Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Biography of a Talented Innovator - an inside look, October 13, 2008
From introduction:
"Shawn, like Isadora Duncan, was drawn to the Greek ideal of body beauty and to the heroic nature of classical Greek drama, myths and history itself. Of all of his many dances for himself two of his favorites were 'The Divine Idiot,' based on Plato's shadow watchers. Shawn introduced into the group the rebel, the prophet, the messiah perhaps, one who has seen the light of the world and would bring it to the unbelievers chained in darkness in a cave of ignorance; and 'Prometheus Bound.' The former was created in 1930; the latter, the year before. They came at a crucial time in his life. The break with his wife, Ruth St. Denis, who had never let him forget that she was the superstar, was imminent. He was nearing 40 and experiencing a new assurance that he had indeed become a leader. But what sort of a leader?
He occasionally in a program note described his 'Prometheus Bound' as 'a study in limitation.' He meant it as a guide to the self-imposed choreographic challenge which required that he perform the entire solo while chained by his left arm to a massive rock on a mountainside. The description was prophetic, as was the dance itself, because it came to symbolize the paradoxical features of a man with severe limitations yet possessed of 'forethought,' inexhaustible energy, invincible drive. Without the innate artistic talent of either a Ruth St. Denis or an Isadora Duncan he became a coequal force in the birth and evolution of the contemporary dance in America - in some respects, truth to tell, his influences proved more permanent and more usable than those of his rivals-colleagues, the 'two great dance matriarchs' as Martha Graham has called them.
In writing a biography an author quite naturally would report on the conflicting nature of his subject. Since I knew Ted Shawn well for 40 years, it would not be presumptuous to speculate on why he succeeded against certain inherent odds and why he failed to achieve the recognition of great artistry which he felt he deserved.
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Ted Shawn's most famous, and distinguished, creation for his company of Men Dancers was his 'Kinetic Molpai,' a philosophical work in which he explored, according to his own program notes, 'Love, Strife, Death, and that which is beyond Death.'
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Like Duncan, St. Denis, and the other true geniuses, Ted Shawn had personality, he had instinct...he had dedication, and he was messianic. But unlike the others, he was organized. He was prepared to channel his dance discoveries into a usable mold, to organize his materials and his talents, his theories and his credos into what might be described as the curriculum of a career.
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Yes, Ted Shawn reproduced within himself the spirit of the ancient Prometheus with its messianic desire to bring light to others. But Ted Shawn, dancer, was fettered by his own physical limitations - he was not blessed with the dancer's ideal build of slim litheness -- and his own esthetic and artistic lacks. But he would not be bound. He literally...tore himself free, at least partly, of his bonds and swung out into a career for which the god had not endowed him. To make a lasting impact on the entire world of dance he had to become a new kind of Prometheus, a Prometheus 'unbound.' And that is what he became."
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DVD ~ Ron Honsa
by Suzanne Shelton
DVD ~ Ted Shawn
