Winslow -- Fitz-Simons

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WINSLOW — FITZ-SIMONS

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Retsof




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Archangel Leprechaun
Photo by Eliot Elisofon   Phot by Eliot Elisofon


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THE OLDEST — YOUNGEST ART
By ISADORA BENNETT
Dance shares with music the great and important position of oldest of the Arts.  Scholars still debate the question whether primitive man invented sound to accompany his spontaneous movement, or whether he invented movement to accompany the sounds he had learned to make.  But it is known that he hunted and fought from his earliest days.  And his first ritual-dances are stylized interpretations of the same stealthy grace, the same lithe fleetness, the life-and death coordination of the hunting-ground and the battle field.  It is reasonable to think that he knew movement before his crude manufacture of drum, of horn or pipe.

Dance is the grand-parent of the theatre and its closest kin.  Long before the masked rituals of the Egyptians, which were drama, and before the pre-Hellenic religious dramas of the Greeks, which were dance, there was tribal dance celebrating the hunting prowess of the group, their conquest over the elements, their discovery of the useful arts, the magnificence of their Gods.  There was no question then of the dance being authentic.  It not only represented the tribal culture—it WAS the tribal culture in its most complete and composite form.

In a little more than a generation, this oldest of arts has become the newest.  For, after all that long history, it is only in our times that it has gained full recognition as a creative art.  Dance, which was regarded as interpretive, which was performed frankly to music, has in these short years established its independence.  its own standards, its right to use its own elements of composition.  The pioneers, lsadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn, Mary Wigman and others, offered theories to prove that right.  But, more important, they danced their ideas of freedom into reality and danced their art to liberation.

As a result of that pioneering, we have seen the dance emerge as one of the most important of the arts.  We have seen a later generation of great dancers, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Harald Kreutzberg make use of that freedom in a broader movement idiom, a new dynamics, a new method of composition.  Music is no longer the basic art—to be interpreted by the dancer or visualized for an audience.  In the first flush of the new freedom, many dancers sharply relegated music to second place.  But all agreed that dance was an independent composition with its own integrity of design, never to be distorted to fit the music.

In that same generation—and a little more—American art and American culture have come into their birthright, too.  For the artists have discovered their native land.  Colonials, to begin with, we were colonials in our taste.  For too many years we prefered the inferior importation to the native effort.  We were not always critical of the foreign artist; if he was foreign, he was therefore good.  We liked to bring our lace, our woolens, our painters, our sculptors, our singers and our dancers from abroad—in delectably foreign styles, which sometimes failed to translate into the meanings of our own life.

Our founding fathers wrote great poetry in the bill of rights, in the declaration of independence and a mid-west frontiersman wrote a short epic, called the Gettysburg Address.  But they didn't mean to write poetry and we didn't know we were reading it.  We were still buying limp-leather gift volumes of the Rubayat.

We were still reading them when we found ourselves in the midst of a poetry renaissance.  A renaissance in which the rhythms of common speech became the music of our prosody.  We learned to write the American Language of Mr. Menken in the same dialect in which we had spoken the words of life and death.  That was a major advance.

We found we had sculptors, painters, singers.  We had novelists and playwrights among the greatest of our times.  Our people had a good, stout-hearted song—and the composers to set it in counterpoint.  They could make a new set of harmonies, too.  As the painters could find new color and a new perspective.  We had travelled the long way from Currier and Ives to Grant Wood.  We had come of age.

The dance, too, was coming of age.  There were weather signs.  For one thing a newer generation of dancers had come of age.  They were old enough to have been through the mill of discipline and stern training in that art which, at its simplest, demands the utmost coordination of mind, body and spirit.  They were young enough to have new things to say—and to search for new ways to say them.  They were reaching for a newer dance.

But what would that new dance be?  And what would it be in America?  American dancers of the so-called modern school, many of them, borrowed heavily from the continent—borrowed a conventionalized movement, a symbolic language (although sometimes called abstract) borrowed political subject matter and a tendency to editorialize.  That was authentic enough, perhaps, under the acute situation where it began—but not authentic in America, where the newspaper still offers the best journalese and the political forum, the best opportunity for reform.

Isadora Duncan, a long time before, had ventured a prophesy on what the new dance would be in America.  It would be different from any form on the continent.  It would be long-legged and athletic.  It would be free-born.  Growing out of a native culture and a native taste, it would be, in short, American.

And already that is beginning to happen.  It is no rare phenomenon that two young dancers, both American of old-line native stock, should find themselves with kindred ideas on the dance—and particularly the dance in America.  It is fortunate, but no accident, that Miriam Winslow, raised in the culture of the flowering of New England, should become the collaborator of Foster Fitz-Simons, out of the old South, whose family, from the earliest days have played their part in fostering that culture.  Their background may be both broader and more specialized than the average American's—but, in the large sense, it is typical; it is the high normal.  They are products of American life and culture.  It is only natural that they should emerge as exponents of it.

And that is the spirit of their dancing.  Ideas, they have—and plenty of them.  But they set themselves no hard theories.  They simply are American—with American taste and standards—and they dance—in American.  And for that, in one short year, American audiences have taken them to their hearts.

Audiences do not always analyze but they have instinctive vision—long-vision.  They, too, have been waiting for the new dance.  It is here—in the work of Miriam Winslow and Foster Fitz-Simons.  And audiences know it when they meet it.

What is it now?  What will it be?  First of all, in America it will be technically brilliant.  For, as a people, we respect skill.  It will be strong, it will be athletic—for we are grounded in a kinder-garten of sand-lot baseball.  Freed of the necessity to be radical, it will remove the stress from that word, 'modern.'  It is—and it will be increasingly—eclectic.  The American people drew upon many sources for a nation—and our taste is broad.  Many styles, we will accept—all that it takes to make an art—but one style or one cult is, in the nature of things, only a fashion.  And that, in the words of an expert, is spinach.

It will be romantic, for our founding fathers were humanists and they are still our fathers.  Our very democracy is one of the most romantic dreams yet dreampt by man.

It will have spontaneity and joy in it.  For, in this troubled world, we are a relatively happy people.  We are not ashamed of our good life, nor our hearty joy in life.

It will have humor for this laughing people.  And where there is satire, it is likely to be the light-handed, good-humored satire, which is native.

In this country, founded on religion, the bible held the frontier as much as the axe and the gun conquered it.  Even our modern sociology is based on our religious inheritance.  Our dance, then, if it is to be authentic, will unashamedly express spiritual values.  We are not yet old enough or cynical enough to deny them.

And, here we are radical: we will demand beauty.  Yes, beauty for its own sake—beauty even without political ideology or social protest!  That is American.  That is authentic.

The old art was important in the tribal life of primitive man because it was authentic—because it was his race-culture.  The new art will be important to this people when it, too, is authentic.  And there lies the importance and the significance of the work of Miriam Winslow and Foster Fitz-Simons.  It is not alone that their movement idiom, their gesture, is so native that audiences understand it.  It is not that it is easy to take.  It is rather that it is understandable because of these things—because it is grounded in the culture of the people.  It is native; it is authentic; it is American.  It is important now.  But its importance will grow because these artists begin their dances—with their feet on native ground!





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Photo by Andre Kertesz


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A NEW DANCE PARTNERSHIP
By WEHLAN MORGAN
For something like five years two young Americans have been emerging from the general field of dancers as outstanding figures—to be watched, the critics said: But even those critical gentlemen, who had been watching the two from their regular seats on the aisle, could not foresee that one day—a year ago at Christmas—Miriam Winslow and Foster Fitz-Simons would decide upon that collaboration which is now hailed as the newest, most exciting partnership in the dance.

It was no sudden decision.  Their paths had crossed on tour.  Each had known of the work of the other and had time to develop a healthy respect for it.  The partnership was the result of mature consideration and of kindred ideas.

It was to be more than a joint tour—it was to be a genuine collaboration.  These kindred ideas were to be fully realized in a new dance repertory.  With great courage—audacity, it seemed, they took a year out of careers that were progressing apace, cooly resisted engagements and, in the seclusion of the dance-farm in New Hampshire and the winter studio in Boston, created that repertory, which was carried to the road this year.

It all seems very logical now.  Their talents are both similar and complementary.  After the success of this season, no one wonders that it happened—but only that it didn't happen sooner.

Yet it is only by viewing their background—professional and personal—that we see what really did bring together the young New Englander and the young Southerner.  For pleasant acquaintnes do not make collaborators.  Deeper reasons are back of a artnership like this one.

And we find one cause in the fact that both came out of the ame dance tradition—the same that, in America, has produced nost of our leading dancers.  The record of Denishawn in the dance field in this country is hard to gainsay.  It remains the royal family of the dance on these shores.

When the Braggioti-Denishawn school was leading the field in New England, there appeared in classes a slim prodigy of ten—a modest, quiet little elf with an almost uncanny technique.  By the time the professional group went on tour, this child then in her 'teens, was a leading soloist.

Like most American girls, she had a background in athletics and sports.  In fact, her record here was as surprising as it was in dancing.  Her father had a string of fine horses.  And the same ten-year-old rode her father's mounts and won the ribbons.  But a cultivated family soon recognized that they had a talent of first-rank to be dealt with.  And, even that early, the quiet little girl had that unmistakable concentration of personality, that organized energy which is the mark of the genuine artist.  Being wise parents, they took her out of private schools and substituted tutoring.  It gave more time 'for practise.'

And that has characterized her whole career.  Anything that interfered with dancing—no matter how attractive—was set aside.  The riding—in spite of her love for horses—was dropped after a few years.  She made a formal debut—and she 'liked the parties.'  But they interfered with dancing.

At fifteen, she took over the Braggioti school—because she had to have a place to work.  And in her teaching, she not only built up the leading school in New England, but clarified her ideas—found her way toward her own form of dance.

When Ted Shawn toured the country, just the year before he organized his group of men, he took with him a new feminine soloist.  The new dancer showed a prodigious range of style—a versatility that is still receiving comment.  For that dancer was Miriam Winslow.

When the tour ended, she set out on the search that has occupied most contemporary dancers—a search for a broader movement idiom.  In this case it carried her to Europe—and back to America.  She was with Mary Wigman in Munich and with Harold Kreutzberg in Salzburg.

Then followed a real dance expedition—into Spain.  Ted Shawn was parent to the idea.  He had discovered that she had the special sixth sense to catch the intricate rhythms of the Spanish Dance.  He, himself, had just introduced the Flamenco dances of the Spanish gypsies in this country.

So from back-bay Boston, the young New Englander betook herself to Spain, to masters of the Spanish Classic dance—the great Otero at Barcelona and, after that, to Beznela, then to Pericet who knows the formal style underlying the apparent abandon of the gypsy improvisations.  Finally, she invaded the south of Spain, the gypsy rendezvouz, the wine cellars and hideouts, where they meet after their somewhat irregular excursions into the hills.  Fraquillo, the gypsies' own favorite, took her on.  But he made this already well-known dancer, veteran of American tours, learn with the little gypsy children.  And learn, she did, and when Fraquillo decided she was a proper gypsy, he presented her with his wife's own dress.

The rest is now theatre-knowledge: her independent work as soloist and choreographer, her development along the lines that have brought her to this sympathetic partnership.

Foster Fitz-Simons' story follows a different course and yet it carried him over the same ground—many times across America, to London—and back to his native shores.

His background is that of the typical Southern boy of good family, raised in the relaxed, human atmosphere of the gentle South.  Something of a prodigy in school, he still found time for athletics, football, basketball and track.  When he went to college at Emory, he got letters in swimming and fencing.

It was really out of athletics that his dancing came though, oddly, by way of playwriting.  For, while still at Emory, he won a national play contest.  This attracted the attention of Frederick Koch, director of Playmakers of North Carolina University and young Foster found himself with a scholarship.  He wrote plays, acted in them, made scenery, learned lighting.  And this knowledge is no small contribution to the staging of the new dance repertory.

But, in spite of all this activity, he had time on his hands.  He was tired of athletics and the almost professional attitude which, he felt, made it no longer a sport, but a business.  A distinguished exponent of Denishawn, Phoebe Barr, was teaching in Chapel Hill.  With her, he organized the first group of men-dancers in the region, experimenting with a new form of strong, athletic dance, which would appeal to men.

They attracted the notice of Ted Shawn, who came by on tour.  He had, for years, been working on the same idea and had organized a group for the next season.  He urged Fitz-Simons to join.  But there was a year of school to finish.  After that year, however, Foster Fitz-Simons was with them and the next five years won his way to a leading place in the organization.

He toured with that group over the country, managing, setting stage, farming with them in the summers, pushing the automobile up-hill in Utah blizzards in the winter.  For these are modern pioneers.  He became what in theatre parlance is called a 'trouper.'  He became a dancer.  And, to use his words, he learned America.

It was this learning of the ways of his people, which decided his present course.  After a season in London with Shawn, in more ways than the literal way of travel, he came home.

Then it was that Miriam Winslow, who had already brought a group of women dancers to the logical end of an artistic idea, and Foster Fitz-Simons, who felt that he, too, had reached the end of a cycle of growth with an entirely masculine group, joined forces, to establish a kind of dance based on human fundamentals—on the combined force of the elements which are essentially masculine, with those essentially feminine.  If this is a move away from pure abstraction, then they are willing to have it so.  It is a move toward something vital, human and real.  In such an idea, growth is inevitable.






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Photo by Andre Kertesz


Archaisms


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NEW DANCE REPERTORY
GIGUE (BACH) … Illustrative of the Dance as a source of inspiration for music is this Gigue from the Fifth French Suite of Bach.  With the system of court patronage, which existed up to the time of Beethoven (and even after), came the tradition of court musicians supplying new compositions for fetes and levees, at which the nobility danced for the monarch.  Dance forms supplied musical forms and even in later centuries, the great composers continued to find musical inspiration in those same dance forms—the pavanne, the sarabande, the polka, mazurka and the polonaise.

As the name implies, the dance is a jig—in its gayety and spontaneity, first cousin to those country-jigs brought to these shores by our earliest European ancestors.  However, this jig is stylized, formalized.  The spirit of the classic ballet is inherent in it but the dancers have given it a styling, which is modern.  The preservation of joy and freedom within a formal pattern, one of the special gifts of the great Bach, makes his music peculiarly suited to a dance designed to set in formal pattern the joy of dance, itself.

LEPRECHAUN (SHOSTAKOWICZ) … The favorite of all the Irish little people, the Sidhe (or Shee, as we hear it in English), is the Leprechaun.  Half-animal, half-human, he hides in the dim light of the bogs.  He knows all the secrets of the faery—where they dance in magic circles, where the faery gold is hidden.  And he knows enough too of men's secrets to play tricks on them.  In him is combined the quickness, agility and smooth grace of the animal with the sly cunning, the mischief of mankind.  In the dance he investigates his surroundings, enjoys a little of lazy basking, amuses himself with leaps and capers—until he catches sight of human creatures.

A favorite mythological subject, this creature of human and animal instincts, he is to be found in the earliest of the Greek satyr he dances, in the English Puck—and even in Mark Twain.

CITY FAUN (GOULD) … In this contemporary satire, the faun, child of a jazz-ridden jitter-bug generation, starts the headachy morning of an up-side-down existence.  Through the round of his glad-hand, slap-on-the-back day (and his night of dancing away remembrance), the confusion of his uncertain bluffs, his assumed complaisance and the jazz-madness of his skyscraper-world tumble about him, sending him into confused and uncertain whirls in which speed—and more speed—destroys memory and even thought.

CARIBBEE: (MILHAUD) … The dark fires that lie under the sultry southern sun of the Indies are in this suite in three parts.  Almost following the hours of the day, In The Plaza, offers a flirtatious interlude, which begins casually in the hot morning and proceeds to a conquest by the primitive swain against the almost feline resistance of his gamin love.  Siesta, presents the innocent sensuosness of the lazy hours of afternoon and Danza, the mad-abandon of the fiesta-night, with all the mixed and contradictory impulses of the Spanish, Indian and Negro elements in the Latin-American dance-tradition.

ARCHANGEL (SATIE) … As might be out of the old-testament or out of a drawing of William Blake, is this archaic seraphim.  From the chilly heights of the world-between-worlds, he leans out—a kind of good St. Michael—yearning over (and perhaps for) the troubled world below.  Soaring in movement of long-pinioned wings to the ends of space, he turns to high heaven to invoke, it might be, pity—or peace.  And then, out of his own pity, he bends from the skies to implant upon the earth, a kiss of god-like compassion.

BOY CRUSADER (REGER) … Out of the twelfth century, time of brutal anarchy and worldly cynicism, comes the strangest miracle of faith in human history—the Children's Crusade, which, sent literally thousands of little children marching in a great, high-hearted multitude, past all the dangers of feudal warfare in Europe, to their pathetic slavery at the hands of their own kind and a more merciful death at the hands of the Saracens.

It is the inspiration of this dance which captures the bravado, the brash self-confidence of adolescence, that, when hit by the impact of religious fervor, becomes the pure faith and high courage of youth.  This element of youthful idealism is opitomized in the Boy Crusader swept away on that fantastic pilgrimage, which remains the most inspring, the most poetic mystery in memory.

ARCHAISMS (RETSOF) … This barbaric dance-cycle in two parts might almost be called an essay in primitive religious impulses.  With rapt intensity and the formal dignity of the savage, in Ceremonial primitive man and woman celebrate their own conquest over the earth, celebrate the tribe and the magnificence of their man-made deities.  But those savage gods, created in man's image, are fearsome, dominant.  In a climax of rising fear, they dance an Incantation to placate the brutish gods they have, themselves created.

The music, closely woven into the dance, begins with a truly archaic theme.  In the beginning it is a melodic line, indicated on the piano, and symbolizing man's reach for something above his savage existence.  However, as that reach brings him only to a God, who is a kind of superior tribal chief, more cruel, more savage than his own, the drums become the symbol of his fear and their rhythm pattern beats like the pulse of frantic humanity to a finish of black, unanswering darkness.

PASTORALE (IPPOLITOW-IVANOV) … Like a Persian miniature—or one of the wall-paintings come to fife—is this delicately romantic.  Iyric dance-poem of courtship.  It happens, as we see it, in a Persian village.  But it might happen anywhere in the world.  For the way of man and maid is much the same and the quaint etiquette of courtship—its reticence and its ardour—is as new and as old as Spring.

Then ankle-bells of the dancers play a counter-accompaniment to the music—the maid's high and light, give honest answer to the deeper heavier importunings of her suitor—and give the lie to her coquetry.

HORNPIPE (LULLY-PURCELL) … Straight out of the earliest English tradition is this formalized ballet version of the polly Jack-tars own quick-step.  Done to a lilting jaunty air of Purcell arranged by Lully, it is a sprightly tour de force of hearty, salty, joy of life.  A costume, which might have been designed by Renoir, adds piquancy.

ON THE BAYOU (VILLA LOBOS) … The simple child of nature, the Bayou Boy, explores his wilderness-world of the Deep Swamp.  He lazes, he basks, he struts in his sense of mastery, over it—until its sinister terrors, its monsters, make him leap in sudden fright.  Stealthily, he kills and takes a lusty joy in killing.  Then slowly—in and out—he moves along its water-ways, master of his dark world.

MAGNIFICAT (BACH) … A dance of prayer, done to the passionately human music of the Air for the G String.  This conveys the miracle of beatification.  Symbolizing the simple faith of the medieval mind, a primitive madonna traces the passion-cycle of the mother of Man—the glory of annunciation, the abandon of grief, the complete self-effacement of adoration, the final wonder of revelation.

MAN'S DANCE (MEEKER)…


Young manhood, in its strength, is proud …
A little vain, perhaps,
A little brash!
But he knows it—and can laugh at himself—almost.

FRAIL WOMAN (TANSMAN)…


We have to admit—
she's gossipy
she's selfiish
she's sentimental
—it's too bad—but—so it goes.

CHROMO: AMERICAN DANCE (GUION) … A chromo portrait of a chromo America, this dance begins with two rural lovers posed, expressionless faces set in the portrait style of the time-honored tin type of tender memory.  The bucolic romp which follows is the bashful, half-realized courtship behind that solemn record.

Out of the family album of the American nation is this historic portrait of a people in terms of the reel, the cake walk—the dances of that people!





GROUP DANCES—AND THE GROUP
When Miriam Winslow entered upon her independent career shortly after she left the Denishawn fold, one of her first acts was to bring together a group of outstanding young women capable of working together toward the ideal ensemble, which is the dream of every choreographer.

Like every other act in the short life of this young artist, it was carefully considered.  The way was prepared.  Her school had been running for some years—ever since she reached the ripe age of fifteen, in fact.  And for some time before she assembled her dancers, she had been looking over prospects, carefully choosing those who had more than the dilletante's interest in the art.  Of course, they weren't told.  But it was easy to see that requirements for the professional class, so called, were setting a pretty high standard.  And then the reason became apparent.  They were not merely a professional class, studying advanced methods—they were to be real professionals, studying, of course, but also dancing.

That was five years ago.  In those years they have supported Miss Winslow, they have danced before symphony orchestras in choreography worked out for them by this dance innovator, they have been given opportunity as soloists and they have become a close unit, moving together with precision and that sense of ensemble, which comes only with time.

I don't want just a group of dancers, said Miss Winslow at that time, I want dancers—welded into a group.  And she took the hard way—the real way.  She refused to pick up dancers who might have a smattering of different kinds of training.  She preferred to gather — carefully — girls of marked talent, to train them in the broad technique, for which she has always stood.  She might have made it easy for herself.  She might have taken dancers with some training, rehearsed them like a drill-master, and had a kind of quick and easy result.  But also it might have ended there.  And that, she did not want.

Her method of training them in ballet (and she was one of the first to use ballet—at a time when it was fashionable to discredit it!)  her modification of Denishawn methods of visualization, together with more modern methods, have borne a more lasting result … a solid, well-grounded technique, equal to many styles—reflecting her own versatility.

This year, on the inauguration of the new partnership, these dancers had two choreographers instead of one.  And proof of their versatility, the adaptability achieved through those earlier years, is that they worked happily and effectively with both.  On certain symphony dates with full orchestra, they have supported Miss Winslow and Mr. Fitz-Simons and played engagements on their own.

They are a living, vital unit.  And, though the personnel has changed (marriages, retirements, happen even among the young!)  the neucleus remains the same.  And, this year, when replacements had to be made for reasons of sickness, members returned—and danced as if they had never missed a day.  For the fact is, they haven't.  They had been rehearsing with the ensemble, even though they hadn't been appearing!

At the farm in the summer, where the dances are created, at the work studio in the winter, where they are perfected, they work always toward the perfect ensemble and always sharing the same fundamentals of esthetik, which have been their training.  Like a family, they understand each other without words.


THE DANCES OF THE GROUP
ZINGARI (KODALY).  Gypsy, of course!  The brilliant flavor of Hungarian music and the volatile, tempestuous rhythms of the gypsy find expression in the Zingari.  The excitement of the mounting tempo, of quick dynamic changes, the sudden flash and burst of movement is echoed in the brilliant reds and greens and blues of the costumes, which formalize in design the gypsies' ragged motley.  The lines of the dance are zig-zag, sharp and violent—the mood changes from sheer physical exuberance through a lyric strain of plaintive, eerie loneliness—always near the surface in the gypsy's art — and finishes in a burst of wild abandon.

FORMAL DANCE (BACH).  Reminiscent of the court dances of the renaissance, when the nobility trod a stately measure to do honor to a mighty Duke, or King, this dance embodies all the ceremonious etiquette of the days of pomp and heraldry.  These are proud dames, austere—but there is a hint of high court-gossip as they make their formal bows.

IN THE FIELDS (JARNEFELT).  Peasant girls in the great, sun-drenched reaches of the open field, full of the joy of the sun and the wind and the earth and growing things, they sing as they work.  In their harmony and happiness there is no difference between the labor of planting and reaping and binding and their games.  This is an incident all sunny laughter and joy—close to the earth and sun without being bound by them.

SPORT INTERMEZZO (RICHARD STRAUSS).  The volleys and drives of a tennis game, the clean lines of the diver, the swift onward rush of the runner are not pantomimed, but danced, so that mere gesture becomes movement and athletics becomes dance.  The mood is one of youthful joy in its own freedom.

LARGO (HANDEL).  The eloquent music of Handel finds its counterpart in the measured movement of the dance, which builds up gradually, phrase by phrase, to its climax.  The theme of the dance is simply the growth of sympathy between two opposing groups, knit eventually into a whole.  It is an abstract study in climaxes into which each spectator may read his own meaning.  The floor-pattern is in the form of a cross, but the mood of the dance is one of spiritual calm, rather than of religious fervor.

LITTLE WOMEN (TCHAIKOWSKY).  The sharp nostalgia that comes of finding a daguerreotype or an old miniature is in this dance, clearly recalling those childhood friends out of Louisa Alcott's passionately personal record, yet reminiscent, too, of a whole period of American life, which has been laid away in lavendar.

Perhaps only the deeply nostalgic music of the always-homesick Tchaikowsky could convey its strange mixture of happy memory and tender regret.

POLONAISE MILITAIRE (CHOPIN) … Suggestive of the pomp and circumstance and the flash of gold lace, which we assciate with all guards of honor from the royal hussars on, is this essay on the militaire.  The movement is disciplined, suggesting parade, drills, salutes.  Like a parade army in a sham battle, the opposing sides achieve fusion and both emerge victorious.  The humor of this opera bouff war offers, perhaps, a contemporary comment.






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PHOTOS BY 




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MARY CAMPBELL AT THE PIANO
Although they are among the youngest of the important dancers, Miriam Winslow and Foster Fitz-Simons have achieved an enviable position for their ability to identify dance with great music, keeping always that delicate balance, jealousy guarded by dancers, between the integrity of the dance and the validity of the music, itself.

From Miss Winslow's earliest important concert appearances, music critics have joined dance critics in pointing out her amazing sensitivity to the inner time of the music and her definition of the melodic line.  Mr. Fitz-Simons' musical gifts have also received recognition and he is rapidly becoming known for compositions for the dance.  Conductors find especial pleasure in directing their symphony appearances.  Proof of this is in the return engagements which have invariably occurred with the same symphony and the same conductor.  Particularly outspoken on this subject is the distinguished conductor, Victor Kolar, formerly director for Isadora Duncan but now with the Detroit Symphony.

For, while they do not dance the music, their dancing is designed in the soundest relationship to the music.  As the critics have stated it, their choreography is contrapuntal.

Unlike many modern dancers, they do not make a fetish of music composed especially for the dance.  Characteristic of the clear thinking, which dominates their views throughout, their attitude here is that too often music composed in this fashion is second rate.  Too often it is music whipped up under pressure and with no more value than an improvisation.  All this is not by way of saying that they never dance to music composed especially for the dance.  Ideally, they feel (as would any dancer!) if you can get a first-rate composition by a first-rate composer, who understands the dance, it is like finding Santa Claus at home.  In fact, there are two such dances in this year's repertory—Man's Dance composed by Jess Meeker and Archaisms, by Retsof.

Yet, in spite of these happy accidents of collaboration, their conviction still stands: it is better to find the RIGHT music.

It would be impossible to say how great had been the part of Mary Campbell, the distinguished composer-pianist, in this constant search for music or the value of her profound knowledge of its uses for the Dance.  Miss Campbell was one of the first of the pioneer musicians to devote her interests exclusively to the dance.  Musical director for Denishawn, she accompanied Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, on research trips to many corners of the globe, searching for native sources, relating music always to the dance.

And from the far corners of the earth has come the music for this new repertory of Miriam Winslow and Foster Fitz-Simons.  The great Johann Sebastian Bach is the most orthodox name on the roster of composers.  And Bach, according to Miss Campbell, has a peculiarly profound appeal for Miss Winslow, perhaps because of her sensibility to contrapuntal design.  The Bach Gigue from the fifth French Suite, furnishes the music for the jig; Air for the G. String from the English Suite, is the setting for the Magnificat.  In the straight English tradition is the tune of Purcell, arranged by Lully, which accompanies the Hornpipe, a classic tour de force of Miss Winslow's previous tours.

But out of Russia comes the music for the Irish fairy, the Leprechaun.  Dmitri Shostakowitcz, born in St. Petersburg in the period before the Revolution and called by Alexander Coates, the Mozart of Russia offers a parallel to the young Mozart in his precocity for his first compositions appeared when he was between fourteen and seventeen, Opus I — his first published work—Trois Danses Fantastiques, is the accompaniment for this elfin dance-fantasy, which, interestingly, is Opus I with Miss Winslow, too.  For, this dance first established her unique style.

The romantic sources of Latin American life—notably Brazilian life—have contributed two numbers on the program, one by the most important musical mind of present-day Brazil, Hector Villa Lobos, who was born in Rio de Janiero in 1886 and one by the musical iconoclast, Darius Milhaud, who is really a Frenchman, but who, as an attache of the French legation in Brazil, spent several years there and was deeply affected by Brazilian life and music.  Characteristically native, the music of Villa Lobos is sometimes sensuous and sentimental and again impetuous and vehement.  Typical is Saudades des Selvas Brocilieros out of which comes the lazy, sultry music for On the Bayou.

In Milhaud's polytonal style is Saudades de Brazil, used for the Suite Caribbee.  In sharp contrast is the music of the Polish composer, Alexandre Tansmen, whose own linear refinement and logic of thought are back of the clear design of the Pour les Enfantes, music for the sly caricature, Frail Woman.

But with all this wandering in foreign fields, it is not surprising that exponents of an American dance idiom, should come home to their native land for the composers of their American satires.  In addition to Meeker and Retsof, who—despite his Russian-sounding name—is an American, they turn to David Guion, the cow-boy composer, for the music for the tin-type satire, Chromo.  And Morton Gould, whose music accompanies City Faun, is himself a child of New York's skyscraper civilization, which the dance satirizes.

The legend, Mary Campbell at the piano has come to mean something in the world of the dance.

Critics and followers of the dance will tell you that one of the greatest of all dance critics would be—Mary Campbell.  That is, if she were not busy at the piano, finding the right music or composing it.  Admittedly, she is a critic now—back stage.

For back of that legend is the fact that Mary Campbell is at the piano from the very first concept of a dance, working intimately and intensively through every stage of its growth.

And, when the vibrant climax of Archaisms reaches its final drum-beat, back stage with Warrene Bulkeley, the percussionist of this aggregation, who finds her rhythms by dancing them first, is Mary Campbell no longer at the piano but at the war-drums.




HAVEN OF HARD WORK
BY NANNIE FOSTER
Francestown, New Hampshire is a real New England village.  From a flag-pole on the green, floats an American .  Facing each other across that green are two white churches, straight and severe behind their white columns, their fan-windows shuttered with the traditional cool green, looking out like tired eyes that have seen much humanity and much history.  There are long carriage sheds where the sleighs are put under cover during service in the winter.  For sleighs are still used up here.

From the mountains around, the little white town trails along like the tail of a dropped kite between the ridges of the hills.  It looks like a New England town should look.  And it lives like a New England town should live — the strong, hard, hearty life of good neighbors and good friends.

No better spot could be found for the home of a truly American type of dancing.  And just outside the town, rubbing elbows with neighbor-farms that produce perfectly orthodox New England crops, is Hob and Nob Farm, where Miriam Winslow and Foster Fitz-Simons—in the simple, healthful atmosphere of real back-country America—find time for reflection and study and play, carry on a rigorous schedule of practice and rehearsal, make costumes and plan lighting, create the dances, which are the unique crop of this farm, and garner a harvest of entertainment for audiences in far distant states.

The old house was chosen for its quaint, early nineteenth century charm.  The main wing is brick, built in the style of 1812.  The garden is at the back, overlooking a real New England pasture with birches crowding the stone fence and apple-trees edging toward the birches.  Even the fence-posts—of long-lived granite—in the date, 1813, carry a legend of sturdy homestead building, clearing of stony fields.

In this background of real American life—lived as hardy ancesters lived it—is the serious project of these two young American artists.  Hard work goes on here—not ploughing or harrowing—but real earnes labor, and the farmer-neighbors respect it.  With friendly interest they come to see the new programs when they are ready to show.  For these American dances have to pass muster with real American audiences and one of the realest is to be found here.

Work begins early — as it should on a farm.  There are two other houses on the place—a cottage, recently built, and the very old Granny Catch, built long before the main house.  In these, the picked group, which accompanies Miss Winslow and Mr. Fitz-Simons for the summer work, live, read, study.  At 8:30 things begin stirring in the studio.

The morning is given over to class work—although these are all professionals.  They work like a corps de ballet, that might be going on in a new piece that evening.  No one style of dancing is worked out exclusively.  For Miss Winslow was one of the first of contemporary dancers to see the value of preserving all the traditional styles along with experiments in modern methods of dynamics.  Technique, a broad technique equal to any demands, is the objective in these morning work-outs.

Miss Winslow instructs, Mr. Fitz-Simons takes over, and there is Phoebe Burr, well-known director.

After a morning of extensions, bending, leaps, and the most strenuous body-building regimen, those who finish early may have a little exercise—on the tennis courts or in the swimming pool.

Lunch—a good, hearty, lunch—is served at the Granny Catch.  The first part of the afternoon is spent in discussion.  Music is the favorite subject.

Miss Campbell, Mr. Fitz-Simons, Miss Winslow start the discussions.  Radio and records are useful here.  Compositions are pulled apart and analyzed.  In this gathering music is studied first as music.  For one of the guiding principles practiced — and preached—on this farm is that the music must never be violated.  A dancer must know his counterpoint.

Creative work—in new dances or new dance experiments—is done later in the afternoon.  Ever the effort among contemporary dancers is to broaden the movement idiom—to find new ways to move, to find new uses for the space in which the dancer moves.  Some of these creative efforts are directed toward the dances which are to be seen on tour the following season.  Sometimes they are pure experiments in the language of the art, itself.  But always they are productive.  It is really this for which this small, carefully chosen group comes all the long way to this farm at the foot of Mount Crotched.

Evenings are spent in reading or in those productive visits, which develop a sound way of thinking amongst people engaged in an absorbing art.  Sometimes, when the season nears, the living room at the Granny Catch looks like the scene of a quilting bee, or a long winter evening of hooking rugs.  For all the dancers, on chairs and on the floor, ply flying needles turning out the brilliant costumes which never fail to draw notices from the critics during the season.  The name Oramae, which appears on programs designating the costume head of the organization, is really Mrs. Harry E. Davis, costume designer for the Playmakers of North Carolina University and—a more significant fact—Dance Director there.  Herself a dancer, and a member of the Hob Nob group, Mrs. Davis is able to execute costumes from the designs of Miss Winslow and Mr. Fitz-Simons that, as dancers say, will move.

Sometimes these evenings are given over to experiments with the drama.  While there is a sharp line between pantomime and dance, the mimetic arts play an important part in this language of movement.  Sometimes these acting experiments are improvisations, sometimes pure pantomime, and sometimes they go as far as a real play—with spoken lines.

In a relaxed, happy atmosphere balancing hard, well-directed work with freedom and play, new springs of inspiration are lapped, new dance sources found; experiments can be tried, meanings, clarified.

When a distinguished mid-west critic said of the two young dancers, The mysterious and experimental is absent.  One 'gets' it the first time.  Pretty comforting in this age of debatable dance forms, he pointed the fact, which those who know the farm are able to explain.  The experiments happen right there—on the farm.  They do not have to be foisted on audiences.

When the long days of summer are over, every group member finds it difficult to leave this haven of hard work, where dances and dancers are made.





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MANAGEMENT
A box-office is more than a country-house, and back of every artistic offering of the theatre and the concert world—every offering, that is, which becomes a major attraction—is a story and a legend.  Hidden away in that short line of type, Mr. Manager presents, is the romance of discovery, of faith and of pioneering enterprise.  For Mr. Manager does not merely present.  He first discovers.  And there is much beside cold business in the long associations of these people of the world of spot-light and footlight.

Managers are proverbially tough audiences.  Trained in the stern values of the art, they are the ones who first recognize the special gifts which lift the truly important artist above the ranks of the great number who enter any field.  Their standards may be severe, but once their hearts are won, loyalty is long.  That's why there is romance in their discoveries.

There is the story of the theatre critic, who discovered the Moscow Art Theatre and persuaded the redoubtable Morris Gest to make a pilgrimage to Russia—a Russia torn by revolution and social upheaval.  The results of that trip are theatre history.  There is the story of that same far-sighted impressario and his meeting with Reinhardt in a candle-lit castle in Salzburg.  Many are the legends of the great Daniel Mayer and the Frohmans, Charles and Daniel, and the players whose destiny they guided.  Legends of exciting discoveries, sympathetic first meetings, watchful protection of the growth of the artist—they make up the tradition of the theatre in this country from the days of the incredible Barnum and Jenny Lind to these later days.

The story of America's newest, most exciting dance partnership, as this one has been called, is no exception.  When it was formed this year, the well-known theatre publicist and manager, Isadora Bennett, was called in to consider the task of directing the two young Americans in their first season together.  And the romance of discovery was repeated.

Born in the theatre, schooled in the widest theatre experience, Miss Bennett had also been a dance-follower of many years.  Of course she knew of the work of these two, knew that critics had been watching them closely for the past five years.  She made a careful study of their careers—for it takes more than spectacular gifts to make a great artist, says she, it takes an organized personality and sustained life-time courage.  Her findings were all on the side of the two young artists.

Came then the meeting.  And on sight, she recognized what she had hoped for years to find—youth, integrity, and that invaluable asset, horse-sense, which translates, in terms of art, into a sense of proportion.  She saw before her two young artists, Americans, who embodied in themselves the American culture and the American dream.

But the meeting was not enough.  Miss Bennett asked to see a show.  For that is her way.  This publicist was first a newswriter and a critic.  And she says, the task of directing an artistic enterprise and publicizing it, is an interpretive one—not one of inflating.  The artists' own growth must be recognized, criticized and articulated.  If the publicist is honest, the world's recognition merely follows his own.

Miss Bennett, as the first audience, sitting on the floor of the studio, had an experience.  She found herself laughing out loud at the satires, deeply moved and ready to shout out the bravos to which later audiences have given voice.  With enthusiasm and alacrity, she took on the task of interpreting this new dance repertory in which she had complete faith.

Miss Bennett was not the first to discover these two young talents.  Something like six years ago Arthur Willmore and Rhea Powers, who were then managing the Eastern tour of Ted Shawn, jumped on, after the way of managers to catch the show on tour.  Mr. Shawn had a new feminine soloist, a modest, quiet young artist with an amazing technique and a gift for subtlety and lyricism so unusual that Shawn had developed new dances to set off her special style.  They knew all this in advance.  What they could not anticipate was that in the young dancer they would have one of the permanent enthusiasms of their managerial careers.  The year following, when Mr. Shawn organized his all-male group, Miriam Winslow started under the banner of Willmore and Powers, the career that has carried her all over the country.

It was in Ted Shawn's group, too, that they first saw the work of Foster Fitz-Simons, and followed it through the four years in which the young dancer forged his way ahead as an important choreographer and outstanding member of that organization.  When the two were brought together this year, it was but natural that Willmore and Powers should present the combination to audiences of the country.

Almost from the first appearance on tour, the initial season was a success.  It played to standees; in one place a special matinee had to be hurriedly announced.

The formal Broadway showing at the Guild Theatre, which was to have ended the first season on April 16, repeated the success of the road—and altered those closing plans as requests for added dates came in.

But long before that happened the far-sighted veteran management of the West—Horner, Moyer, Inc., of Kansas City, Missouri—had decided that the West, too, should see this authentic American repertory.  They had followed the work of both young dancers, managed tours in which each had appeared.  It was no new faith, but an old one, which made them undertake for this year and the next the extended Western tours, which will carry the two young artists to the coast and back.



REPRESENTATIVE:
Isadora Bennett, Empire Theatre Building
New York City.

MANAGEMENT:
Willmore and Powers, 2 West 45th Street
New York City.

WESTER TOUR:
Horner, Moyer, Inc., 3005 Harrison Avenue
Kansas City, Missouri.

Printed in U.S.A. by Strand Press, New York, N. Y.





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