Submit a 1-page typewritten summary of the assigned reading packet The progress
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Question
Submit a 1-page typewritten summary of the assigned reading packet
The progress of dance in America has been bedeviled by labels affixed to it by the early white settlers--largely Puritans laboring hard to make the colonies inhabitable (by their standards) and Christian. Dancing was frivolous and potentially sinful. Increase Mather's thirty-page tract "An Arrow Against Profane and Promiscuous Dancing Drawn out of the Quiver of the Scriptures" made it clear in 1.665 that men and woman mingling in dance might be tempted to mingle in other, even less acceptable ways The charges of frivolity and time-wasting didn't entirely squelch dancing done for enjoyment and to let off steam. In the eighteenth century, working people in cities performed their reels and jigs in taverns. Among the upper crust, knowledge of the steps of the minuet and the patterns of the cotillion were mandatory (George Washington showed himself as an adept dancer at a ball in New York days after his inauguration as the country's first president). It was when French dancing masters expanded from teaching Ballroom steps into giving ballet lessons, and variety shows began to flourish, that ministers worked themselves up more strenuously about sinfulness. Professional women dancers took most of the heat. Surely no decent woman would wear skirts so short! And while men ballet dancers in nineteenth-century America weren't denigrated, as they were in France by such influential critics as Théophile Gautier and Jules Janin, for being all too unappetizingly and stolidly male in a gossamer world, they were largely ignored. The men who made a decent living as dancers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were those who used their feet like tools and didn't wave their arms around and strike attitudes. The popular white choreographer performer John Durang (who maintained a wife and ten theater-savvy children) initially made his name with his solo hormpipe, while the African-American minstrel William Henry Lane (known as Master Juba) thrilled London with his nimbleness and quickness of foot. It's not clear exactly when the charge of effeminacy first began to be leveled at male dancers, or when a boy studying ballet might be labeled a sissy (a term not always a euphemism for homosexuality). But tap dancers, black or white, largely escaped the labeling. They were showing you their intricate steps with concentration and frank enjoyment; it was their job to entertain you, and they did it with muscular ease. Fred Astaire, who began as one half of a vaudeville duo with his sister Adele, is an interesting case. He wasn't a brawny hunk, or even a typical romantic lead; the characters he portrayed onscreen--witty, dapper, debonair and definitely not day laborers--seemed almost asexual. Until he danced. He wasn't just an imaginative solo tapper, he exercised power over the women he partnered onscreen. In many duets, he woos an initially reluctant beauty by swirling her into increasingly ardent steps until she's putty in his hands. At the end of "Night and Day," his character's life-changing number with Ginger Rogers in the 1934 Gay Divorcee, he dances her over to an upholstered banquette and slides her onto it just as the music ends. The camera closes in on her-stunned and starry-eyed--then cuts to show him brushing his hands together, as if he's just finished up his work for the day (The fact that Astaire made a very good living in films certainly helped to convey a dancer's potential to be a success in business--another token of masculinity.)Explanation / Answer
The article is about dancing and the evolution of dancing in America. In the earlier years, at the time of its advent dancing was considered to be a sin and against Christianity. It was thought that through dancing men and women would mingle in ways that would be unacceptable to the society l dancing expanded as the French masters began incorporation of ballroom dancing into ballet. Women experienced more rage as descent women were not expected to wear skirts. The male dancers had to face a lot of stigma and labelling, where ballet dancers would be named as sissy. Though, tap dancers did not get this sort of labelling in their acts. And, they were known to to entertain with the help of muscular ease. Later, around the earlier 20th century, there emerged strong personalities such as that revolutionised the field of art and dance. There were. Astaire emerged as one of the people, who would involve himself in drama, and imagine a person as young as him make a career out of the same. Dance training sessions started in around the 1940s as well as the 1950s where Martha Graham’s representation of the males were influenced by the female. There was establishment of school of performing arts entered in the company that Martha graham was. The view of male ballet dancers were also influenced by the two Russian dancers who defected Rudolf Nureyev and Kirov ballet. Another name in the field of performing arts was of Mikhail Baryshnikov who became superstars in Martha Graham’s company. It was believed that choreography should be made same since men and women could perform similar work in their daily living. Even the idea of basic dressing was changed such that women would wear trousers. The differences in gender Began to be diminished at least in the field of performing arts as there came intermingling of steps to clothes.