Rejecting Artifice, Advancing Art: The Dance Criticism of John Martin Siobhan Burke

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Notes

[1] John Martin, Reflections of John Joseph Martin (Los Angeles: University of California, 1967), 61.

[2] Jack Anderson, "Introduction," in John Martin, The Dance in Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Book Company, 1989), viii-ix. This text is a reprinting of pages 31-126 from Martin's 1939 Introduction to the Dance, with a new introduction by Jack Anderson.

[3] Mark Fearnow "Boleslavsky, Richard Valentinovich" The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance. Ed. Dennis Kennedy. © Oxford University Press 2003, 2005. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance: (e-reference edition). Oxford University Press. Columbia University. 23 February 2008 http://www.oxford-theatreandperformance.com/entry?entry=t177.e485; Anderson, "Introduction," ix.

[4] Cynthia Marsh "Stanislavsky, Konstantin" The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance. Ed. Dennis Kennedy. © Oxford University Press 2003, 2005. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance: (e-reference edition). Oxford University Press. Columbia University. 23 February 2008 http://www.oxford-theatreandperformance.com/entry?entry=t177.e3755; Selma Jeanne Cohen, "Martin, John," in International Encyclopedia of Dance, volume 4; Anderson, "Introduction," ix.

[5] Anderson, x.

[6] Martin changed his attitude on the ballet in the late 1940's, when he began to praise the work of George Balanchine and the New York City Ballet. By this time, modern dance was well-established, but some still accused him of disloyalty to his original cause. This paper focuses primarily on the 1930's, when Martin's loyalties remained predominantly with modern dance. See Cohen, "Martin, John."

[7] John Martin, America Dancing: The Background and Personalities of the Modern Dance (New York: Dance Horizons, 1968), 84. This version of America Dancing is a reprinting of the original 1936 edition.

[8] John Martin, The Modern Dance (New York: A.S. Barnes and Company, 1933), 36 (emphasis added).

[9] Martin, Reflections, 86.

[10] Cohen, "Martin, John."

[11] Martin, Reflections, 87.

[12] Martin, America Dancing, 76, 115.

[13] Martin, The Dance in Theory, 23.

[14] Martin, quoted in Anderson, xi.

[15] Martin, The Dance in Theory, 1.

[16] Ibid., 12-22; The Modern Dance, 11-13.

[17] Martin, America Dancing, 117.

[18] Martin, Reflections, 192.

[19] Anderson, xi.

[20] Martin, The Dance in Theory, 23, 33.

[21] Martin, America Dancing, 141; Martin, The Dance in Theory, 22.

[22] Martin, The Dance in Theory, 33.

[23] Martin, America Dancing, 93-94.

[24] Martin, The Dance in Theory, 34.

[25] Martin, America Dancing, 89.

[26] John Martin. "The Dance: A Need of Trained Audiences," The New York Times, November 11, 1928.

[27] Martin, American Dancing, 114-115.

[28] Martin, Reflections, 196.

[29] Martin, America Dancing, 114.

[30] Martin, Reflections, 102.

[31] Martin, America Dancing, 204.

[32] Ibid., 213-216.

[33] Martin, Reflections, 77-78.

[34] Ibid., 105-106; John Martin, John Martin's Book of the Dance, (New York: Tudor Publishing Co, 1963), 153.

[35] Martin, Reflections, 105.

[36] Ibid., 86.

[37] John Martin, "The Dance: One Artist," The New York Times, March 10, 1929.

[38] John Martin, quoted in Nancy Reynolds, No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 147-148.

[39] Van Wyck Brooks, "The Culture of Industrialism," Van Wyck Brooks: The Early Years, Ed. Claire Sprague, (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 202.

[40] Warren Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 157-158.

[41] Susman, 157-158, 205; Martin, America Dancing, 53.

[42] André Levinson, quoted in John Martin, "The Dance: An Attack," The New York Times, June 7, 1931.

[43] Levinson, quoted in John Martin, "The Dance: Old and New Forms," The New York Times June 14, 1931. In spite of his distaste for American dancers, Levinson held continuous praise for Isadora Duncan, calling her "the exception that proves the rule."

[44] Levinson, quoted in Martin, "The Dance: An Attack."

[45] Levinson, quoted in Martin, "The Dance: Old and New Forms."

[46] Martin, "The Dance: Old and New Forms."

[47] Martin, America Dancing, 44 (emphasis added).

[48] Ibid., 38.

[49] Martin, Reflections, 128.

[50] Ibid., 181.

[51] Levinson, quoted in Martin, "The Dance: Old and New Forms."

[52] Martin, America Dancing, 74-75.

[53] Ibid.,177.

[54] Martin, Book of the Dance, 180.

[55] Ibid., 178-179.

[56] Ibid., 178 (emphasis added).

[57] Susan Manning has written extensively on the co-emergence of "modern dance" and "Negro dance" from the 1930's to the 1960's. She traces their development as "mutually constitutive categories" that elicited a wide range of ambiguous, often contradictory critical viewpoints. See Susan Manning, Modern Dance, Negro Dance: Race in Motion (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), xiii-xxvi. See pages 34-35 for Manning's discussion of Martin's racialized double standard and the "critical conundrum" that he presented to African American dancers.

[58] Patrick B. Miller, "The Anatomy of Scientific Racism: Racialist Responses to Black Athletic Achievement," in The Journal of Sport History 25 no. 1 (Spring 1998): 119-120.

[59] Martin, Book of the Dance, 177-178.

[60] Ibid., 178-179.

[61] Ibid., 189.

[62] Book of the Dance, which I have cited extensively here, is an extended, revised version of Martin's 1946 The Dance. In the 1946 text, his section on "Negro dance" is even shorter, less detailed, and, unlike the 1963 edition, does not contain separate entries on individual African American dancers. While the earlier version lacks the overt essentialism that we see in Book of the Dance, the seeds of this mind-set—the equation of the "human" with the "racial"—are there. Noting that many "Negro artists" drew inspiration directly from "cultural tradition," Martin predicted that, "Eventually, no doubt, the purely objective racial approach to the art will give place to a more universal attitude in which the artist dances simply as an individual human being, allowing his racial heritage to voice itself freely through him but not to limit his range of subject and content." Here, Martin assumes that even within an expanded "range of subject and content," the black dancer's expression of a "racial heritage" will naturally endure. While that heritage may not be reflected in the "objective" subject matter, he suggests, it will remain a part of the subjective, "individual" experience articulated through the dancing body. See John Martin, The Dance (New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1946) 145-147.

Siobhan Burke is a senior at Barnard College. She is working toward a B.A. in American Studies with a concentration in Dance.