Dancers Break the Rules

The Professional Dance World.

During the 1910s most Americans thought of dance as amusement rather than art. Yet several events in the world of professional dance made headlines—and affected the evolution of dance traditions in the United States. Among them were the first American performances of Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1916 and the debuts of two great Russian ballet dancers, Anna Pavlova in 1910 and Vaslav Nijinsky in 1916. Moved by Pavlova's Dying Swan, parents dressed their daughters in tutus and sent them off to ballet school. Modern dance was also taking hold in the United States. The first American pioneer of this dance form, Isadora Duncan, spent most of the decade performing in Europe and South America, but she danced at the Century Theatre in New York City during the 1914 season and performed in New York City and San Francisco in 1917.

Denishawn.

More significant than Duncan's...

[The entire page is 1153 words long]

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