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Preface
As a child, I loved dance from the moment I put on my first leotard and tights and experienced the grandeur of ballet's traditions unfold in technique class. My small town in Pennsylvania had a long history of novelty dance and a more recent history of ballet, but modern dance was completely unknown in our studios. It was not until I received a scholarship at age sixteen to attend Pennsylvania's Governor's School for the Arts that I first encountered the form through visiting artists from New York City. The absence of modern dance deep into the 1970s in Pennsylvania has always made me wonder how local dance histories affect regional understanding of the art form and when local artists may affect the national scene. Certainly, the brilliant work of Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis, or, later, Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey, had little impact on my own hometown. Yet dance was alive and thriving in its own particular way, in many instances with a language that was influenced by its own prominent teachers rather than national figures.
When I moved to Boston in 1994, I became very curious about the city's early dance history. Casual conversations with established modern