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Dancing Americanness: Jane Addams's Hull House as a Site for Dance Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2013

Jessica Ray Herzogenrath
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Abstract

This paper explores the role and influence of dance education in Jane Addams's Hull House from its opening in 1889 through roughly 1900. I contend that the ideology of middle- and upper-class women of the Progressive Era, asserted through channels like Hull House, privileged particular forms of dance over others. In effect, they denied the validity of American vernacular dance as a legitimate movement vocabulary. To illuminate these Progressive postures, I investigate the trajectory of American dance education in relation to Jane Addams's attitudes toward diversity, the role of art, and the value of dance at Hull House. I draw from women's, race, and cultural studies for this project and employ historiographie analysis. By contextualizing the elements above, I suggest that as a site of socialization and education Hull House assisted in maintaining the separation of “acceptable” and “unacceptable” dance in the United States.

Type
Research Article
Information
Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings , Volume 40 , supplement S1: Dance Studies and Global Feminisms , 2008 , pp. 111 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2008

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References

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