Ruth Page: The Woman in the Work

In Ruth Page: The Woman in the Work, the Chicago ballerina emerges as a highly original choreographer who, in her art, sought the iconoclastic as she transgressed boundaries of genre, gender, race, class, and sexuality. Author Joellen A. Meglin shows how her works were often controversial and sometimes censored even as she succeeded in roles usually reserved for men in the ballet world: choreographer, artistic director, and impresario. From extensive dramaturgical analysis of her most famous ballets DL La Guiablesse, Frankie and Johnny, Billy Sunday, Revenge, The Merry Widow, Camille, Carmina Burana, and Alice DL to embodied re-imagining of an avant-garde solo performed in a "sack" designed by Isamu Noguchi, this biography follows the global reach of Ruth Page's career spanning the greater part of the twentieth century. In the process of discovering the woman in the work, one encounters with an international cast of dancers (Anna Pavlova, Harald Kreutzberg, Frederic Franklin, Alicia Markova), composers (William Grant Still, Aaron Copland, Jerome Moross, Darius Milhaud), visual artists (Noguchi, Pavel Tchelitchew, Antoni Clavé), and companies (Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Ballets des Champs-Elysées, London Festival Ballet). Disrupting notions that New York was the only cradle of the American ballet, and George Balanchine, its exponent to eclipse all others, Ruth Page explores the woman's unique sensibility, corporeal praxis, and collaborative ethos to reveal her Chicago-centered network of creativity.

Table of Contents:
Dedication Acknowledgments Overture PART I: INTERNATIONAL STIRRINGS 1. From Pavlovita to Première Danseuse 2. World Travelers: Chicago Allied Arts and Beyond 3. "Gone Modern": Skyscrapers, Sacks, and Sticks 4. A Surprising Partnership: Page/Kreutzberg PART II: BALLET AMERICANA 5. White She-Devil in an Otherwise Black-Cast: La Guiablesse 6. "Jungle Jazz": A Murder Trial in Ballet 7. "Ghosts of Harlem": A Blues Ballet 8. America's First Feminist Ballet: An American Pattern 9. Embodying "Lowlife" in High Art: Frankie and Johnny 10. Victory Garden: Danced Poems in the Time of War 11. Postwar Anomie: The Bells 12. Bible Stories Meet Music Hall: Billy Sunday PART III: COSMOPOLITAN CHOREOGRAPHIES 13. The Remaking of the Choreographer: Revenge and the European Market 14. A Woman's Will: The Merry Widow 15. The Woman Who Could Not Sleep 16. Grand Finale Key to Endnote Abbreviations Endnotes Index Poetry Credit Lines

About the Author :
Joellen A. Meglin, long-time editor of Dance Chronicle: Studies in Dance and the Related Arts and professor emerita of Dance at Temple University, has published extensively on Ruth Page and American ballet. Her re-imagination of Page's solo Expanding Universe was recently presented at the 92nd-Street Y and the Noguchi Museum in New York.

Review :
Pages creations truly come to life and jump off the page thanks to Meglins thorough descriptions.... The analysis is particularly strong in exploring the music for each dance and how it contributed to the dramaturgy. There are fascinating collaborators for each work, and the chapters function as a making-of or behind-the-scenes look at her dances a delicious dive into the imagination and artistic journey of a gutsy innovator.... Meglin offers the reader a visceral understanding of Pages creative process. an absolutely admirable work of dance scholarship. Although full of detail and history, the writing is fluid and highly readable--it often feels like storytelling Meglins expertise as well as her passion for her subject matter shine through in her generous, rigorously researched, and comprehensive biography of Ruth Page. Meglin makes a compelling argument for a renewed examination of Pages overlooked contributions: this is a readable and engaging study of an American Midwestern choreographer whose works were unorthodox, experimental, inflected by the rhythms of jazzand female. Ruth Page: The Woman in the Work is an inspiring portrait of an innovative and boundary-breaking artist. Finally, a full-length study of a major woman leader in ballet, whose prolific career brought her into contact with many of the most celebrated artists in twentieth-century modernism. Meglins rich analysis of Pages work—experimental, collaborative, populist, and committed to a female point of vie—woffers a timely and much-needed alternative to the discourse of neoclassicism that has long monopolized ballet history. Impeccably researched and elegantly written, this book is an extraordinary and essential contribution. Dancer, choreographer, daughter, sister, wife, impresario, and visionary, Ruth Page... was an American dance treasure... The author uncovers Page's inquisitive boldness, spotlighting choreography-e.g., Alice in the Garden (1970) - that championed feminism and challenged gender roles. Meglin, who has published widely on Page, is an established dance historian, choreographer, and dance re-imaginer. She expertly infuses methodologies from these areas into this meticulously researched, skillfully written, accessible tome. At its heart, this biography also functions as cultural history and dramaturgical analysis, weaving together engaging movement description, critical reception, sociopolitical and aesthetic contexts. The book wonders: What might a womans artistic directorship of a major ballet company in the United States look like? This central question ponders ... what experimentalism it might offer to ballet creativity, repertory, and audience development.... Meglins biography reveals a strong counter-narrative to monolithic ballet histories that present the art form as a purely highbrow, heteropatrichal product emanating from the genius of men in New York City. The author uncovers Pages inquisitive boldness, spotlighting choreography— e.g., Alice in the Garden (1970)— that championed feminism and challenged gender roles."— The book is very thorough and detailed, and if that's the kind of writing that speaks to you, this book is for you. For me, it's quite dense. I feel like much of the discourse about Page and the artists in her world, while fascinating, could have been abridged significantly.