Ted Shawn's core contribution to the dance world lies in all of the information I have already posted on this page. Every single biography I find about Ted Shawn attributes almost all of his success to his all male dance company. What Ted did for male dancers changed the future for every aspiring male dancer out in the world. He paved the way and created a world where it was more accepted for men to dance. However, he did more then that with his work.
Other men danced before Ted came along. There were men in ballet companies and other male modern dancers in his time, but Ted did something to stand out. He looked at what men did in their daily lives and created dances inspired from that. He really got to the heart of the physicality men were capable of. It wasn't always the grandiose physicality of modern dance that he portrayed either. In a dance titled "Labor Symphony", it is evidently clear of Ted's "work day" inspiration. There is a link below to a video of a cast dancing this four section piece, but the message is still quite clear. All four sections show the hard working man through the movement Ted created.
In the first section entitled "Labor of the Field", the MC states that the inspirations come from harvesting, cutting wheat, gathering, thrashing, and a celebration at the end. In the second section, "Labor of the Forrest", cutting a tree, sawing a tree, killing a small animal, and then carrying the log off stage are what inspired Ted (the picture on the left shows men today carrying a large log, and then a picture of Ted's company "carrying" a log).
In the third section, "Labor of the Sea" it is once again, "manly" behavior that takes hold of Ted. Carrying the boat, rowing the boat, casting a net, pulling in the catch, and then carrying off the boat are once again, very predominate. Finally, in the fourth section, Ted took to a more "modern" approach to the movement."Mechanized Labor" looks at the comparison of how the body moves fluidly and machines move rigidly. Each section comes off as extremely masculine in its movement, and even in this video, which is a cast of females, the masculine nature of the movement is evident.
Without Ted Shawn, men may have never been allowed into the dance field and been taken seriously. It seems like such a small contribution to such a large filed, but even today, the ratio of men to women is so large that what Ted did should never be forgotten. Perhaps it is because I am a male dancer that I find this to be his biggest contribution, but I doubt that. When all writers credit Ted for this "simple feat", it is hard to ignore.
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