Everything Under The Sun: Tracing American Dance Through Art

The exterior of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

Bentonville, Arkansas, located in the middle of the US, is home to the CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART. This museum explores the history of America through through its collection of outstanding works of art. Through its exhibits, the museum is enhancing visitors' understanding and appreciation of this country and themselves.

Besides the art works within, the museum is surrounded by the beauty of the nature around it. The building is set in 120 acres of Ozark forests, which enable visitors to enjoy their natural surroundings as an augmentation of their artistic experience. Three miles of nature trails allow leisurely exploration of surrounding flora and fauna.

Like most museums, Crystal Bridges hosts temporary, and traveling, exhibitions. One current traveling exhibition is the Art of American Dance, now open through Jan. 16, an exploration of the interaction between dance and art. The museum already had some works contained in some examples of its rare book collection.

Dance has historically been an important aspect of the lives of Native American tribal members, utilized in ritual and spirituality. For European-Americans, their relationship with dance has been highly influenced by the Christian beliefs that were brought with them. Many of these newer additions to the American land mass viewed dances performed by Native Americans less as spirituality and more as deriving from evil spirits or demons.

John G. Bourke, noted in The Moquis of Arizona, in 1884, "The Cochino Dance never was openly revived so long as the Spaniards could prevent it; yet it is possible that the Dance of the Tablet may have afforded a satisfactory substitute. And, further, may not these exercises have been a compromise between the prejudices of those who tenaciously clung to the old heathen rites and the inclinations of others whom fear, venality, superior intelligence, or hidden sympathy attracted to the doctrines of the conquerors."

In the early to mid-twentieth century, gender roles changed and became reflected in performance arts, such as dance, theatre, and literary themes. Burlesque was a reflection of some of these changes. The women performers engaged in this type of dancing did not only show their dancing skills but also their artistic talents, when they performed in comedy sketches and drama.

Bernard Sobel noted this in his section on "Burlesque in Pigments" in The Theatre in Art, "Where is the canvass and the etching that embodies this nefarious search for the joy of living - this passage to paradise by way of the runway? All these matters are assuredly authentic Americana, to be snatched up eagerly before it is too late."

Etching by Troy Kinney from his book, Etchings of Troy Kinney, 1929.

The emotionality of dance, along with the personification of nature, was part of what was conveyed in dance in the nineteenth century. This is reflected in a poem, "The Dancing Lesson" published in Union's Magazine,
"A nod and a smile, and away she flew
To the woods she loved and the waters blue;
But the mother sighed, with a thought between
A hope and a fear, for that cheek's soft sheen
Told her heart that too soon the world would
The joy, now her sweetest of joys to name."