{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.023035230352303523, 'fraction_numerical': 0.005420054200542005, 'mean_word_length': 5.366379310344827, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Nation, Class, and Ethnicities in Modern Dance of the 1930s

Modern dance in Depression-era America distinguished itself from other forms of theatrical dancing by its "primitive" style and psychological content. The primitive aspect of psychological content led to modem dance's markedly affective--or emotional--expression. But the role of what I shall refer to generically as "feeling" was not limited to physical styles; it also played a part in the cultural politics of subjectivity subtending class and racial tensions during the Depression. In fact, it was through theatrical manifestations of feeling in modern dance that concepts as different as psychological depth and ethnic identity became symbolically wedded to movement. Once psychology and ethnicity were concomittantly embodied, as it were, modern movement could bear testimony to national, class, and ethnic identity. In other words, expressive bodies conveyed significant ideological content, and were themselves ideological constructs. A critical theory of ideology is, therefore, indispensable to the reassessment of modem dance during this period. The ways in which personal bodily experience and ideology were conjoined in modem dance performance can be illustrated not only by dances, but also by the modernist critical discourse generated in response to them. The general aim of this article, however, is to explore the relation between performances of feeling and ideology in modern dance of the 1930s.