{"id":173,"date":"2017-12-30T18:16:33","date_gmt":"2017-12-30T18:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mpny.tv\/featured\/?page_id=173"},"modified":"2024-10-15T21:32:34","modified_gmt":"2024-10-16T01:32:34","slug":"the-men-who-danced","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mpny.tv\/featured\/the-men-who-danced\/","title":{"rendered":"The Men Who Danced"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Men
\nWho Danced<\/p>\n

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The Story of Ted Shawn\u2019s Men Dancers
\nThe First All-Male Dance Company in America<\/p>\n

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A film by
\nRon Honsa<\/p>\n

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[vc_empty_space height=”50px”][vc_column_text el_class=”white” css=”.vc_custom_1597716525697{padding-top: 10px !important;}”]Now available for streaming and digital download on Vimeo\u00a0<\/i>[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”30px”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″][vc_btn title=”Watch Trailer” style=”gradient-custom” gradient_custom_color_1=”#e53f31″ gradient_custom_color_2=”#e56054″ size=”lg” i_align=”right” i_icon_fontawesome=”” add_icon=”true” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fvimeo.com%2F453412286|title:Watch%20Trailer|target:_blank|rel:nofollow”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″][vc_btn title=”Download Now” style=”gradient-custom” gradient_custom_color_1=”#4e67c4″ gradient_custom_color_2=”#8b97c4″ size=”lg” i_align=”right” i_icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-vimeo-square” add_icon=”true” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fvimeo.com%2Fondemand%2F271271|title:Watch%20Trailer|target:%20_blank|rel:nofollow” el_class=”nolightbox”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_btn title=”Watch Interview” style=”gradient-custom” gradient_custom_color_1=”#bababa” gradient_custom_color_2=”#e2e2e2″ gradient_text_color=”#000000″ size=”lg” i_align=”right” i_icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-play” add_icon=”true” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fvimeo.com%2F453708553|title:Watch%20Trailer|target:%20_blank|rel:nofollow”][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_empty_space height=”30px”][vc_column_text el_class=”white”]<\/p>\n

Revised and reformatted with never before seen footage.<\/i><\/p>\n

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[vc_column_text css_animation=”fadeIn” el_class=”white” css=”.vc_custom_1597717734192{margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”]\u201cOne of the most authentic records we have of a most remarkable chapter in dance history.\u201d<\/em>
\n~ John Gruen of Dance Magazine<\/p>\n

\u201cShawn\u2019s passionate interest in everything about him is paid homage to … “<\/em>
\n~ The New York Times<\/p>\n

Nationally aired on PBS and distributed worldwide.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”279″ img_size=”600×300″ alignment=”center”]<\/div><\/div>[\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row full_height=”yes” row_align=”align_middle” row_type=”full_width” type=”container” bg_select=”bg_parallax” parallax_speed=”6″ parallax_repeat=”cover” parallax_img=”178″ anchor=”synopsis”][vc_column content_align=”text-center” offset=”vc_col-lg-8 vc_col-md-8″][vc_empty_space height=”50px”]

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Synopsis<\/span><\/h2>\n

American male dancing has come a long way since the days of Ted Shawn. <\/span>The Men Who Danced <\/span><\/i>chronicles the story of the first all-male dance company in the United States, known as Ted Shawn\u2019s Men Dancers. \u00a0It includes historic footage of the company performing in the 1930s, capturing the beauty and rigor of Shawn\u2019s choreography. \u00a0Additionally, it tells the story of the founding of Jacob\u2019s Pillow, an abandoned farm that Shawn purchased to house his dance company. \u00a0The Pillow is now one of the premier annual dance festivals and summer dance schools in the country. \u00a0This film highlights interviews with eight of the original Shawn dancers, as well as rare archival dance films and contemporary footage of these historic dances being revived at the festival.<\/span><\/p>\n

This classic documentary captures the early struggle \u2013 the evolution and legacy of a concept that is still evolving today. \u00a0Without Shawn, the American male dancer would not have achieved his fullest sense of maturity and independence.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The New Yorker<\/em> <\/span><\/h2>\n

Feb. 8, 2016, by\u00a0<\/span>Joan Acocella<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Men Who Danced: The Story of Ted Shawn\u2019s Men Dancers and the Birth of Jacob\u2019s Pillow, 1933-1940,\u201d a thirty-minute film that will be shown on Feb. 14 at the Dance on Camera Festival, at Lincoln Center (Feb. 12-16), is a modest business with sometimes fuzzy footage, but it is an excellent illustration of the typical circumstances of early modern dance in America: communal, idealistic, and penniless. Ted Shawn (1891-1972) was a divinity student at the University of Denver when he was forced to take ballet lessons, to strengthen his legs, after a bout of diphtheria. Around that time, he also went to a vaudeville show and saw Ruth St. Denis, a riveting free-style dancer, in her Pharaonic spectacle \u201cEgypta.\u201d He auditioned for St. Denis, hoping to join her troupe. She hired him as her partner and, a few months later, married him, though she was about twelve years older than he. Together they founded Denishawn, a company and school that became hugely influential. Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey studied there.<\/p>\n

After the demise of Denishawn, Shawn decided to establish an all-male company, to prove to the world that not just women, but men, too, could inhabit the world of ideal beauty associated with dance, and do so without any compromise of their masculinity. To that end, he bought an abandoned farm, called Jacob\u2019s Pillow, in Becket, Massachusetts, and collected a small group of young men, almost all of them innocent of any dance training. Like a lot of early modern dancers, he had firm beliefs about how dance, and beauty, emerged naturally from the human body. He also could not afford to pay trained dancers.<\/p>\n

In 1982, eight of these men came together for a reunion at Jacob\u2019s Pillow, which now houses what is probably America\u2019s foremost summer dance festival. Interviews with them occupy a good part of \u201cThe Men Who Danced.\u201d They talk about the spartan conditions in which the group lived, rehearsing in the morning and chopping wood in the afternoon. Their usual dinner, one man says, was what they called \u201ccarrot ring,\u201d chopped boiled carrots, molded into a ring. (That was the whole dinner.) Barton Mumaw, the company\u2019s lead dancer (after Shawn), says that the group was held together by a sort of \u201coversoul,\u201d produced by the men\u2019s constantly working together.<\/p>\n

The film shows excerpts from dances Shawn made for the company, many of them stressing weight and strain, labor and combat, in keeping with the goal of persuading audiences that dance could be virile. They are a little camp, and also touching. Shawn didn\u2019t always bring people over to his side. Mumaw says there were times when people would warn them, \u201cThere are fifty guys out there who are going to come and break up the show.\u201d Such guys were not entirely mistaken in their suspicions. Shawn was homosexual. Mumaw was his lover during the lifetime of the troupe. This was never spoken of in the company, nor, indeed, is it mentioned in the film, which was released in 1985.\u00a0\u2666<\/span><\/p>\n

This article appears in other versions of the February 8 & 15, 2016, issue, with the headline \u201cOversoul.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Read full article at newyorker.com \u00bb<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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Directed by Ron Honsa<\/span><\/h2>\n

Produced by Nan Penman<\/span><\/h2>\n

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Contact<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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For further information, or to purchase an institutional copy of the film to attain Public Performance Rights (PPR), please contact Nan Penman at 212-924-7364 or nan@mpny.tv<\/a>\u00a0or complete the form below.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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