Within the Might 1939 concern of The American Dancer, a predecessor to Dance Journal, a handful of well-known dance artists shared “their pet likes and dislikes” for a narrative titled “Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down!”
Likes included musings on the career, comparable to “the woman who learns to guide in addition to comply with” (ballroom dancer and instructor Arthur Murray) and “dancers who make it their enterprise to know the historical past and background of the dance” (ballet dancer and instructor Leon Fokine, nephew of Michel), and tongue-in-cheek commentary, like “a spot to identify whereas doing a set of pirouettes in efficiency” (American ballerina Karen Conrad) and “audiences of any sort wherever—they’re the shoppers in order that they have to be proper!” (musical theater duo Grace and Paul Hartman).
As to dislikes: “individuals who apologize for his or her dancing and do nothing to right it” (Murray), “posing for photos” (Conrad), “American choreography!—besides Catherine Littlefield’s” (Fokine), and “individuals who don’t like canine” and “robes that tear and the man who invented hoop skirts” (the Hartmans).
However maybe most hanging have been fashionable dance matriarch Martha Graham’s responses. She gave thumbs-up to “a dance type which has its roots within the lives, customs, traditions and pursuits of 1’s personal individuals,” “good theatre,” “skilled dancing of any kind,” “cleanness of line and economic system of motion,” and “dancers who’ve an consciousness of at the moment.” On the thumbs-down facet: “pretentiousness and artiness,” “any try to justify poor dancing by an thought, irrespective of how good the concept could be,” “those that don’t acknowledge the necessity of technical base for the dancer,” “the dancing of slogans which could be displayed to raised impact on banners!” and “self-expressionism.”
