Inside the classroom, the students developed a strong, scientific basis of technique. They put on yearly pageants, often performed outside, which would allow the community to witness their dancing. The pageants were performed to classical music and often had natural or historical themes. Hundreds of students were involved in these pageants. The 1927 pageant “Our Lady’s Juggler” was so popular that a repeat performance was created in 1939.

However, fashions change. As the larger dance world began to experiment with more pared down movement, structure, and gesture, Oberlin followed suit. Dance at Oberlin has continued to evolve, staying at the forefront of movement of the time from the advent of Graham to the development of experimental dance in the 1970s.

For more on early dance at Oberlin, see Stephanie Woodard’s article, “Pioneers in Ohio.”

Classroom Activities

• Move: In groups, read about and execute your interpretation of the movement test from University of Michigan’s 1928 issue of “Nike.” Discuss whether the instructions were familiar or unfamiliar. Do you have an equivalent examination system? What would you want to measure in a movement test?
• Analyze: Review the images on the Program Covers for the “Natural Dancing Classes” at Oberlin College in the early twentieth century and discuss the intersection of grace and nature.
• Read: Why Dance?, a poem written by Lorraine Maytum that was included in a program for the Natural Dancing Classes at Oberlin College. Read aloud in class, and discuss how the poem reflects the themes of this module, particularly freedom from social restraint and moral uplift.
• Research: What is the history of dance and dance education in your local area? Go into the archives of your school, institution, theatrical dance venue, or public library and research the local history. Can you find dance in any yearbooks, programs, or photographs? Focus in on the early 20th century. Do you see any influences from Delsarte, Duncan, Fuller or other figures discussed in this module?

Because one’s outside movements correspond to inner feelings, it is crucial to understand the interpenetration of mind, body, and soul. Thus, in order to move beautifully, you must think beautiful thoughts, and your heart must be compassionate as well. Interestingly enough, however, the practical exercises proffered by the various Delsarte manuals also suggest the opposite. Cultivating these three dimensions was considered as much of a science as an art in the nineteenth century. By refining one’s bodily attitudes and striking the “correct” poses, one can also experience the appropriate internal feelings, inspiring one’s self and one’s audience to a better life. The implications were that even if you were not born into an educated milieu, you could learn to affect the right stance and actually accede into a more sophisticated level of society, providing a pathway for social mobility, exemplified by the life story of Irene and Vernon Castle.

Although one’s comportment must look “natural” – not fake or contrived – this graceful bearing is a result of analysis and serious study. Like the nineteenth-century British gardens, “natural” in this context means cultivated, not wild. As Warman notes: “There are three co-essential elements of grace – precision, harmony, and ease. Precision of movements is mental, harmony of movement is emotive, ease of movement is vital” (349). If we recognize that every gesture and motion in the Delsarte system corresponds to an intellectual, emotional, and physical state, we can infer the values which were considered important at that time by looking at and inhabiting the exercises these manuals suggest. (See pdf in Classroom Activities below).

Martha Banta wrote a book called Imaging American Women in which she analyzes the way advertising and the popular media evoked that particular brand of energized femininity. In her chapter entitled “The Purchase of Grace,” Banta connects Delsartian principles to late nineteenth-century American culture. “Among these predilections are the classification of physical and spiritual types; interest in reciprocal relations between habit and will; unembarrassed borrowings from classical art and philosophy; preference for formulas that order personal and public lives; enthusiasm for scientific methods of self-advancement; insistence that every meaning has its clearly recognizable sign; beauty defined as outer repose and inward vitality; demands that artful expression be joined to spontaneous emotion; appeals to women to free themselves from society’s self-demeaning control over their bodies and dress” (643). In the following sections, we shall see how many of these very same themes relating movement, health, self-improvement and an artistic sensibility are taken up in the dancing, autobiographical writings and artistic manifestos of Loïe Fuller and Isadora Duncan.

Classroom Activities

• Move: Using partners, have one group read the Delsarte Exercises from Florence A. Fowle Adams’ “Gesture and Pantomimic Action” aloud while the other group physically follows the instructions. Switch roles and allow some time for discussion of how those gestures feel in our bodies.
• Research: Look at various examples of the late-twentieth-century gestural phenomenon of “Voguing” and describe in writing the similarities and differences between the Delsarte system of expression and Voguing’s system of gesture. Begin with an analysis of the physical poses and then discuss who dances in each of these situations.

Banta, Martha. Imaging American Women: Idea and Ideals in Cultural History. New York: Columbia UP, 1987.

Warman, Edward Barrett. Gestures and Attitudes; an Exposition of the Delsarte Philosophy of Expression, Practical and Theoretical. Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1892.

When Madonna released her 1989 hit single “Express Yourself,” little did she realize how directly her lyrics echoed themes expounded by American women at the end of the nineteenth century. Riding on the momentum produced by the twin forces of industrialization and urbanization (which included increased educational opportunities and more leisure time for middle-class women), the first generation of modern dancers believed that bodily movement could be an expression of inner feeling, a physicalization of one’s “true” self. The word “expression” means “to press out,” and Madonna’s exhortations to communicate one’s true feelings resonate with the new approach to movement and gesture developed by the first generation of “modern” dancers 100 years earlier. In the late nineteenth century and first decades of the twentieth century, proponents of “expressive” or “interpretive” dancing flooded the theaters, living rooms, college gymnasiums, and community stages of America, helping to lay the cultural foundations for later generations of women performers to “express” themselves – just like Madonna.

This module explores the cultural context of early modern dance, delving into the dress reform, temperance and early feminist movements that contributed to its rise in America. Dance pedagogy, both in higher education and in early movement systems like Delsarte, was influenced by the scientific leanings of the time. The cultural landscape, in turn, was influenced by individuals, from ballroom dance sensation Irene Castle and the fictional Gibson Girl to the dance icons Loïe Fuller and Isadora Duncan. Despite differences in personal temperament and artistic sensibilities, these two innovators shared strong wills and the experience of working to support themselves early in their lives. Eventually, both became world-renown dancers, rivaling even Madonna’s star power. Through examining their manifestos, autobiographies, photographs and and artistic renderings of their performances, we will understand more fully how these two dancers came to embody not only a new manner of moving for women in the early twentieth century, but a new way of being in the world.

Next Section: Moving into the Twentieth Century