Talk:Ted Shawn

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Dance

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Eva Palmer-Sikelianos

I note that Eva's contribution to the formation of Ted's Men Dancers and style are not noted. Eva's connection to Ted and his to her surely should be noted herein - something I will rectify in short order unless there are any objections or counter-points. Zamdrist (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 17:22, 10 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Untitled

whats not neutral about the article? his quote? You cant help that... Grow up wikipedian who nominated this...

What's Not Neutral?

Maybe someone objected to the fact that he lived apart from his wife? Except he didn't pass judgment or speculate on it. We don't even get the juicy dance gossip about the big split with Doris Humphrey, Martha Graham, Charles Weidman, et. al. This article is totally neutral. Berkeleysappho 06:41, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Jacob's Pillow chapter

"Saratoga Springs is now the home of the National Museum of Dance, the world's only museum dedicated to professional dance." This is not correct. Museums dedicated to professional dance are also located in Stockholm (Sweden), Cologne (Germany) and St. Petersburg (Russia). All these are open over the year. Saratoga Springs is only open troughout summer season. Best wishes, --Dr. Kloebner (talk) 11:45, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What's with the cultural appropriation/racism accusations?

I noticed that an IP editor added, without source, a comment that Shawn's use of Eastern influence raises questions of cultural appropriation, colonialism and racism. I've added a citation-needed tag. Doing a quick Google-search, I see that an enormous amount has been written about Shawn and colonialism, right through to eugenics. I am not an expert on this area, and don't feel confident to sift out the weird from the mainstream. In honesty to Shawn, and to the larger question, I think it would be good if someone could give a reference or two to somewhere that discusses the subject properly. Does anyone know something good? Paul Scolieri seems to have written a lot. Is this good and balanced? I don't have access to any of it. Elemimele (talk) 19:01, 20 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Here you hava a long citation from Siobhan Burke's 2008 university thesis "Imagining the Dance of America, Regenerating “The Race”: The Eugenic Fantasy of Ted Shaw":

"Writing in distinctly eugenic terms, Shawn often likened the pervasiveness of jazz in America to a proliferation of filth, disease, dementia, and low forms of life. In Fundamentals of a Dance Education, he likened tap dancing—which “rightfully” belonged to “the Negro”—to “a mild case of epilepsy,” in which the dancer “allows the body to jerk and flop about.” To peer in on a roomful of ballroom dancers was to glimpse “a drop of dirty water through a microscope . . . the movement of amoebae, devoid of intelligence, grace, beauty, rhythm or design.”[1] And alluding back-handedly to the image of the melting pot—which, like Grant, Shawn interpreted as a menace to national identity—he described jazz as “the scum of the great boiling that is now going on” in the “huge foreign population” of New York.[2] Making reference to “the fox trot and its idiot brood”—which he deemed “degenerate” and “doggerel”—Shawn suggested that jazz itself was in a dysgenic state, the product of its own flawed genealogy.[3] Cleanliness, clarity, order, balance, precision, refinement, intellect, self-control: these were the virtues that would make for a true dance of America, and that only “the white man”—with his more highly evolved mental, emotional, and spiritual endowment—could achieve.

The eugenic aphorism that “some people are born to be a burden upon the rest” seemed to ring all too true for Shawn.[4] The moronic, the uneducated, the poor, the diseased, the mentally ill, the immoral, “the Negro”: the dance of America was littered with all of those “dysgenic types,” whom eugenicists wished exclude from America itself. In Shawn’s view, this was not just an artistic problem limited to the dance hall or the concert stage; it was the sign of a broader cultural crisis. “As the dance of a country is,” he wrote in 1929, “so is its inner health.” The insidiousness of “degenerate” jazz reflected the broader degeneration of (white) America. But just as the art of dance had decayed with its native culture, so could it become a force for cultural uplift, a source of regeneration. 190.20.206.183 (talk) 14:56, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

More on this, look the following citation from Heinilä, H. (2016). An Endeavor by Harlem Dancers to Achieve Equality: The Recognition of the Harlem-Based African-American Jazz Dance Between 1921 and 1943.: "...another modern dancer, Ted Shawn, called the claim that jazz is an American expression as “a lie” and he added, “Jazz is the scum of the great boiling that is now going on, and the scum will be cleared off…”150 Two decades later he still expressed his disappointment by stating that he “was sick at heart that…this whole vast country of millions of white people, still kept on dancing dances of Negro derivation”.151 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.20.206.183 (talk) 15:00, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]