Shawn and His Men Dancers

              1939

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SHAWN
and His Men Dancers


SEASON 1939–1940

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SHAWN
AND HIS MEN DANCERS

SUMMER STUDIOS: P. O. BOX 87, LEE, MASSACHUSETTS
WINTER STUDIOS: P. O. BOX 877, EUSTIS, FLORIDA
PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVES: FERN HELSCHER AND GRANT CODE
MANAGEMENT: HORNER-MOYER, INC., 3005 HARRISON AVENUE, KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
Photographs: John Lindquist, Boston, Mass.; Marcus Blechman, New York, N. Y.; Mitchell Shapiro, Pittsfield, Mass.
Costumes: George Horn, Springfield, Mass.; Masks: Mary Kinser, Eustis, Fla.





BARTON MUMAW



FRANK OVERLEES



WILBUR McCORMACK



FRANK AND JOHN DELMAR



SHAWN



FRED HEARN



HARRY COBLE



SAM STEEN



JOHN SCHUBERT






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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 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 increasingly 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 Naïf.  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 for which Meeker composed all the music, was a result of his collaboration with Shawn in Florida and in the Berkshires during those periods of 1938 when the company was in training.  In The Dome, the newest Shawn program, Meeker appears not only as a composer, but as a budding choreographer, for in the Studies in Rhythmic Form, he devised his own choreography, and directed the dance movement of the group, as well as writing the music.  And the final section of The Dome (1939), called the Jacob's Pillow Concerto, reveals again the amazing freshness of this vital and constantly growing genius.

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.





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THE DOME
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity.

Adonais—Shelley.

AFTER HAVING in two consecutive years created the two major productions O, Libertad! and Dance of the Ages, each having one theme unfolding throughout the entire program, Shawn felt that it would be a relief to produce again a program of divertissements, using those creative works which had been emerging through these last few years, none of which fitted into the scheme of the two previously mentioned programs.  And so, inspired by Shelley's lines, he has put  of life's infinite variety, and

ch has a quality of white ed in the dances created to o the chorale Jesu, Joy of awn to the chorale I Call religious in tone.  The Two hawn created in 1917, and re counterpoint) are pure aw's own creation to the Sonata is, like the music, a VI Prelude from the Well- ach composition in the same ompaniment to the melody he aria i.e. Shawn has created which rests upon the Prelude and Fugue in D Minor the as contrapuntal.

s the title for the second section lorful in mood and costume it gic to modern sophistication, ric, folk and national types. Lightning, Fred Hearn his their dance of two Greek Steen his witty Green es was written by Weldon Wallace, accompanist for Shawn's men's school for the past two summers, in collaboration with the dancers).  The rest of the choreography is by Shawn: Turkey in the Straw, as danced by a Cowboy with which Wilbur McCormack made his popular success the first season of the men's group; Shawn's own solos Flamenco Dances and Frohsinn; the Free Fantasia for Capes which takes source material from the traditional cape movements of Spanish bull-fighters, and uses this as pure dance material; Pierrot in the Dead City which critics consider is perhaps Barton Mumaw's popular Pioneers' Dance on the Kentucky mountain Running Set.

Excursions Into Visible were the outcome of Sha in the summer of 1939. been experimenting with voice as the dancer's onl program and the Penite amples of this continued wife of Greece's greate duced the world-renow and 1930.  She has co Shawn men in the sing Nine Selected Verse and two poems of W Joy, Shipmate, Joy! The Divine Idiot, Shawn's solo called The Cave to music o 1931.  Studies In Rhythmic choreographer as well as c

The Jacob's Pillow Con Shawn and Meeker colla of the group and a typ studio on Shawn's 200


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

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 Demogog-orator-statesman.  The last movement, Air, portends something Beyond Democracy and its archetype is the creative artist.

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 the 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.

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.

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 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 Nietzsche said, is something that must be surpassed.

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.





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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 Orzoco'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 1937.

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.  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 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.

With recovery at least seemingly on its way, the young men of the country turn once more to sports.  The Olympiad Suite of six dances, was created by the young men of the company, each of them having excelled in these sports in college, and with the close collaboration of Jess Meeker, they have caught the essentials of the rhythms of American athletics in dance form such as has never before been approached.  Barton Mumaw created his own solo of The Banner Bearer; Frank Overlees the group for the three Cheer Leaders; Foster Fitz-Simons, former member of the group created the Decathlon, which Fred Hearn dances; while Fred Hearn created the Fencing dance which the Delmar Twins perform.  Wilbur McCormack gives us his version of the training of a boxer, and a prize-fight boxing match; while Dennis Landers another former member of this company, created the Basketball group dance for five.  This whole section closes with Mobilization for Peace.



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.

Molpai (singular Molpê) was the name by which archaic Greece called that matrix art-form, outgrowth of primitive dance, which included in essence all of the personal arts—singing, poetry, drama and instrumental music.  Strife, Love, Death and the Things Beyond Death, says Prof.  Gilbert Murray, in his The Classical Tradition in Poetry, were the subject matter of the ancient Molpai.

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.  Choreographically 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.  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.






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THE STORY OF JACOB'S PILLOW
IN 1930, after selling my summer school at Westport, Connecticut, I bought from Arthur E. Morgan, Jacob's Pillow an old New England farmhouse and barns, built circa 1790, on approximately 150 acres in the heart of the Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts.  Naïfly, I thought then it would be a personal summer home and studio where I could get away from the hectic life in New York after each season's thirty or more weeks of touring.

The barn, first-off, was rebuilt into a studio, with maple floor, mirrors, ballet bars, piano.  The house, bit by bit, was made more liveable.

But from the beginning of my career—as far back as 1911—I had had the conviction that something drastic should be done to restore masculine dancing to its ancient and rightful prestige and legitimate dignity.  In 1932 some sub-conscious power told me that the time had come.  So that season of 1932-3, instead of going on the road, I went into the faculty of Springfield (Mass.) College and taught, as a laboratory experiment, some 500 young men, all training to be athletic coaches or physical education directors.  The success of this pioneer venture further strengthened my decision to launch a company of men dancers, American college athletes, to call attention of public, press and educators to the problem of men in the art of the dance.  And late Spring of 1933 I gave in Boston at the Repertory Theatre, the historic first professional, public, all man, dance performance.

That summer, instead of using Jacob's Pillow as a personal retreat, I took that first group of young men up there for further training and to polish the program for a full tour of the country.

Friends, business associates, concert managers, et al, all told me I was crazy—that the country would not accept a whole evening of concert dancing by men only, with not a woman in the group; that I was going up against adamant ignorance and prejudice, trying to uproot and destroy a deeply intrenched national habit of thought, i.e. that dancing was somehow only legitimate for women—and effeminate for men.  All predicted disaster.

But on October 22nd, 1933, we started forth.  And when we bring this venture to a close in May 1940, we will have had seven consecutive seasons of upwards of 125 performances a year, danced for over a million people in all of the states of the United States, and in Canada, Cuba and England—a record not even approached by any other American company—and exceeded only by one foreign dance attraction (with millions to spend on promotion, and booked by the powerful concert managers' trust).

During the summers the company and I have lived, trained, created each year a new production, taught a summer course to 30 or 40 men pupils, given a series each summer of more than ten lecture-demonstrations—all at Jacob's Pillow. Gradually the place has expanded —we enlarged the studio to accommodate the everincreasing audiences; in 1935 we bought an adjoining 55 acres and four buildings to house the men students, and later built on that place a second studio; each member of the professional group built his own cabin on Jacob's Pillow itself—and a large kitchen and students' dining room was added to the original main house, and these were built without outside help by the dancers.

And to this place which I bought in 1930 as a quiet, protected, isolated retreat, in which to be alone, last summer (1939) came over 5000 people!

For several seasons after we began, this radical, revolutionary idea of a company of dancers, all men, caused considerable discussion.  For the past two years it has been so accepted as proved that the question of 100% masculine dancing is no longer even raised: the programs of this men's group are considered and judged solely on the merits of the choreography and the performance—no one even caring any more whether there are girls in the company or not.  And the seeds we have sown are springing up all over the country in increased activity of men's dancing in colleges, in the theatre and on the concert stage.

Having achieved so magnificently what I set out to achieve, I am now eager to go on to still newer and bigger fields.  For that reason in October 1939 I publicly announced the release of all the members of this men's group to take place in May 1940, so that they can go out to carry on individually this work, while I take a year off to clarify, prepare and create the next chapter of my life.

TED SHAWN





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1 Jacob's Pillow Main House
2 Crowd at a Friday Program
3 Inside Studio—Weekly Lecture-Demonstration Tea
4 The Pool
5 Main Studio and Costume Barns
6 Inside Students' Dining Room
7 Men's School Studio
8 Cabin, Students' Dining Room, Kitchen and Main House From Rear


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Presenting

THE DOME
DANCE OF THE AGES
O, LIBERTAD