Book contents
- Vaughan Williams in Context
- Composers in Context
- Vaughan Williams in Context
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Graphs and Tables
- Musical Examples
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Editorial Note
- Bibliographic Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Biography, People, Places
- Part II Inspiration and Expression
- Part III Culture and Society
- Part IV Arts
- Chapter 19 Literature
- Chapter 20 Visual Art
- Chapter 21 Theatre, 1895–1914
- Chapter 22 Dance
- Chapter 23 Film
- Part V Institutions
- Part VI Reception
- Further Reading
- Index of Works
- General Index
Chapter 22 - Dance
from Part IV - Arts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2024
- Vaughan Williams in Context
- Composers in Context
- Vaughan Williams in Context
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Graphs and Tables
- Musical Examples
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Editorial Note
- Bibliographic Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Biography, People, Places
- Part II Inspiration and Expression
- Part III Culture and Society
- Part IV Arts
- Chapter 19 Literature
- Chapter 20 Visual Art
- Chapter 21 Theatre, 1895–1914
- Chapter 22 Dance
- Chapter 23 Film
- Part V Institutions
- Part VI Reception
- Further Reading
- Index of Works
- General Index
Summary
This chapter situates Vaughan Williams’s involvement with dance in a capacious network of literary, theatrical, choreographic, and visual associations. Dance – performed (such as ballet and modern solos) and participatory (such as folk dance and other forms of social dance) – is crucial to understanding conscious and subconscious efforts at cultural renewal in interwar Britain, efforts that in turn should be understood as a response to the devastation of the First World War and as part of the story of modernist experimentation. In this context, Vaughan Williams’s important composition for the ballet Job: A Masque for Dancing, first staged in 1931, having been premiered in Norwich as a concert work the year before, was a crucial contribution to interwar dance history. Job’s context is the vibrant, formative, intensely experimental interwar period of twentieth-century British dance history. Job belongs to what cultural historian Susan Jones calls ‘an important transitional moment in British dance’; new experiments in collaborative theatre and dance stirred excitement, and Job was staged amidst a creative ferment that intermingled British and continental artists and visions. Job shared with much experimental interwar British theatre a focus on daring and provocative experiments with dance drama as cultural commentary.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Vaughan Williams in Context , pp. 188 - 195Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024