Ted Shawn and Company

[shanmonster]

Although I already have a Ted Shawn gallery, it's limited in scope. I thought it would be nice to share some of the other photos I have of this influential dancer and of the dancers in his troupe.

Ted Shawn in his signature role in "Invocation to the Thunderbird." I'm not sure on the date of this photo, but he played this role for over thirty years.

Here is Ted Shawn as St. Francis of Assisi. The photo dates from the early 1920s.

This is Ted Shawn in "Kinetic Molpai." The photo was taken by Shapiro Studio in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The picture is inscribed to Stanley Davis, one of Ted's principal dancers, in September, 1936.

This is Ted Shawn (dancer in foreground) and his Men Dancers in the three-act American saga "O, Libertad!" The dancer on the far right is Barton Mumaw, Ted's lover of fifteen years, from the late thirties through his service in WWII.

This photo was taken at Jacob's Pillow--Ted Shawn's school for modern dance--by Japanese photographer Soichi Sunami. I don't know who the dancers are.

This is a nude photo of Fred Hearn (left) and Horace Jones (right) standing with intertwined legs. Hearn was one of Shawn's principal dancers, and Jones was also with the dance company. The photo may date from the 1930s.

And just to balance things out a bit, here's a photo of "Florence O'Denishawn" as a Sprite. Denishawn was the name of the dance company formed by Ruth St. Denis and her husband Ted Shawn. This photo was taken by Alfred Cheney Johnston and was published in the July 1924 issue of Dance Lovers Magazine.

Comments

[o-lucky-man.livejournal.com]

wow, those are great pictures! Thanks for posting them.

I looked through a yearbook type thing for Denishawn a few years ago. Their road schedule was grueling, to say the least. They would be in, say, Columbus Ohio one day, Tampa Florida the next. It was nuts!