How To Do Things with Dance: Performing Change in Postwar America

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. For an extended aesthetic and cultural analysis of Ailey’s Revelations see DeFrantz 2004b. 2. I have composed this narrative of the sit-ins based on both primary and secondary sources. It is therefore not meant to be a definitive account, but rather a means of establishing a sequence of events. 3. In Huizinga’s words: “The rite produces the effect which is then not so much shown figuratively as actually reproduced in the action. The function of the rite, therefore, is far from being merely imitative; it causes the worshippers to participate in the sacred happening itself” (1950, 14–15; emphasis in original). 4. Austin was responding to logical positivists, like Rudolph Carnap and A. J. Ayer, who developed a criterion of empirical verifiability to distinguish meaningful scientific claims from meaningless metaphysical claims to which they referred simply as “nonsense.” Thanks go to David Bullwinkle for pointing this out. 5. Other examples included the naming of a ship, “as uttered when smashing the bottle against the stem”; the bequeathing of a possession to someone else, “as occurring in a will”; and the act of making a bet ([1962] 1972, 5). 6. Examples of the first case are: Graff 1997; Foulkes 2002; Manning 2004. Examples of the second case are Banes 1983, 1989, 1993, and 2003. For a notable exception with respect to political theater see Cohen-Cruz 2001, 96–97. 7. Sally Banes, has claimed, for example that “the late 1940s and early 50s were not creative years in modern dance” (Banes 1987, 5), and Lynn Garafola has argued, “by the late 1950s modern dance and ballet had joined the Establishment” (Garafola 1988, 177). 8. For more on the composition and functions of the Dance Panel see chapter 1 as well as Prevots 1998, 37–52. 9. As I discuss in chapter 1, dance critics Walter Terry and John Martin both spoke about dance in these terms in the years just following World War II. 10. Thanks to Anthea Kraut for helping me articulate this connection. 11. Primus’ thought on these matters comes to fruition in an essay she published on her return in Theatre Arts magazine in December 1950. Entitled “Earth Theatre,” the essay constructs a new theater in which modern dance and dramatic artists might reinvest their efforts: “And so the earth becomes the stage: the curve of endless skies the backdrop . The setting is the jungle itself with its giant trees and twisting vines; the bald tops of mountains, with their rocky fingers jutting out, form the wings. The props are made from the bones and hair of the earth. And the actors are merely men and women!” (41). 12. After much deliberation, I have decided not to include a chapter on Alwin Nikolais in this book due to thematic restraints. Please see my article on Nikolais published elsewhere (Kowal 2007). 13. For example see Banes 1987, 1989, and 1993; Morris 2006. 14. For example, see Copeland 2004, 8. 15. This is a reference to Susan Sontag’s influential essay “Against Interpretation,” which served as a rallying cry for experimental choreographers in the early 1960s. As Sally Banes . 257 . has argued, Sontag’s essay “called for an erotics of art that would replace hermeneutics” along with formalist-driven critical approaches (1993, 246). 16. The idea that movement constitutes a kind of efficacious speech, for instance, is investigated in several recently published books and essays: Román 1998; Foster 2002b; Gere 2004; DeFrantz 2004; and Goldman 2007. 17. For another example of scholarly work in art history on transnational avant-gardes see Mercer 2005. 18. I use “world-making” in the sense investigated in Buckland 2002, as an act of “reimagining creatively” (6). Chapter 1. Setting the Stage 1. Long a promoter of dance as a medium of communication, Terry, whose career as a dance critic had been interrupted by Army service during the war, spent time teaching modern dance to Egyptian students in Cairo while he was stationed in Africa. He also gave lectures on American dance to Allied forces there (Kowal 1998, 785). On his return to civilian life, he dedicated himself to increasing the public’s knowledge of all forms of dance. He knew firsthand that dance could bring people together, bridging cultures and worldviews through the medium of the human body, adding the role of cultural ambassador to his occupation as a dance critic. 2. Guilbaut 1983 makes a similar set of arguments...