The Ted Shawn Dancers

[robcat2075]

In the teens and 20s of the last century Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn were highly influential in the area of "modern dance" with their Denishawn dance company.

In the 30s, Ted Shawn experimented with a very unusual-for-its-time all-male dance troupe.

How unusual, you ask? They say they had to sometimes fight their way through the un-adoring crowds that had gathered outside the venues to beat them up.

Here is rare film of the ensemble in action. You can tell it's the Great Depression... they don't even have a shirt on their back!

The New World


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[BGuttman]

Shawn and St. Denis founded the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Lenox, MA. Think of it as a "Dance Tanglewood". Located not far from Tanglewood in Western MA. Denishawn (as they were known) were the originators of what we now call "Modern Dance".