choreographer dancer impresario teacher writer
He was born on October 21, 1891 in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, the son of Elmer Ellsworth Schaun, an editor at the Kansas City Star. His mother, Mary Lee Booth, died when he was very young and he lived in Colorado with his father.
Shawn attended the University of Denver with the intent of becoming a Methodist minister. Shawn took classes in ballet technique with Hazel Wallack.
He contracted diphtheria at the age of eighteen, the treatment for which temporarily paralyzed his limbs. To regain his movement skills, Shawn took classes in ballet; this experience established his interest in dance. Shawn earned his early living by logging, typing, selling insurance, making movies, teaching dance, and "tea dancing" (working as a hired dance partner).
He moved to Los Angeles and in 1913 joined dancer Norma Gould, a pianist and a soprano, to tour the waiting rooms of the Santa Fe Railroad with a program of national and ballroom dances. This brought him to New York City, where he entered into a professional and personal liaison with dancer Ruth St. Denis. The St. Denis-Shawn relationship developed into Denishawn, the theatrical entity and dance school that endured from 1914 until 1930. St. Denis's cycle of mystical East Indian dances became the core of Denishawn programs, to which Shawn added his stature as a male performer.
His greatest contribution was his understanding that a company must have a school for the training of its dancers. Denishawn School underwent various manifestations in Los Angeles from 1915 to 1922. It attracted myriad students (Doris Humphrey, Martha Graham, Charles Weidman, among others) looking for St. Denis's vision and Shawn's support. For the funds needed to put their dance into American theater, Denishawn toured the Orpheum vaudeville circuit, St. Denis touring while Shawn served in World War 1. Louis Horst was the accompanist for these tours as well as for those acts produced by Shawn and sent on the Pantages circuit: Julnar of the Sea (1919), Xochitl (starring Graham; 1921), and Les Mysteres Dionysiaques (1920). Horst remained with Denishawn as musical director for ten years.
In 1922 Shawn, just coming into his prime as an artist, took the Denishawn Company into the American concert field under the aegis of Daniel Mayer. In three cross-country tours, with an average of 150 concerts each, Denishawn brought serious dance to the United States between 1922 and 1925. St. Denis continued to perform her own numbers, Shawn presented his mature ethnic dance adaptations, and each created dance-dramas using a company expanded to twelve dancers.
Shawn's account of this period, One Thousand and One Night Stands (1960) describes this achievement. Shawn and St. Denis took world dance as their source of inspiration for such works as the Spanish Cuadro Flamenco (1923), the Hopi Feather of the Dawn (1923), and for Egyptian Ballet (1922). Shawn's solos stressed his masculinity (Japanese Spear Dance; 1921). "Music visualizations" adapted dance to the style, structure, and mood of selected compositions (Revolutionary Etude; 1921), and popular divertissements, deriving from characterizations (Betty's Music Box; 1922), filled out the eclectic Denishawn programs.
In 1921 Shawn moved Denishawn School to New York City, where the company's elaborately staged concerts were choreographed and rehearsed. Shawn prepared the curricula for the many branches of the school that opened across the country and launched The Denishawn Magazine, which reflected the ferment of Denishawn philosophy and teaching.
From September 1925 to December 1926, St. Denis, Shawn, and their Denishawn Dancers became the first American dance group to tour in the Far East. Booked by the impresario Asway Strok, they mounted four different programs. Shawn created the solo The Cosmic Dance of Siva (1926) and the trio Sinhalese Devil Dance (1926), both emphasizing his theatrical persona as a virile male.
Shawn and St. Denis separated in 1931, but never divorced. In March 1933 Shawn emerged on the American stage as an independent performer and producer with a new artistic entity, Ted Shawn and his Men Dancers. From the base of his farm, Jacob's Pillow, near Lee, Massachussets, Shawn again toured the United States, with seven male dancers headed by Barton Mumaw, and Jess Meeker as pianist and composer. From 1940 until his death, Shawn labored to develop Jacob's Pillow into a comprehensive school and dance forum.
Edwin Meyers Shawn was one of the first notable male pioneers of American modern dance. Along with creating Denishawn with his wife Ruth St. Denis he is also responsible for the creation of the well known all-male company Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers. With his innovative ideas of masculine movement he is one of the most influential choreographers and dancers of his day. In 1965 he was a Heritage Award recipient of the National Dance Association. He was knighted by the King of Denmark for his efforts on behalf of the Royal Danish Ballet.
Quotations: "I believe that dance communicates man’s deepest, highest and most truly spiritual thoughts and emotions far better than words, spoken or written. "
He married Ruth St. Denis on August 13, 1914. Shawn was sustained by an unpublicized relationship with Mumaw; any reference to a homosexual partner was an unmentionable fact at this time.
