Shawn and His Men Dancers

              NOW BOOKING
Season 1935–36
Coast-to-Coast Tour


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Shawn AND HIS MEN DANCERS
1935


CONCERT APPEARANCES

Carnegie Hall, New York
Symphony Hall, Boston
Academy of Music, Brooklyn
Blackstone Theatre }Chicago
Studebaker Theatre }
Eaton Auditorium }Toronto
Massey Hall }
Belasco Theatre }Washington, D.C.
National Theatre }
Orchestra Hall, Detroit
Lyric Theatre, Baltimore
Municipal Opera House, St. Louis
Memorial Auditorium, Louisville
Ryman Auditorium, Nashville
Memorial Auditorium, Chattanooga
Jerusalem Temple, New Orleans
Convention Hall, Tulsa
Shrine Auditorium, Oklahoma City
Broadway Theatre, Denver
Ararat Temple, Kansas City
And in 55 Other Cities
Under Concert Auspices

Already booked for next season for the third consecutive time in many of the above cities

THREE DIFFERENT PROGRAMS IN REPERTOIRE FOR SEASON 1935–1936






In October, 1933
A Pioneer Adventure


Today
An Established Success



Over 250 Performances in First 2 Years

More Than 50 Cities Played First Season Booked Return Dates for Second Season

Every Return Date—Audience Doubled to Ten Times Larger Than First Year

DANCED Under Auspices of

38 State Teachers' Colleges
72 State Universities, Universities and Colleges
12 Women's Clubs
5 Rotary, Kiwanis and Men's Clubs
2 Parent-Teachers' Associations
2 State Teachers' Conventions
2 Civic Music Conventions
5 Leading Boys' Preparatory Schools


DANCED at
2 National Conventions, Directors of Physical Education

DANCED With
2 Symphony Orchestras


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FOR DATES, TERMS, INFORMATION
WRITE TO
Willmore & Powers
2 West 45th Street, New York City



TRAINING CAMP   SHAWN AND DANCERS   P. O. BOX 87, LEE, MASS.




PRESS COMMENTS

Greensboro (N. C.) Daily News Jan. 17, 1935
FULL HOUSE ENJOYS SHAWN DANCE DRAMA
Hearty Applause Gives Evidence of Popularity of Dancers and Their Work.

FIVE ACTS PRESENTED

Representing in a dance drama of five acts the motifs the primitive, labor. religion, play and art, Ted Shawn and his company of eight dancers last night at 8:30 o'clock appeared in a performance at Aycock auditorium under the direction of the committee in charge of the lecture course at Woman's college.

A full house and the hearty applause were evidence of the popularity of the dancers and their performance.



Chicago American—Nov. 26, 1934
Shawn Dances Please.
The Studebaker Theater was well filled yesterday afternoon for the dance program by Ted Shawn and his ensemble of men Shawn himself is a great dancer, and his group of assistants have been trained by a great choreographer.



Chicago Tribune—Nov. 26, 1934
Ted Shawn and his ensemble of men dancers, who claim and prove that the dance art may be strenuous and forceful as well as graceful, gave a program at the Studebaker theater.  Primitive rhythms, dances of labor, play themes, and art dances were all presented to much applause, and there is particular reason to compliment the final seetion of the Labor Sym phony not only for its accurate and energetic performance but because of the illusion of mechanism by bodily formations.



Hartford (Conn.) Courant Oct. 24, 1934
Ted Shawn And Dancers Pack House
Hundreds Turned Away at High School Hall — Male Ensemble Wins Men's Applause

New Britain

New Britain, Oct. 23.—(Special.)—The continents of the earth were brought together and the primitive joined with the present on the stage of the Senior High School Auditorium Tuesday night as Ted Shawn and his ensemble of male dancers presented a program of the art for which they are internationally noted before one of the largest audiences ever to be allowed in the roomiest meeting place in the city.

Approximately 2000 persons sat. several hundred more were permitted to stand and hundreds of others who had hoped to see the program were not even allowed to enter the building so great was the congestion.  The program was sponsored by the students and faculty of the Teachers College jointly with the Teachers Club of New Britain as the first in a series of cultural programs to be presented, and there was no charge for admission.


'Remain to Applaud.'
If enthusiastic response, prolonged applause and repeated calls for encores mean anything, the movement of Mr. Shawn to restore the art of the dance to the place which it once held in the lives of men received a huge local spurt Tuesday night.  Men who had accompanied their wives to the performance and had expected to be bored remained to applaud as loudly as any others at the grace of movement, supple strength and muscular art of the dancers.




MORNING ADVOCATE, BATON ROUGE, LA.—Feb. 13, 1935
Shawn and His Dancers Are Given Big Ovation in Recital on Campus
By CLAIRE L. GUEYMARD

Ted Shawn, who with his group of six men dancers appeared at the Louisiana State University theater Tuesday evening in a varied and colorful program of dances, is not only a great artist in the field of the dance but a delightful personality as well, his appearance here revealed.  The entire program received enthusiastic response from an audience which filled the theater, and individual ovations were given Mr. Shawn, especially for his dramatic John Brown Sees the Glory, and Invocation to the Thunder-bird, and other members of the troupe who appeared in solo numbers.



Ithaca (N Y.) Journal—Nov 2, 1934
Big Audience Pleased with Shawn Dances
Perfectly balanced rhythm, timing, coupled with graceful movements executed with masculine vigor and virility, marked Ted Shawn's presentation of Dance as an Art at Willard Straight Theater last night.  His vivid interpretations were hailed by a capacity audience.



News-Sentinel, Knoxville, Tenn. Feb. 5, 1935
Dancers Can Be He-Men, Shawn's Troupe Shows
Ted Shawn and his company of eight young men brought to Knoxville Monday night the Shawn ideas of the dance which he and his troupe are showing American audiences on their second tour.

The company, disdaining the usual feminine forms of the dances, is showing the beauty and grace of dances of labor, or strength, of primitive peoples in their masculine dances.

Beginning with exciting dances of Indians, the program carried on to the finale of art form dances interpretive of the music of Beethoven, Bach and Brahms.

To Ted Shawn, the teacher and composer, even more than to Ted Shawn, the dancer, is due credit for the remarkable performance.  All dances were created by Mr. Shawn and taught by him to his company at his summer camp.



Chattanooga Times—Feb. 7, 1935
TED SHAWN'S MEN PLEASE AUDIENCE
Bronzed Men Dance Gracefully at Community Hall.

Ecstacy, Suffering, Gayety and Pride Dealt With in Unusual Exhibition.

Ted Shawn and his bronzed dancers, statuesque, mobile and graceful as poetry in motion, delighted a sizable crowd with a recital of interpretations, rhythmic folk themes and highly expressive religious dances in the community hall of the Memorial auditorium last night.



Nashville (Tenn.) Banner Feb. 6, 1935
Shawn Dancers Are Blazers of Trail
Nashville Approves Idea To Reestablish Art, as Troupe Gives Interesting Program

By SYDNEY DALTON

Anyone who entertained doubts as to the masculinity of the art of dancing—a doubt more peculiar, perhaps, to the Anglo-Saxon than to others, and seemingly not entertained by earlier generations—must have had his prejudices dispelled if he witnessed the program presented by Ted Shawn and his company of young men at Ryman Auditorium Tuesday evening.

Here was something new, something inspiring and essentially virile in the field of dancing.  It spoke in the accents of today, even to the point of a vivid portrayal of the proletariat ascendency.  Yet it had its roots far back in the classic days of the Grecian artist and athlete.

For Shawn, in carrying out his, idea of reestablishing the dance as a manly art, has chosen, young Americans who combine grace, rhythmic pulse and imagination, with the body of an athlete—many of them having excelled in athletics in school and college days.



Daily Telegraph, Bluefield, W. Va. Feb. 1, 1935
SHAWN DANCERS REGISTER BIG HIT
Capacity Audience Is Present For Program Last Evening Given At Colonial Theater By Famous Group Of Artists

Embodying all the grace and charm of the terpsichorean art, in its truest sence, Ted Shawn and his ensemble of men dancers gave an inspired performance last evening at the Colonial theater, before an audience which sat enthralled by the perfection and beauty of the various dance numbers.  Lending substantiation to the theory of Shawn that the dance is still dominantly masculine, the dancers went through a maze of intricate and artistic dances in a manner which bespoke long and rigorous training by a group of men endowed by nature with amazing physical perfection, as well as a fine sense of the artistic, and marvelous powers of endurance.



KNOXVILLE JOURNAL—Feb. 5, 1935
THE DANCE
Music and Drama

By MALCOLM MILLER

TED SHAWN AND HIS ENSEMBLE OF MEN DANCERS, Barton Mumaw Frank Overlees Wilbur McCormack, Dennis Landers.  Fred Hearn  Fitz-Simons William Howell Ned Coupland, Jess Meeker at the piano presented in the U-T Alumni Memorial auditorium by the Physical Education department of the University of Tennessee and Miss Annie McGhee.

By sheer genius of creative art and through authoritative technique in the interpretation and execution of his dance themes, Ted Shawn immortalized himself to an enthusiastic Knoxville audience last night.

Without the aid of scenic investiture or elaborate costumes.  Shawn and his men dancers gave one of the most thrilling performances ever witnessed in Knoxville.  Every man in the ensemble was a veritable adonis, displaying amazing grade of figure and movement and yet every motif was decisively masculine.

There was glorious pantomime expressing humor tragedy, spiritual fervor toil and boisterous play
PRIMITIVE RHYTHMS

The first group was devoted to primitive rhythms, the second to a symphony of labor, and then Shawn's wonderful dance conception based on Francis Thompson's The Hound of Heaven.

The fourth group, which followed an intermission of 10 minutes, was based on play motifs and folk themes, and the concluding group displayed the dance as an art form with themes based on the music of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms

With his vitally new and daring program Ted Shawn established himself as one of America's greatest pioneers in creative art.  It is impossible to describe adequately the work of Shawn and his dancers, but seeing is believing Should he ever play a return engagement in Knoxville it is safe to predict that he will be greeted by a packed house.



ATLANTA CONSTITUTION—Feb. 8, 1935
Versatility of Ted Shawn Dancers Delights, Amazes Atlanta Audience
By BETTINA CARTER.

An enthusiastic audience filled the auditorium of the Atlanta Woman's Club Thursday night to see Ted Shawn dance.  The most amazing part of Mr. Shawn's art is his versatility.  One can see his work repeatedly and not tire.  He and his company can always seek out new and untried fields to the admiration and delight of the onlookers.

In the first group on the Shawn program, the company interprets primitive concepts of the dance.  The range is from American Indian interpretations through those drawn from the far east.  The understanding of the dancers for the savage concept of the dance as living religion is superb.

The labor symphony is even more compelling.  The observer is deftly carried through field, forest, sea, back to the labor of the machine age in a pantomimic and rhythmic achievement that is marvelous in control and detailed in execution.

Shawn alone is seen in the Hound of Heaven.  This dance, based on the poem by Francis Thompson, is the essence of mysticism.  It develops a concept of the soul: its fears, its yearnings, its depths, its heights.  Shawn's presentation a year ago of the Epic of John Brown was admirable.  The Hound of Heaven is finer.

Group four, delightfully enough, is called Play Motifs.  We follow Barton Mumaw's Pleasantly Satiric Comment through Ted Shawn's Gnossienne, Greek comedy dancing, a Spanish dance, to a group of three American folk themes.  The variety of material in this group is remarkable.

The final series on the program is named The Dance As an Art Form. Ted Shawn and his company interpret the classical type of dance.  The symbolism runs a gamut from Bach, through Beethoven, to Brahms, ending in a frieze of beautifully controlled figures.

Compliments are in order for Bartow Mumaw, Dennis Landers, in fact, the whole ensemble.  Jesse Meeker's piano background is inspirational as well as essential to the scheme.  It is agreeable to note that an Atlantan Foster Fitz-Simons, is ably assisting Mr. Shawn this year.

Shawn, the master, achieves what seems paradoxical: the ability to lose himself completely and, at the same time, to preserve a splendid individuality.  His faith in the dance as primarily a man's art is triumphant throughout the program.  If one doubts that the finished artistry is anything but the result of overwhelming physical labor, one has only to note the glisten of perspiration on the beautifully developed bodies, the ripple of controlled muscles that tell the story of months of real toil.

At the last, the audience must have carried home two desires: one to rejoice again in the satiric human touches in Ted Shawn's program, the other to understand more fully the philosophy of dancing.  The temptation is to quote the title of Ted Shawn's book on the Orient and call him and his men Gods Who Dance.



St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Feb. 20, 1935
TED SHAWN DANCERS IN POPULAR RECITAL
All-Male Ensemble Gives Varied Program at Municipal Auditorium.

Ted Shawn and his merry men put on a show at the Opera House Monday night—one which delighted a large audience and one which undoubtedly forecasts the troupe's return when it chooses.



ATLANTA JOURNAL—Feb. 8, 1935
Large Audience Applauds Rhythmic Shawn Dancers
BY MABELLE S. WALL

A record breaking house packed the Atlanta Woman's Club Auditorium, with many turned away, Thursday evening to see Ted Shawn and his Men Dancers in a program that ran the gamut of the unique, the humorous, the satirical, or the dramatic, as expressed through the dance.

Originality and variety dominated the program which began with a group of dances under the general title of Primitive Rhythms, done to original rhythmic patterns by Jess Meeker.  Fantastical costumes and the spirit of the Ponca Indian Dance characterized the dynamic mood of the first dance offered by air ensemble of five, and put the audience on the alert and kept its attention for the rest of the evening.



Brooklyn (N. Y) Eagle—Jan. 12, 1935
Ted Shawn Scores Heavy at Academy
Ted Shawn, the popular American dancer, and his Ensemble of Men Dancers, were warmly applauded by an Institute audience in a diversified dance program at the Academy of Music last night.  Nearly 2,000 attended.

Shawn and the ensemble opened the program with five native Indian dances.

The ensemble of men dancers includes Barton Mumaw, Frank Overless, Wilbur McCormack, Dennis Landers, Fred Hearn, Foster Fitz-Simons, William Howell and Ned Coupland.



Wisconsin State Journal Madison, Wis.—Dec. 4, 1934
Theater News
by Bildad
By J. K.

Ted Shawn's only performance of the season here Monday night at the Parkway, proved to be an important event in every sense of the word.  A large audience crowded the house and showed immense enthusiasm.

Perhaps the greatest American male dancer of the day, Shawn is also a composer who creates the choreography of his dances with a wide background of experience and musical understanding.  His recital on this occasion was marked by careful and precise study of the underlying rhythms of dance creation.

Together with his group of six male dancers.  Shawn presented a difficult program that was a triumph for his conception of an all male



POST-GAZETTE, PITTSBURGH, PA.—Nov. 14, 1934
Shawn and Ensemble Dance in Sewickley
TED SHAWN and his ensemble of six men dancers drew a record crowd to the Edgeworth Club Monday night and met with a most enthusiastic response from the audience



WASHINGTON (D. C.) STAR—Jan. 19, 1935
Ted Shawn Dance Group Gives Impressive Recital
High Point of Program Reached With Leader's Vivid Interpretation of Mystical Theme, The Hound of Heaven.

BY ALICE EVERSMAN.

TED SHAWN and his group of men dancers returned to Washington yesterday, when they gave a highly successful recital at the National Theater.  There are a few changes in the personnel this year, the group now comprising Barton Mumaw, Frank Overlees, Wilbur McCormack, Dennis Landers, Fred Hearn, Foster Fitz-Simons, William Howell and Ned Coupland.

The impression left by the dancing of this ensemble was that here is art in all its freedom.  Free in its complete command of external means, the artistic sense is at liberty to create with a broad, unconfined gesture.  The limitations of musicians dependent on the resources of their medium was borne in upon one, as well as the restrictions of other schools of the dance.

WHAT Mr. Shawn and his young men have achieved is a power of projection that is not finished with the extent of the movements, but continues on to some distant point of esthetic reverberation.  It indicates the unseen, the mind carried past the sweep of a gesture to find a completion of the idea in space.

The perfect bodily control and the exact timing of posture and movement are a subordinate part of the equipment of these men, and takes also a secondary place in the mind of the spectator.  The predominating impression is rather the concentration of thought and the intellectual picturization of ideas, with the use of technique as a means to an end which seems to be the individual attitude of each dancer.

Without exaggeration, and never overstepping the artistic boundary in any movement, they move with a swift blending of action and a grace of posture that conceals the mechanical working of fundamental technique.

The program followed much the same lines as the one presented last year and is particularly well adapted to the style Mr. Shawn has evolved.  A group of Primitive Rhythms, with solo dances by Frank Overlees, Mr. Shawn and Barton Mumaw, elevated the gauche expressions of primitive men to the plane of art.  Likewise The Labor Symphony, with its basis of practical muscular movement in field, forest, on the sea and the rhythmic angular revolution of machinery, was both clever and artistic as visualized by this group.

THE high point of the program was Mr. Shawn's interpretation of The Hound of Heaven, inspired by the mystic poem of Francis Thompson.  More a pantomime than a dance, it was a potently vivid presentation of a mystical theme, with the powerful motivication of Mr. Shawn's idealism a strong thread through the progressive plan.  A poet and a thinker, as well as a dancer, Mr. Shawn brings these two qualities to the fore in his treatment of such elusive subjects.

A group of play motives and folk themes caught the fancy of the audience with its humor and variety, excellently presented by the individual dancers.  Nearly every dance had to be repeated, and Mr. Shawn's clever and amusing Spanish dance required several additional forms before the audience was satisfied.

Interpretations of the music of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms completed the program on a more serious note and epitomized the aims and the possibilities of this unique group of artists.  The recital yesterday was one of the most interesting and artistically satisfying presented this year in this particular branch of art.



ASHEVILLE, (N. C.) CITIZEN—Feb. 2, 1935
Ted Shawn Dancers Are Wildly Applauded Here
Program At Clubhouse Is Highly Pleasing To Crowd

Making an art of athletics and providing the dance with a virility as robust as the poetry of a Shakespeare or a Wordsworth, Ted Shawn and his men dancers had the theater of the Asheville Club for Women ringing with shattering applause at his recital last night.

Shawn has truly carved a new frontier for the dancing man. Boldly proclaiming that the Greeks classic regard for the sinewy and lithe beauty of the masculine form and its power and grace of movement must be revived today, he and his troupe demonstrated last night that ruggedness and sublety can go hand in hand, and that masculine angularity may be quite as poetic as feminine curves.



New Orleans Times-Picayune Feb. 12, 1935
SHAWN'S DANCERS SHOW ENDURANCE
Grace and Rhythm Also Displayed by All-Male Troupe

By Podine Schoenberger

With not a woman in the cast, Ted Shawn and his dancers put on a show at Jerusalem Temple Monday night that will long be remembered in New Orleans.

Before the curtain rose there were many skeptics in the audience; men and women who weren't sure a womanless troupe would prove a success.  Hardly had the first dance ended when they realized their mistake.  For here was grace and rhythm and beauty.  Here was virile masculinity, perfect timing and inspiring execution.

Eithe and well built, the dancers appeared more like Greek gods than ordinary humans.  And because there were no women partners, the delicate softer aspects of the Terpsichorean art were missing.  Instead there was the fierceness of war, the hard sweat of labor, the primitive passions of the savage.

With effortless ease they swung from the mad barbarity of an Indian war dance to the comical steps of a French sailor.  Each movement was fraught with meaning.  Facial expressions were a sheer delight.  Watching the strength and endurance they exhibited it was not surprising to learn that four of the dancers had at one time been college athletes.



Richmond (Va.) News Jan. 15, 1935
Shawn Dancers Well Liked by Audience Here
Woman's Club Performance Wins Commendation.

By KATHERINE WARREN.

TED SHAWN and his ensemble of men dancers yesterday brought to a delighted capacity audience at the Woman's Club a program wholly unlike anything Richmond has seen previously.

To the type of person who has regarded dancing as a profession suited solely to women and effeminate males, the Shawn dancers are a distinct revelation of what a wholly virile, masculine art it can be.



Toronto, Ontario—Nov. 5, 1934

Figure


Music Notes
Yenmita:
Edward W. Wodson.

Machine Men Give Example Labor Dance

Ted Shawn's Artists Show Toil by Music and Motion — Have Varied Program

Ted Shawn and his ensemble of eight men dancers were seen in recital at Massey Hall on Saturday Contrast.

It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast than the dance of the Ballet Russe a week ago and that of Shawn and his associates on Saturday evening.  Each was perfect—refined esthetic dancing art and most delightful entertainment.  But there the likeness stopped.  Ballet Russe sent the audience home with memories of sylphs and fairies conspiring to while away dull care on gossamer wings.  Shawn and his men sent the audience home with memories of quite another sort.  Ballet Russe artists were dancers and left it at that.  Shawn and his men were dancers and propagandists too.  Underlying their splendid dancing was a purpose, though of course nobody says so.  And it seems as though that purpose is as high and profound as their dancing is beautiful.


Native Dance.
With the native dances—Ponca Indian, Singhalese, Dayak and Maori—Shawn does what Chopin did with the waltz, mazurka, polonaise and so forth.  Grotesque, intense, sinister, almost fiendish at times, they were nevertheless beautiful.  They had childish buoyancy and fervor.  For the time being the dancers were splendid savages gone poetic through discipline.  Wonderful dancing it all was.  Perfect gymnastics rarified by association with music until every individual muscle had become free as spirit.  Enthralling to watch.  Athletic fitness and discipline and the grace of the Athenian in every movement.



Labor Dances
Labor dances pictured the toil of men in the field, in the forest and on the sea.  Here was the real dignity of labor, measured and cooperative and deliberate—but agonising too.  In the sweat of their faces men were winning daily bread, and reward ran parallel with the hard work.  There was eloquence in every gesture—the knotted muscle, the bent back, the upflung head, the knitted brow—and the abiding impression was of nobility, simple unaffected and direct.  The fourth dance pictured mechanized labor.  A robe of glittering gold garbed the dictator who set the pattern of the toil, and the machinemen obeyed.  Cynical and pathetic, ugly and yet beautiful the picture was.  No speech could emphasize the story as Shawn and his dancers did in this.



Hound of Heaven
Shawn's interpretation of Thompson's mystic poem was marvelously vivid and sincere.  The wilful distraught soul fleeing from the love that sought it—restless, fearful, bold and despairing by turns—the last submission heaven-glancing and serene—these were poignant details in a beautiful dance picture.  Better than dance—drama without words.  Folk-dance themes were encored again and again.  And Bach the the contrapuntalist was translated into splendid manhood that had the spirit of the fugue vibrating in every nerve and muscle of their being.  Beethoven's variations on a Diabelli theme and a Brahms Rhapsody were also danced—which means that they were given a new and wonderful meaning undreamt before.  Jess Meeker at the piano was an inspiration as well as an accompanist.  He played in the darkness and in the light, and his own dances were symphonies in arrest and understanding.  They kept the listeners constantly wondering which came first—a Ted Shawn or a Jess Meeker.  The art of each is the perfect complement of the other.