Harmony Bench | All the World’s Onstage
Channel: MSU Digital Humanities
Date: 2019-05-28

Harmony Bench | Ohio State University

Full Title: All the World’s Onstage: Representing Culture through the Touring Dances of Denishawn

This presentation considers what transnational and postcolonial digital humanities perspectives offer to an analysis of dance touring in the first half of the 20th century. I examine the U.S. popular stage as a site of global representation through the domestic and international touring of Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn, and their Denishawn Dancers. The bulk of St. Denis and Shawn’s creative work together (1914-1931) took place when popular performance was an important part of how American audiences understood themselves in relation to a broader world. A culturally omnivorous outfit, Denishawn exposed audiences to dance practices representing far-flung parts of the globe, stitched together from anthropological texts and photographs, personal observation, and creative imagination.

Dance scholars have emphasized the politics of representation embedded in Denishawn’s repertory, understanding that the artists’ whiteness functioned to legitimize their onstage transformations of material influenced by or appropriated from people of color. I extend this conversation to consider the broad dissemination of these representations made visible through the digital humanities project Mapping Touring, which enables comparative analysis of dance touring in conjunction with dance repertory. A project in process, Mapping Touring shows the geographic distribution of early- to mid-20th century dance touring in order demonstrate the intertwining of globalization and aesthetic modernism in ballet and modern dance.

Denishawn performed the same kinds of dances in Billings, Montana and Mobile, Alabama as in London, Singapore, and San Francisco. I therefore also speculate on the possible impact of their touring programs. How might Denishawn’s repertory have informed audiences’ imagination of their own global citizenship prior to the rapid expansion of film and broadcast media? As the dancers traveled, what gestural information did they carry with them? What did they gather from their touring locations and what did they leave behind?

For more information about the 2019 Global DH Symposium visit msuglobaldh.org.