Shawn and His Men Dancers

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SHAWN
AND HIS MEN DANCERS

DANCE OF THE AGES
AN ELEMENTAL RHYTHMUS IN FOUR MOVEMENTS
Choreography by
TED SHAWN

Music by
JESS MEEKER

TED SHAWN'S newest creation is called Dance of the Ages, An Elemental Rhythmus in Four Movements.  Jess Meeker, talented composer-pianist, who has collaborated with Shawn and His Men Dancers for the past six years has written the music.  To those who have been thrilled and satisfied with Shawn's choreographic work, Kinetic Molpai, Shawn has said. 'Dance of the Ages' is to the Kinetic Molpai as a symphony is to a sonata.

The movement quality of the four sections is elemental—that is the movement quality of Fire, Water, Earth (which includes geologic process, vegetable and animal life) and Air is the motivating inspiration of the choreography.  Also each of the four movements represents a stage of development in human society.  The Fire section exemplifies humanity at a plane of Tribal Culture, and Shawn's solo role is its archetype the shaman priest (medicine man, witch-doctor or voodoo-magician).  The Water section assumes the level of the City State, and Shawn's solo has the quality of poet-philosopher, although none of these is literal or explicit.  In the third section, Earth, democracy is arrived at and Shawn is seen in a mood which suggests Ward-heeler and Demogogorator-statesman.  The last movement, Air, portends something Beyond Democracy and its archetype is the creative artist.


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The first movement, Fire, opens with a hunting dance performed by primitive men costumed in skins of wild beasts.  They kill their food with stones, clubs, bows and arrows, and eat it raw with their hands, for fire has not yet been discovered.  Following a feast, with the setting sun, they become cold and fearful, and crawl away into holes or caves for warmth and protection.  The Shaman, danced by Shawn, enters—thoughtfully he views his people, shivering and fearful, and he resents the cold and dark.  Like Prometheus he feels that something should be done about it, and his primitive mind gets a glimmer of how a change may be achieved.  In a magic dance, whirling like a fire stick drill, he creates the first spark of fire, and creeping out one by one, the tribe begins to fan the flame.  After the fanning, of the flame there follows a dance of fire itself with the movements of the dancers based on the rhythmic patterns of flame.  This dance progresses to an intense climax with all the dancers making a leaping exit.  Immediately a black robed priest (Shawn) appears who begins a Ritual of Initiation.  He is soon joined by the candidate for initiation, Barton Mumaw, and the ensemble in black robes and hooded.  The neophyte is put through the ordeals of initiation, which includes the purification by fire.  When he has successfully borne the trials put upon him, the hoods of dancers are thrown back, the robes opened, and the neophyte finds himself admitted to the brotherhood of the priests of fire.  The entire ensemble is costumed in capes of red, black and gold.  This whole first movement ends with a ritual dance of the Fire priests who disperse bearing embers to the hearths of all humanity.


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The second section, Water, has less narrative scenario; being concerned largely with the pure movement problems of water rhythms—river, ocean, waterfall, vortex, storm at sea, the rising of moisture to form clouds, and movement of underwater vegetation.  Shawn's solo in this section is like a passage for solo instrument in a symphony with orchestral accompaniment, and only implies through rhythm and movement quality the poet-philosopher—all is flux—nothing is permanent but change.


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The third section, Earth, starts with a symbolic solo of Mumaw's followed by a mass group movement, which is extremely slow, suggestive of the many centuries of geologic process and movement of glaciers.  Out of this there gradually develops a vegetation movement, which is followed by a study in animal movement by Fred Hearn.  A plan of democracy begins to develop in a labor pattern which shows labor as a drudgery when performed alone becoming easier with cooperation, and when guided and disciplined by rhythm becoming almost play.  Then there is a dance representing village crafts and trade by barter, which is treated in a humorous vein.  With humanity developed to this point, people become the prey to the slick-tongued orator, and Shawn and the group perform an ingratiating dance in which the orator gets the entire village moving to his rhythm and organizes a political machine.  Following this there is a sport episode—executed by Mumaw and McCormack.  This theme is developed by the whole company into a carnival mood and sets the scene for the entry of the demagogue-statesman, Shawn.  He does an intricate bit of co-ordination in which his left arm says My friends with large, ample gestures, and all the while his right hand juggles finances and bureaucracies like a magician.  A travesty on a Sousa



FIRE



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EARTH



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WATER



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AIR




WATER



FIRE


TED SHAWN in Dance of the Ages

march has been written for this by Meeker.  Eventually with preparedness, and this and that, the demagog has them all in uniform and marching.  Mr. Shawn emphasizes the obvious point that when men are in uniform and march long enough they often march off to war.  The episode ends with carnage and death.  Mr. Shawn says here that neither Fascism nor Communism is the answer, and that there may be something beyond democracy is indicated. Man as Nietszhe said is something that must be surpassed.


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The last movement, Air, is again more a matter of pure movement.  It opens with Shawn's solo indicating the birth-struggle of the creative artist-fighting free from the earth pulls and freeing his earthbound fellowmen.  There follows swiftly all varieties of air rhythms.  Objects blown by the breeze, flight, elevation, and the whirlwind.  It concludes with a still rising indication of a fifth element, which the Tibetans call Ether-light.

While the scheme and the major part of the choreography is by Shawn the men of the company have done more individual creative work in this production than in any preceding one.  Mumaw created his solos, Purification by Fire, and Earth Forces, as well as solo bits in the Air section.  He also collaborated with McCormack in the Sport Dance.  Frank Overlees did the choreography for his solo in the Water section, and contributed to the Air movement.  McCormack created his solo role in the Air section and Hearn his Animal study.  All of the men contributed greatly to the development of the work as a whole.

Critics proclaim Dance of the Ages a marked advance choreographically over anything Shawn and His Men Dancers have previously done.  The Boston Herald said that it was in many respects the greatest dance work America has yet produced.  The music for the entire production—as in the case of Shawn's O Libertad is the work of Jess Meeker.





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O, LIBERTAD!
AN AMERICAN SAGA IN THREE ACTS
Choreography by
TED SHAWN

Music by
JESS MEEKER


ACT I
THE PAST
The Noche Triste de Moctezuma is the opening scene.  This depicts the fateful night when the invading Spaniards had invited a great number of that mighty Aztec emperor's chieftains to a magnificent banquet, in order to slay them treacherously.  In an atmosphere of foreboding, Moctezuma with his bodyguard of princes receives the news of the disaster.  He orders the bearer of bad tidings to be used as a human sacrifice, and, carving out the heart himself, reads the omens of the gods—the unmistakable signs of the doom of his empire.  Alone and grieving on his throne, he hears the chant of Christian priests approaching.  One of them, Father Olmedo, enters to present him the Cross to kiss.  Moctezuma replies: I have but a few days to live; and will not at this hour desert the faith of my fathers.  Choosing this episode as the crucial moment of the impact of the European civilization upon the indigenous one, Mr. Shawn has created a dance scene of barbaric splendor and bitter tragedy.

The second scene depicts a Good Friday celebration of a fanatic sect of Franciscans; while chronologically out of order, it shows in striking contrast the effect of the new civilization upon the indigenous peoples. Los Hermanos Penitentes, the penitent brotherhood, on each Good Friday lash themselves with thongs into which cactus is woven, and going out to a lonely hill, crucify one of their number.  Sometimes the crucified one actually dies upon the cross; his shoes, taken from his feet, are borne to the doorstep of his parents, by which they learn the sad news.

Following immediately is a dance based upon a labor rhythm of the Mexican peons working in a sugar refinery—peonage being another result of the Spanish domination of Mexico.  One of Orozco's masterly murals was inspired by this same subject.

As the peons exit, there comes dashing in a Hacendado de California of about 1830.  Living upon sweated labor, the Spanish grandees and their sons were rich beyond measure, and lived in regal splendor—a life of gracious ease and romantic adventure.

Following the Spanish period in California came the Gold Rush and in a rousing, rowdy square dance the Forty-Niners celebrate a lucky strike on the spot.

In this rhythmic biography of our country, obviously there was far too much material to deal with adequately in one evening's production.  Mr. Shawn has chosen significant periods in the past of one of the many colorful sections of the country, suitable to rhythmic treatment, in one single line of development, believing that this line was to a great degree parallel to the stages of history in other regions.




ACT II
THE PRESENT
While this section is entitled The Present the term is used to include the period from just prior to 1914 to now.

The second act opens with Campus 1914 ending with the serpentine dance familiar on many a college campus after victory.  Suddenly a figure in soldier's uniform appears in the midst of the revellers and sounds the call to arms—transforming a college march into a martial one, and he sends the youth of America off to the battle fields of France.  The soldier himself, sincerely fooled by patriotic propaganda, continues to disseminate the germs of hate abroad like poison gas until he finds himself in the trenches.  In No Man's Land the group represents the abstract elements of modern warfare, which the soldier experiences, a single protagonist, as symbol of the millions who fought and died.  After cessation of active hostilities, wounded and broken, with almost every illusion gone, he still believes that he will return to his native land—a hero.  But after the War, everyone wanted to forget, and the sight of a soldier in uniform only annoyed with its reminder of something everyone wished to forget.  The soldier is unable to establish contact with his fellow men, and wanders off lonely and forgotten, to a veterans' home to die, embittered, his last illusion gone.

Following the war comes the Jazz Decade in which eight masked figures give themselves to the cheap, shoddy, neurotic rhythms which were the aftermath of the war.  This mounted during a period of false boom prosperity until the vapid, empty youths were frightened into sense by the depression.

Depression was coincident with the peak of modernism in the dance and in his two-part solo, Shawn treats the first half as a satire on the most fanatic of modern dancers.  Slipping out of the frightful mask and robe of Depression he dances Credo a concise autobiography in dance form.

The opening solo of the group of sports dances is by Barton Mumaw and is a kinetic expression of the banner-bearer entering the stadium of the Olympic games; upon the banner is the olympic device of five linked circles symbolic of the five continents.

The second group shows three cheer leaders, a 100 per cent American manifestation, and a feature at all football games and major athletic events.  This is danced by Frank Overlees, John Schubert and Wilbur McCormack.

In the Decathlon, Fred Hearn depicts the 10 track and field events, broadjump, shotput, discus, the hurdles, javelin, running events, high jump and the pole vault.


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Fencing, while still distinctly an imported sport, has continued to gain in popularity in America, and the dance of Frank and John Delmar gives essential rhythms of the swordsman's art without the use of actual foils, masks and padded garments.

Wilbur McCormack next shows the training of a boxer, as well as depicting kinetically and rhythmically the winning of a bout in the ring.

This suite ends with a dance based on the rhythms and movements of basketball, a sport invented by an American, and one which is more than any other sport, already the raw material of dance.  Dennis Landers created this dance; it is danced by Coble, Overlees, Mumaw, Hearn and Delmar.  Mumaw created his own solo, Overlees created Cheer Leaders; Fitz-Simons the Decathlon; Hearn, Fencing; and McCormack his study of a boxer.  All of these men know these sports thoroughly having excelled in them in college—and with the close collaboration of Jess Meeker, accompanist-composer, they have caught the rhythmic essentials in a way that has never been done before.

The section closes with Mobilization for Peace done by the entire company.



BARTON MUMAW



FRANK OVERLEES



WILBUR McCORMACK



FRED HEARN




FRANK DELMAR



HARRY COBLE



JOHN DELMAR



JOHN SCHUBERT





ACT III
THE FUTURE
In presenting his now widely known Kinetic Molpai, Mr. Shawn offers this as one of the forms of dance of the American man of the future—an art creation already ahead of its times that indicates a direction in which America may proceed—the Athletic Art of the Dance as a field of creative endeavor for the American man.

To utter in dance that for which no other language exists is the Molpê.  In ancient Greece there were Molpai for sowing and harvest, for rain or for sun; for fertility in man, beast, and fruit; for the oversion of pestilence, and for most of the other things that people pray for.  The scenes of these dances were mountain tops, threshing floors, and spaces around such sacred objects as springs and altars.  The dance was a yearning of the whole dumb body to be like that for which the dancer longed, to express an emotion for which words and singing are not enough.  Love, Strife, Death, and that which is beyond Death.  Those are the four themes about which our earliest bards sang, and when singing was not enough to express all their stress of emotion, yearned and reached out their arms amid the dancers.  * To be merged in some life that is the object of adoration or desire, those are the subjects and spirit of that primitive molpê which is the fountain head of classical poetry.  The whole Molpê was inspired by the worship of nature.

These eleven Molpai of Shawn's are an evocation of experience as universal to modern life as it was to primitive, experience at once sacred and poetic; and the Molpai are so devised that, just as each listener to music makes his own dream out of the music that he hears, so each spectator may here make his own poem out of the dance that he sees, and be thus a fellow-participant in that common worship which was the Molpê.

The Molpai suite opens with Strife—the group led by Shawn in a clashing, warlike movement, which fuses into the second number—a study in oppositions.  The next motif is Solvent signifying divine love: that universal, all-embracing love which unites nations and divers peoples in harmony.  This is a solo for Shawn.

The fourth movement, Dynamic Contrasts is visible fortissimo and pianissimo, danced first by Shawn and a group of four, and then by two groups.  Abstractly conceived, it finely portrays that ever recurring desire of humans to destroy what natural forces have created.  The next theme Resilience is in effect a scherzo movement, gay, light, rhythmic, and uses parallelisms in geometric design.  This merges into Successions dealing with the technical problem of the wave movement through the body, relieved by walking motifs.  Choregraphically and musically it is constructed like a canon, or two part invention.  Then comes another solo passage for Shawn,—Unfolding and Folding which is symbolic of man's life in birth, radiant maturity and death.  This is followed logically by Dirge a funeral march of warriors, resentful and bitter—the grief of heroes over heroic death rather than weak, pathetic resignation.  Limbo follows, depicting the transitional period—a drifting of souls through infinite space.  Surge a rising and falling, surf-like dance, emerges into Apotheosis which is the end of the suite of Molpai, a dynamic, exhilarating, radiant climax of life deified and glorified.  The music for this suite was composed by Jess Meeker.

* Professor Gilbert Murray—The Classical Tradition in Poetry


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JESS MEEKER PIANIST-COMPOSER
THIS KANSAS PIANIST-Composer has been with Shawn from the very beginning of the men's group.  Born in Oklahoma, but from early childhood a resident of Kansas, he was accompanist for one of Shawn's former pupils in Arkansas City, when they first met.  Upon the occasion of Shawn passing through that city, he was taken to hear a cantata which Meeker had composed, and was much impressed.  Later he heard fragments of a proposed work upon the life of John Brown.  As this theme, in which is concentrated and embodied much that is significant in American history and life, had long been in Shawn's mind to create in dance form, he at once arranged for Meeker to join him.

In the summer of 1933, working together, they created the now famous music and dance John Brown Sees the Glory.  In addition, on that first program, Meeker composed the music for Barton Mumaw's dance Fetish based on primitive African motifs.  The following summer, 1934, Meeker and Shawn collaborated on the Labor Symphony, a whole suite of five tribal dances, Primitive Rhythms, and on the dance inspired by Francis Thompson's great mystic poem The Hound of Heaven.

1935 saw Meeker and Shawn working together with a smoothness and power obtained through the preceding years of increasing successful and happy collaboration.  The result was the major work, Kinetic Molpai in which each, separately, as well as together, attained a new high.  In addition he achieved the two lighter numbers A Dreier Lithograph, and Mouvement Naif.  And as a result of the 1936–1937 collaboration with Shawn came O, Libertad the first full program with music entirely by Meeker.  Dance of the Ages, the second full evening's production with all of the music by Meeker, was begun during the two months the Shawn Dancers spend at their Florida studio and finished during the five summer months of 1938 when the company lives, creates and performs at Jacob's Pillow.

Meeker, both as pianist and composer has received the highest critical acclaim all over this continent and in London.  Arnold Haskell, author of Balletomane and dance critic for one of the leading London newspapers wrote: Meeker is the ideal pianist that every dancer dreams about and hopes for.  Half of the program which Shawn and his men dancers gave for two nights at Robin Hood Dell, Philadelphia, summer of 1936, accompanied by the men of the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Saul Caston, was Meeker's music, and his own orchestrations.  Those with real musical knowledge and vision say that here is one of the most significant of young American composers.

The entire musical settings for O, Libertad! and Dance of Ages was composed by Jess Meeker.





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As WOLO, (BARON WOLF von FALKENSTEIN) famous cartoonist of Pacific Coast, sees THE SHAWN DANCERS


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Jacob's Pillow—Shawn's Training Camp

SHAWN TRAINS HIS DANCERS IN BERKSHIRE RETREAT
By Ted Shawn

(Reprinted from The Berkshire Evening Eagle)

SIX OR SEVEN YEARS AGO, after having lived in many parts of the United States, and having had summer schools in many advertised climates, I found an old farm in Becket Township, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, which seemed to me the ideal spot I had always been looking for.  My first idea was to have this place as a hideaway—where I could escape from the hectic New York life, and the terrific schedule of performing, teaching and producing—and have a place in which to live quietly and do creative work in protected isolation.

Then, in 1933, I made a decision to set forth on an adventurous project that had been my dream for twenty years—to have a company entirely of men dancers—not just arbitrarily eliminating women from my touring companies, but to choose an ideal type of young American manhood, and train him in athletic forms of the dance—to restore the dance to its ancient dignity as a manly art.  This Berkshire farm—Jacob's Pillow—obviously was the perfect place to do this.

While we were first living up here, creating, rehearsing and training and at the same time working like farmers to raise our own vegetables, cut our own firewood, and doing all of the work of the place ourselves, F. Cowles Strickland, then director of the Berkshire Playhouse, and an old friend of mine, called to see me about summer performances.  He became fascinated with this revolutionary idea of dancing for men, and witnessed many class lessons, asked many questions to which I made explanations and had the men demonstrate my theories.


Studio Interiors



Strickland then said that he believed many people would appreciate the privilege I had extended to him.  The public sees dance performances at rare intervals, different types of dance, but not often enough, nor with sufficient background to understand what it is all about.  Nor has the public today any way to become intelligently informed as to the creative and technical problems of the dance as an art.  Therefore, he suggested that we have, once a week, a lecture and demonstration, covering each week for ten weeks during the summer season, the different phases of the dance, as a course in dance appreciation and dance education for a dance loving public.  Thus began, what has since become, an institution in the Berkshires, attended now by more than 500 people a week—many from beyond the Berkshires proper—from Albany, Hartford, Springfield; even attracting pilgrims from Boston and New York City.

The life at Jacob's pillow, and the training plan here inaugurated, has been considered by prominent educators as one of the significant experiments in progressive education.  Whereas in most schools, there is a great deal of listening to lectures, reading textbooks, and other methods of taking in other people's thoughts—here the emphasis is upon doing, upon expression, and upon living.  It is an education of the whole man—mind, body and emotions simultaneously, and considering these as three organic parts of man's unity.

The young men and I do all our own work (except for the cook we have during the heaviest schedule of the summer).  We work with pick and shovel, with scythe, axe, crowbar, and two-man saw.  Then when we come into the studio to create a Labor Symphony, for instance, it is no mere abstraction—the sweat of these forms of primitive manual labor is on our backs, our muscles are sore with it, and our hands are calloused with it.  And that is why our labor dances have a quality of verity about them that convinces audiences out in Texas, Montana and Wyoming.

My young men, themselves, are all college men and have been outstanding athletes.  One man has a pole vault record, another was a crack wrestler, all have been letter men in football, basketball, swimming or track.  And this knowledge and muscular training results in the same convincing quality when we do dances created out of the raw material of sports movements.

We read continuously, and I read to them.  We work in the

1. Student group, summer of 1937.  2. Students' cabins.  3. Students' cabins.  4. Swimming pool.  5. Studio unit—costume barn and carpentry shop, studio itself and compound enclosing outdoor platform and terrace.  6. Students' dining room interior.  Jacob's Pillow and the men's school property includes approximately 200 acres of land, on which there are twelve buildings, houses, studios, barns, cabins.


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As MOCTEZUMA

TED SHAWN

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As the HACENDADO DE CALIFORNIA





studio all morning.  Then at 12 we have our lunch (generally a big salad, rye crisp and a fruit drink) on a tin tray which we carry out into the sun, and have a sun bath while we eat, after which I read aloud, not only from my extensive library of books on the dance, but also books on metaphysics, philosophy, theories of art, aesthetics, and biography.  And there follows brisk and intelligent discussion.  These informations and theories, digested, very shortly become visible in our creative work in the studio.

For six years now these young men and I have toured giving performances in over 350 cities and in 1935 eleven special performances in London—with great success everywhere.  Here again, the spartan quality of the men is evidenced for we travel entirely by motor and the boys drive the cars and the trucks which carry our baggage.  They are even called upon in some places to unload the baggage, hang the scenery, and set up the lights, and then get into costume and make-up and give the performance; then get out of costume and make-up, take down and pack the show, load it into the trucks and drive, perhaps all night, to get to the next town.  This is necessary because it is still a pioneer adventure, and it has no endowment or financial support such as is lavished upon the foreign dancers who come to America.  But we feel strongly that we are making, today, the greatest contribution to the progress of the dance that is being made anywhere.

Pericles, speaking of the Athenians, said: We are lovers of beauty without having lost the taste for simplicity—and lovers of wisdom without loss of manly vigor.  Shelley prophesied A new Hellas shall arise, and we believe that by living up to the ideal of Pericles in present day America, we shall make it possible for a great new culture to come into vital being here in our own times and in our own country.


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Friday gathering at Jacob's Pillow-Shawns training camp




Exclusive Management: HORNER, MOYER, & HORNER, 3005 Harrison St., Kansas City, Mo.

Miss Fern Helscher, Advance Representative

Sam Steen, Understudy

Training camp and summer school of Shawn and his Men Dancers—Box 87, Lee, Mass.  Training camp and winter school, Box 807, Eustis, Florida



Credits: ..............................., Photographs by Marcus Blechman, N. Y. C.; Shapiro Studio, Pittsfield; Boris Studio, Lake Mahopac, N. Y.

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