Molly Levy Is A Dancer Essay

I started dancing when I was 8 years old with the Shanahan School of Irish Dance in Columbus, Ohio. Peggy Shanahan, my first teacher her son played baseball with my brother, so when my she and my parents became friends and she asked if I wanted to start dance lessons, free for boys for a year, my response was Dzsure!dzI had at the time absolutely no knowledge of what Irish dance was, and at the time questioned it as to how or why it was even a thing. My first class, I heard Peggy shout out DzGood Myles that’s itdz while we learned skip 2, 3s. I didn’t even know I was doing all that good, but hearing Peggy say that made me know I wanted to never stop hearing that from anybody in any situation. Over the years I would have two boys with me in class, both older and both at different stages of my dance career. They weren’t really

Influenced primarily by cultural roots and incredibly opportunity, Dunham had the luxury of studying in the West Indies as well as anthropological study of other cultural style dances. The West Indian experience changed forever the focus of Dunham’s life and caused a profound shift in her career. This initial fieldwork began a lifelong involvement with the people and dance of Haiti. And, importantly for the development of modern dance, her fieldwork began her investigations into a vocabulary of movement that would form the core of the Katherine Dunham Technique. Though many of Dunham’s primary influences lies within her multicultural experiences, Mark Turbyfill also seemed to play a large role in her future dance career, giving her private lessons despite his doubt in the opening of her student company (Kaiso! 187). Katherine Dunham has been list as an influence to “everyone from George Balanchine to Jerome Robbins, Alvin Ailey, Bob Fosse and Twyla Tharp. American dance, including ballet, modern dance, Hollywood and Broadway, would not be the same without her” (Aschenbrenner 226).

People of many different nationalities settled in Pennsylvania to work in the coal mines. Conflicts developed not only among people of different cultural backgrounds but also between laborers and owners of the mines. The struggle between labor and management is illustrated in the story of the Molly Maguires, an Irish group which settled in eastern Pennsylvania.

Who were the Molly Maguires? Did they really exist? These are questions asked by many people today. Some historians wonder if the Molly Maguires really did bring their secret society from England to the United States, or if the incidents blamed on them were just random accidents on which officials needed to place a blame. We may never actually know...

The light shine down and the music surrounds her as she dance into the air and across the stage. The audience yells and clap for her as the curtain close. It’s the end of another work week for Jane Onwuegbuchu. Jane comes from a very huge family of 8, where it’s very hard for her to be at the center of attention, especially being the 5th child. Jane was born in Houston, Texas on June 22, 1987 to Rosaline and James Onwuegbuchu. She started dancing at the young age of 3 with Elite dancers and fell in love with dancing since then. “Growing up as a child, Jane was a very good child, she loved dancing and just seeing her dance melt my heart. She was a part of a lot of dance organization, church, youth dance team etc… You name it and she was there,”

From kindergarten until high school, I was a member of the Jean Wolfmeyer School of Dance. Up to 5 days per week, I would be at the dance studio taking classes, rehearsing for shows, and helping out in the less advanced classes. Regardless of skill level, Jean never hesitated to speak the brutally honest truth about students’ performances and she never settled for anything less than perfection. Jean would often preach that she is only the instruction manual and she cannot make us good dancers, we had to do that for ourselves. However, it was not her critique or teaching alone that motivated dancers to perform well, it was her relentless work ethic and commitment to her studio. As a 70 year-old women, Jean held classes as much as 7 days per

As ballets were about telling stories or formulating movements, modern dance broke the rules and started to focus more on individual expressions. Loie Fuller (1862 – 1928), Doris Humphrey (1895-1958), and Ruth St. Denis (1877-1968) were pioneering women who took a stand and used their dance performance to speak up for women’s rights. Using dance, they significantly contributed to the Feminist movement in which they embraced self-expression and creativity so that women could be acknowledged in the dance field and in the society as a whole. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, they found for women’s rights by “taking dance to a new form, and creating dances to speak directly and intimately to the viewer” (Au 89). Loie Fuller, Doris Humphrey, and Ruth St. Denis demonstrated the transformation of dance with their innovation of costumes and stage lighting, incorporation of foreign cultures into performance, and creation of natural movements and individual expression that rejected the formal structures of ballet to deform a woman’s body, allowing women to be free from stereotype of a traditional woman.

Martha Graham was one of the most influential figures in American modern dance, and her techniques and styles are still practiced today. She became widely known throughout all ages and decades. Her first debut was in the 1920's. As time went on, she became more experienced and wiser in the modern dance field. Martha Graham, whose style was considered controversial, became one of the finest choreographers and dancers in the dance world.

Marigolds have always been her favorite flower. They reminded her of the stages she onced performed on. Staff members would decorate the stage with summer-bloomed dahlias and bright sun-colored marigolds, and tie silk ribbons to the bark of trees during celebrations. Crowds were surrounding her, cheering and watching her gracefully move her body across the stage. The light hue of her pink hair shined as the sunlight struck her like a spotlight center stage. She wore a pure white, flowing dancer’s garment which allowed her to move the way she wanted to. Her arms would stretch out as if she was reaching for someone’s palm, and her legs move as if they were made of the wind. Sometimes, there was a special someone; a pair of eyes that could see through the heart of her dance,

On April 24, 1903, one of the founders of American modern dance was born to parents who emigrated from Russia. Helen Tamiris, originally Helen Becker, grew up in New York, New York on the Lower East Side. In her lifetime, she danced, choreographed, and helped initiate modern dance. Later in her life, she moved to the “Great White Way,” otherwise known as Broadway, to choreograph many shows.

She studied different types of dance and incorporated them into her own technique. “Called the matriarch of black dance her groundbreaking repertoire combine innovative interpretation of caribbean dances,traditional ballet, African rituals and African American rhythms to create the Dunham technique” (“Katherine Dunham Biography” 2). Dunham technique is continued to be taught at schools and companies all over the world. Her travels to other countries always inspired her choreography. “She is credited for bringing caribbean and African influences to a European-dominated world” (“Katherine Dunham Biography” 2). Dunham’s use of different world influences innovated dance and created more significant choreography. Dunham not only changed how she danced; she created an entirely new

Mrs. Farrell’s book is quite technical when it comes to the lengthy descriptions of the dances she rehearses and performs; from a dancer’s view these varied conclusions of the types of movements she was dancing is quite astonishing. In fact, it adds a whole new level to the imagination that can come alive in a person’s thoughts when they read an expressive book. Although the technical explanations will excited, astound, and reveal how much passion and deep meaning ballet had in Suzanne Farrell’s life, but a reader, who may not be involved in the arts will be unfamiliar with the ballet and musical terms in

Frontier (1976)- with Introduction by Martha Graham. Perf. Martha Graham. YouTube. YouTube, 24 June 2011. Web. 17 Nov. 2012. .

Dance is an ever evolving form of art; in much the same way that one can categorize and differentiate between eras and styles of architecture one can also do so with dance. These eras at times have sharp delineations separating them from their antecedents, other times the distinction is far more subtle. Traditional forms of dance were challenged by choreographers attempting to expand the breadth and increase the depth of performance; preeminent among such visionaries was Seattle born dancer and choreographer Mark Morris. Mark Morris' began as one of the millions of hopeful individuals attempting to simply make a career in dance; he not only succeeded but managed to have a lasting effect on the entire landscape of dance.

Watching the video “A Dancer’s World” made me want to become a professional dancer. Martha Graham’s dancers showed how delicate, defined, sharp, smooth, and astatic a choreography can be. It illustrated how much hard word and dedication it’s needed, but the results will always be beautiful. Also Martha Graham explained how dancing with a partner can be. She also talked about males as dancers, but in her video she demonstrates how men danced with females using physical contact. The techniques and how the piece turns out to be. Both genders jumped a lot through out each piece of performed and that’s something loved. During a piece, there can be both gender dancing separately doing their own thing. The techniques are used differently by males