Ruth St. Denis and two unidentified dancers in Egypta.

Sarony, Otto — Photographer. 1910

Notes: National Endowment for the Arts Millennium Project.

Source: Denishawn Collection (more info)

Repository: The New York Public Library. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Jerome Robbins Dance Division.

Dance occupied a back seat in the theatre of the performing arts in the latter part of the nineteenth century, but it began to come to prominence with the craze for the cakewalk starting in 1896. Loie Fuller’s Serpentine Dance of twirling scarves and lights entranced audiences from 1902 and in 1906 Ruth St. Denis presented herself in a full length work Radha.

But it was in the second decade of the twentieth century that dance took center stage. Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn established the Denishawn School in 1915 whose dancers explored the modern repertoire for years to follow.