Monday, July 25 – “One Thousand and One Night Stands” by Ted Shawn
I gave myself the day off of traveling/working out/coffee/real clothes/makeup, and literally did not leave all day. I watched the DNC and ate leftover pizza and drank a lot of tea. It was magnificent.
Sadly, Ted Shawn was a little bit less magnificent.
That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with Teddy or his book, but it was just not my favorite.
For starters, the VAST majority of this book was descriptions of traveling and touring and the places they stayed and the things they did and I was just not interested by that. Of course it’s a super important part of Denishawn, but it was not the most fun thing to read.
The first thing that struck me was that Ted Shawn actually started dancing as a form of physical therapy, and thereafter decided it was something he wanted to do. He started with social dancing, also. Now, this isn’t like a particularly shocking or wild thing in and of itself, but after a minute of surprise I realized why it shocked me–
it’s because in all of the books I’ve read, including the millions about St. Denis, no one mentioned what Ted Shawn did before he met Ruth.
I guess this makes sense to some degree, since the books were about Ruth and not Ted, but it was still a wild thing to realize.
Dance as PT is also a recurring theme; later in life Ted gives a woman private lessons as physical therapy and he details that. It’s important to remember that dance, whatever form it’s being used in, is always valid and important.
Finally, Ted’s life’s mission is to prove that men do dance. In fact, “Men Do Dance!” is the title of his last chapter. It’s the whole reason he created Jacob’s Pillow and his own troupe of dancing men. I think this is still a battle men in dance are fighting today (although I can’t speak for them, so if any dancing men are reading and want to refute me, by all means), but for some reason reading about it in this book made it feel very Men’s Rights Activist to me. Which is misguided, I know, since the dance world is different from the world at large. But at any rate, we now have dancing men and I am truly grateful, for many reasons.