The May Fete--a dance tradition

I'm not sure if Miss Dieman is in this particular photo, but she was in the group of college women that did these dances.

The (rather blurry--sorry!) photo is from a copy of the Coe College yearbook documenting the 1923-24 school year. Miss Dieman was a junior, and she was part of the Campus Fete, also known as the May Fete.

Each year, a May Queen was chosen from the student body, and a celebration--with costumed dances on the lawn of the campus--was held in her honor.  This wasn't just at Coe. May Fetes seemed to be a tradition all around the country. Just with a quick Google search, I found May Fete photos from U of Illinois, Carleton College, Pomona, and my alma mater The College of Wooster.

The dances in these celebrations arose from a turn-of-the century trend toward encouraging women to exercise. No more fainting Victorian maidens!  But acceptable exercise was limited: one 1900 editorial from a badminton magazine said this:

“. . . unlimited indulgence in violent, outdoor sports--cricket, bicycling, beagling, otter-hunting, paper-chasing, and--most odious of all games for women--hockey, cannot but have an unwomanly effect on a young girl’s mind no less than her appearance . . . Let young girls ride, skate, dance, and play lawn tennis and other games in moderation, but let them leave field sports to those for whom they were intended--men.”

Luckily, dance made the list of "appropriate" activities. 

The newly (and partially)-liberated young women were trained in several popular movement styles. One had been pioneered by Francois Delsarte, and was named for him. It taught combinations of movements to express emotions. "The object of art is to crystallize emotion into thought and give it form," said Delsarte.

Delsarte movement instruction was quite elaborate. Students learned a vocabulary of gestures.  Here are a few from a book called Delsarte System of Expression:

Description of action:  head level between shoulders, inclined neither to right nor left, up nor down.

Signification:  Calm repose or indifference

Description of action:  Head leans toward object, but must not be raised, depressed, or rotated.  

Signification:  Trust, tenderness, sympathy, affection, esteem from the soul.
 

Description of action:  head thrown back, midway between the shoulders

Signification: exaltation, explosion from self as a center, a lifting to the universal.

When I look at these May Fete photos, I wonder if the dancers were influenced by Delsarte.

Today we may not be very impressed by these dancers' costumes, but imagine: the women in these photos were usually trussed up in corsets, stockings, and skirts every day. It must have been incredibly freeing to dance barefoot on the lawn.

I've noticed that most of the women in the pictures have bobbed hair.  No more heavy buns and elaborate hairstyles.

May Fete dancers probably also took some cues from other dance and movement pioneers of the era, like Eugene Jacques Dalcroze.  Dalcroze gave his name to a school of movement that sought to teach rhythm and musical expression through movement. Miss Dieman spent two summers studying the Dalcroze methods in New York City after she graduated from Coe.

The lightly-clad figures in these photos also make me think of Isadora Duncan, who pioneered her own form of dance based on natural movements. One of the May Fetes that Miss Dieman participated in had a Greek theme, like many of Duncan's dances.

I am sure that these experiences with dance on the soft green lawns of a college campus influenced Miss Dieman to continue on with dance, and to bring dance to the lives of others.

Grandmothers in Dance

If you're from Cedar Rapids, my current hometown, you probably know these two women.  They are Julia Bennett (left) and Edna Dieman (right), the founders of a long-running dance studio here in Cedar Rapids.

Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett are my grandmothers in dance.

I don't know if "grandmothers in dance" is actually a thing, but it means this: they were the teachers of my ballet teacher, Suki Morrisey. (Yes, at age 52, I take ballet classes, twice a week, with other ladies . . . of a certain age. I am grateful for the opportunity.)

Suki, who was the Sugar Plum Fairy for many Nutcracker performances of the Dieman-Bennett Dance studio, sprinkles our "Adult Intermediate" ballet classes with anecdotes about Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett, who were apparently formidable teachers--full of passion and high expectations for all their many, many students (they taught here for 40 years). I love hearing these stories.

We often heard about "Miss Bennett's notebooks," which were, according to Suki, a set of large blue three-ring binders that Miss Bennett had filled with typewritten stories and remembrances of her life: her memoir. Suki hoped that the stories in those notebooks would live on, somehow, after Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett had passed away.

At some point, it dawned on me. I am a writer: maybe I can help share the story of my dance grandmothers . . .

I talked my ideas over with a friend, choreographer and dance instructor Carol Maxwell-Rezabek--could we somehow bring Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett's words, ideas, and dances to life for a contemporary audience?  We decided to try.

This summer, we began our work, learning about Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett by going through their papers, memoirs, diaries, VHS tapes, newspaper clippings, photographs, and Miss Bennett's Notebooks--housed at the Iowa Women's Archives. You can't imagine how delightful this work was. Or maybe you can.

This fall, I hope to interview with people who knew Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett--former students, collaborators, people involved in the arts in Cedar Rapids--to get more perspective on their work.

Our goal? Carol and I hope to create a multi-media presentation that shares images, words, music, and dance by and about Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett.

I'm not sure how long it will take us to create this presentation. In the meantime, I thought I'd share some images I've discovered and reflections on what I'm learning about Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett.

One of the images I discovered was this one. Don't they look elegant?  they look like they are wearing some kind of ethnic clothing--kimonos or, more likely, something from India.

The photo appeared in the Gazette, the local paper in Cedar Rapids, in March of 1951, just before Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett performed for the first time in Cedar Rapids as guest artists of the Beethoven Club.  They called the program their "triumvirate performance," as it blended 1. singing, 2. dancing, and 3. piano music.  Miss Bennett sang--songs from Schumann's Dichterliebe Song Cycle--Miss Dieman danced (while Miss Bennett sang Schumann, and to music of India and Spain) and Alma Turachek, professor of music at Coe College played piano.

The article notes that this was not the first performance. The program's debuted January 7, 1951--in New York City.

Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett met in New York City in 1945. Miss Dieman was there studying ethnic dance and working for the Center for Ethnologic Dance. Miss Bennett had just arrived from India, where she had grown up and where her British parents still lived, hoping to make a start as a professional singer. Apparently Miss Bennett had very little money, but she did have authentic Indian saris, which Miss Dieman bought.

"It was there, at the ethnological Dance Center, that I met Edna Dieman, Director of the Center," writes Miss Bennett in her Notebooks. "It was her birthday and I remember it well.  Her eyes were like stars and looked through me like laser beams.  It was a meeting that would change my life."

Miss Bennett's notebooks are deliciously dramatic.

This photo is a visual record of the importance of that meeting. In 1950, the two women came to Cedar Rapids--Miss Dieman's hometown--to teach a summer dance class. They ended up moving here. They started their dance studio in a small room at the YWCA, teaching ballet.

They were always multi-faceted artists. They didn't just teach ballet--they taught Spanish dance, Hindu dance, and Baroque dance, too.  There were yoga classes, and classes for adult students, like the one I'm taking now. Miss Bennett continued performing as a singer, and the Dieman-Bennett Dance Studio was known for its extensive collaborations with other arts organizations in town.

This is just the first photo that documents their impact on Cedar Rapids.  It's a hint of things to come.

As Gazette Arts writer Dee Ann Rexroat wrote in 1990, "Miss Dieman and Miss Bennett.  The names are synonymous with dance and the arts in Cedar Rapids."

Over the next week or so, before things get too busy at Coe, I'll use this blog to share a few more of what I've discovered about my influential grandmothers in dance.