Historical, Social, and Cultural Context
20th Century American Dance

• 1900-1920s

  • WMU was established J
  • U.S. a world power:   Spanish-American War, annexation of the Phillipines and Hawaii, Mexican Revolution, Panama Canal opens, Yukon gold rush, Russian Revolution (1917)
  • World War I (the Great War-1914-1919)
  • Sinking of the Titantic
  • Clothing conservative, covered the body (at the start era)
  • Later short skirts and short hair
  • Motion pictures introduced at beginning, first “talkie” The Jazz Singer in 1927
  • Hosting of salons was important socially
  • Etiquette was important
  • Women not equal, woman’s suffrage and independence
  • Minorities and segregation, especially in the South
  • Social restrictions and taboos strong
  • Impressionism in art
  • Expressionism in art
  • Art Nouveau
  • Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes tours the world
  • Chautauqua experience (traveling tent shows with focus on education and enlightenment)
  • Paris as the progressive heart of the arts movement
  • Expansion of what can be dance
  • Prohibition begins, speak-easies popular, gangsters, rum-running
  • Flappers—Charleston, Black Bottom, Tango,
  • Industrial growth:  Ford and the first assembly line, the airplane, Big Business and Anti-Trust Laws, growth of unions, strikes
  • Prosperity seemed limitless until stock market crash in 1929
  • Move toward secularization
  • Popular Dixieland, ragtime
  • Pilates created during World War I
  • Harlem Renaissance

  1930-through World War II (1945)

  • Black Tuesday—stock market crash resulted in Great Depression
  • Great Depression:  farm foreclosures, unemployment, “shantytowns” and disillusionment
  • Mao Tse Tung and the Red Army begins legendary Long March that ends in Communist China (1934-35)
  • Spanish Civil War: Franco victorious (1936-39)
  • Dust bowl:  extend period of drought in the Great Plains
  • Great migration:  people head west to seek better situations
  • FDR and Mrs. Roosevelt:  New Deal programs (FDIC, PWA, WPA, TVA, etc)
  • Polio and other diseases
  • Women work to support the war effort, patriotism BIG
  • Mobs and gambling
  • Industrialization
  • Swing era:  dance marathons, Jitterbug/Lindy Hop, Rhumba
  • Big band era:  Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie
  • Hitler and persecution of the Jews
  • First attack on our soil—Pearl Harbor (1941) and American enters WW II
  • Modernism in art
  • Abstract movement in art just beginning (Pollack, etc.)
  • Black concert dance forms intersect with Black dance on Broadway (Emperor Jones, Porgy and Bess, Stormy Weather with the Nicholas Brothers, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Katherine Dunham Troupe, Asadata Dafora’s Kyunkor
  • Hollywood’s Golden Age of Musicals:  stars trained by studios to sing, dance and act, tap is “in” as are lavish production numbers a la Busby Berkley, era of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Shirley Temple, Gene Kelly, Balanchine choreographs On Your Toes, Babes in Arms, Boys from Syracuse, Agnes De Mille choreographs Oklahoma
  • Rise of Nationalism

  Life after the Bomb:  mid-1940s through the 1950s

  • Cold War and nuclear anxiety: bomb shelters, Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles
  • Red scare:  blacklisting, anti-communists, House Committee on Un-American Activities, McCarthy, spread of Communism in China and Korea
  • Women’s role changes again—back to homemaker
  • Mass production
  • Levittown:  cookie cutter mass produced housing
  • Baby boomers generation begins
  • Music:  Frank Sinatra (love ballads), Elvis Presley (Rock and Roll); Richie Valens (“La Bamba”)
  • Vernacular dance:  Latin dances, Twist, American Bandstand
  • Polio vaccine created
  • Women allowed to be on juries in 1954
  • Early Civil Rights:  Segregation of the races continues to be practiced in many places; Rosa Parks; Mongomery bus boycott; Little Rock school desegregation; Martin Luther King
  • Beat generation:  stirrings of youthful rebellion
  • Religion a strong influence
  • Traditional family values
  • Television:  CBS Studio One for arts programming, consumerism and conformity 
  • Musicals:  Showboat (1946 ch. Tamiris w/Pearl Primus & Talley Beatty); House of Flowers (1954 perf. Donald McKayle, Arthur Mitchell, Geoffrey Holder, Alvin Ailey, Carmen de Lavallade); Kiss Me Kate (ch. Holm); West Side Story (ch. Jerome Robbins); Damn Yankees (ch. Fosse)
  • Korean War
  • McDonald’s Restaurant opens
    

  1960s and 70s

  • Crises in the Cold War:  Erection of the Berlin Wall, U2 spy plane, Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis
  • Vietnam (1965-75):  anti-war protests; Kent State “massacre” in 1970; Hawks vs. Doves; draft dodgers; first war that was broadcast on TV
  • Violence: Assassinations:  JFK, MLK, Bobby Kennedy, John Lennon, major riots in the cities, Son of Sam serial killer
  • Civil Rights:  sit-ins, boycotts and marches; 1963 MLK in Birmingham and DC; 1964 Civil Rights Act; 1965 Selma AL Bloody Sunday, then Voting Rights Act; 1968 MLK assassination, followed by riots; Malcolm X and the Black Power Movement; Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers in the Brown Power Movement; 1973 Russell Mean and Wounded Knee; from Equal Opportunity to Affirmative Action
  • Hippies:  generation gap; rejection of materialism, patriotism, work ethic, traditional values; interest in non-Christian religions explored; Cults big, shock value of nudity and profanity embraced
  • Sexual Revolution:  advent of the birth control pill
  • Women’s rights:  1972 ERA amendment approved by Congress by not enough states ratify; 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision on abortion
  • More divorce and single-parent families
  • Space race; landing on the moon (1968)
  • Music:  Woodstock; The Beatles; Stevie Wonder; Aretha Franklin; folk music; the Jackson Five; Motown
  • Nixon’s impeachment proceeding result in 1974 resignation, Watergate, all proceedings televised
  • American Bandstand, Disco
  • TV:  TV in nearly 100% of homes; Color TVs; Ed Sullivan; Carol Burnett; Lawrence Welk; Laugh-In
  • Attire:  Very revealing clothing; Thin is IN:  Twiggy
  • Recreational drugs popular:  LSD, marijuana, cocaine
  • NEA created in 1964
  • Musicals:  Hair, first rock and roll musical and nudity; Fosse’s Chicago, Cabaret, Pippen, Sweet Charity; The Wiz (ch. George Faison, dir. Geoffrey Holder); Sophisticated Ladies (dir/ch. Donald McKayle, perf. Judith Jamison); A Chorus Line (ch. Michael Bennett); Jesus Christ, Superstar
  • ABT on strike
  • Judson Church—start of post-modernism, pedestrian movement, new venues
  • Gus Giordano’s technique and company founded
  • Post-Modernism
  • Woodstock

  1980s-to present day

  • New Right and Moral Majority; Right to Life; Family Values; warming of the Cold War; Berlin Wall brought down;  Glasnost and Perestroika; disbanding of the USSR; Reaganomics
  • Human Rights:  South Africa, China and at home
  • MTV started
  • Pop culture a big thing
  • Break dancing big
  • Newsmakers:  Reagan shot; Clinton  sex scandals; Challenger crash; Gulf War; 9/11; War in Iraq
  • Information age; Digital age/Internet; YouTube
  • Increase in youth violence:  Columbine shootings, copycats, bomb threats in schools
  • Increase in terrorism:  Oklahoma City bombing; Twin towers—2nd attack on our soil
  • Urban concerns:  population explosion, homelessness, crime
  • AIDS; Gay rights
  • Martha Graham died
  • Environment issues come to the forefront; gas crisis
  • Obsessive interest in celebrities:  Princess Diana; Michael Jackson; OJ Simpson; Brittany Spears
  • Dance:  revived interest in tap; broadened view of what IS dance?; focus on social commentary
  • Fusion of culture and art forms
  • Globalization
  • Customization and personalization of everything!