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dancers from the community always elicited the same comment: “When I arrived in 1970 [or 1950, or whatever year that person arrived], there was absolutely nothing happening in dance in Boston.” The number of responses of this nature combined with the great variety of dates that these dancers mentioned piqued my curiosity about what sort of historical dance tradition the city had and, specifically, what sort of relationship the city had to expressive dance as it emerged in America during the early twentieth century. I have focused my research on three questions: what trends in health reform, women's rights, and expression set the stage for acceptance of expressive movement as an art in Boston and what populations supported this change; who were the most influential teachers and performers; and what was being taught in the schools and offered choreographically to Boston's citizens?
As Boston gained wealth and prominence in the new world, its upper-class citizens saw themselves as responsible for its intellectual and cultural development. Boston's interest in becoming the modern “Athens of America” is often celebrated through its architectural and literary accomplishments. There was also a movement, however, to restructure older puritanical perceptions that the body is sinful. This movement was led by women's rights activists and proponents of physical culture, and the founders of the movement adopted an ancient Greek ideal of the body as beautiful in its most natural state. Although this trend was national, upper-class Bostonian women used their power and prestige to support these social and cultural changes within the region. Eventually, they rallied behind movement and expression and were instrumental in sponsoring Boston's first schools of expressive dance.
I specifically selected the Braggiotti Denishawn School, The Miriam Winslow School of the Dance, and the Hans Weiner Studio because they were tied to this elite community of Bostonians and influential across time in developing and shaping the region's experience with dance. Evidence of other schools exists, such as the school run by Lila Viles Wyman, who studied ballet with dancers from Italy and also advertised interpretive dance at her studio. Others, such as The Biyar School and the Morgan Dancers, offered what appears to be a “Duncanesque” style