 George B. Luks, The Spielers, 1905 26
Figure 11 Abastenia St. Leger Eberle, Girls Dancing, 1907 28
Figure 12 William Gropper, Hassid Dancing, 1968 29
Figure 13 William Sidney Mount, Rustic Dance after a Sleigh Ride,
1830 31
Figure 14 William Sidney Mount, Dancing on the Barn Floor,
1831 32
Figure 15 William Sidney Mount, Dance of the Haymakers or Music Is
Contagious, 1845 33
Figure 16 Christian Friedrich Mayr, Kitchen Ball at White Sulphur
Springs, Virginia, 1838 34
Figure 17 Eastman Johnson, Negro Life at the South, 1859 35
Figure 18 George Caleb Bingham, The Jolly Flatboatmen, 1846 37
Figure 19 George Caleb Bingham, The Jolly Flatboatmen,
1877–78 38
Figure 20 F. R. Bennett, Dance on a Sequoia Stump, c. 1875 40
Figure 21 Thomas Hart Benton, City Activities with Dance Hall, from
America Today, 1930 41
Figure 22 Russell Lee, Jigger at a Square Dance, Pie Town, June,
1940 43
Figure 23 Martha Graham performing in Primitive Mysteries,
1931 45
viii
IllustratIons
Figure 24 Abraham Walkowitz, “Dance Improvisations,” ink drawings of
Martha Graham, 1930s 46
Figure 25 Barbara Morgan, Erick Hawkins in El Penitente, 1940 47
Figure 26 William Zorach, Spirit of the Dance, 1934 49
Figure 27 David Smith, Dancer, 1935 50
Figure 28 David Smith, Dancers, 1940 51
Figure 29 James Goodwyn Clonney, Militia Training, 1841 54
Figure 30 Anonymous, American Theatre, Bowery, New York, 1833
54
Figure 31 Anonymous, “Jim Crow” character created by blackface
performer Thomas Dartmouth (“Daddy”) Rice, n.d. 55
Figure 32 Winslow Homer, A Bivouac Fire on the Potomac, 1861
56
Figure 33 Walker Evans, photograph of poster of J. C. Lincoln’s Sunny
South Minstrels, 1936 57
Figure 34 Thomas Hart Benton, Minstrel Show, 1934 58
Figure 35 Thomas Eakins, The Dancing Lesson [Negro Boy Dancing],
1878 59
Figure 36 Cecilia Beaux, Dorothea and Francesca [The Dancing Lesson],
1898 61
Figure 37 George B. Luks, Cake Walk, 1907 63
Figure 38 Theresa Bernstein, The Cakewalk—New Orleans,
c. 1948–50 64
Figure 39 Aaron Douglas, Study for Aspects of Negro Life: The Negro in
an African Setting, 1934 66
Figure 40 Richmond Barthé, Kalombwan, 1934 68
Figure 41 Olowe of Ise (Yoruba peoples, Nigeria), Bowl with Figures, c.
1925 69
Figure 42 Richmond Barthé, Lindy Hoppers, 1939 70
Figure 43 William H. Johnson, Jitterbugs II, c. 1941 72
Figure 44 Archibald J. Motley Jr., Nightlife, 1943 73
Figure 45 James VanDerZee, Dancing School, 1928 74
Figure 46 Charles Demuth, In Vaudeville [Dancer with Chorus], 1918
75
Figure 47 Winold Reiss, Interpretation of Harlem Jazz I, c. 1925 75
Figure 48 Vincent Van Gogh, Bal à Arles [Dancehall at Arles], 1888
77
Figure 49 Stuart Davis, The Back Room, Bar House, Newark, 1913
78
Figure 50 Stuart Davis, Dancers on Havana Street, 1920 80
Figure 51 Adolf Dehn, Swinging at the Savoy, 1941 82
Figure 52 Anonymous, photograph of Josephine Baker dancing the
Charleston, 1920s 83
Figure 53 Jan Matulka, Dancing Woman with Parasol, 1929 86
Figure 54 Jan Matulka, Arrangement with Phonograph, Mask, and Shell,
c. 1930 87
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