Abstract
Stage dance in Mexico grew increasingly privatized in the 1940s, when the party in power shifted to more conservative policies and added “institutional” to its previous “revolutionary” title. This chapter examines how gender norms and artistic expectations shifted during this period, and how these changes played out on the stage. Dancer-choreographer Nellie Campobello no longer received acclaim for dancing the masculine roles of a revolutionary soldier. At the same time, Waldeen and Anna Sokolow arrived from the United States with modern dance and the art of falling and recovery. The dancers and the public in Mexico embraced the visitors and the novel possibilities of movement they introduced. However, Nellie Campobello attempted to preserve 1920s standards of nationalist purity, and her company folded as a result.
Dance happens in the frightening moment between falling and recovering.
—Doris Humphrey
The original version of this chapter was revised. An erratum to this chapter can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92474-8_5
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29 September 2018
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Notes
- 1.
Writer Martín Luis Guzmán returned from exile in 1936. He used his connections and experience to both support and exert influence upon Campobello in her dance productions as well as her writings.
The titles of pieces she created during the Cárdenas years signaled a single-minded patriotism aligned with the nationalist ideology:
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“Bugle” (Clarín) (1935)
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“Barricade” (Barricada) (1935)
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“Seed” (Simiente) (1935)
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“Land” (Tierra) (1936)
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“Flag” (Bandera) (1937)
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“Columns” (Columnas) (1937)
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- 2.
Waldeen’s Ballet del Teatro de las Artes also did a brief performance tour of “La Coronela” at United States universities in 1941, sponsored by Nelson Rockefeller.
- 3.
The 1940s were also the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. In the 1930s, Fernando de Fuentes created disenchanted films about the revolution . His “Vámonos con Pancho Villa,” 1935, demystifies Villa ; John Mraz calls it “an anti-epic” (Mraz 103)
- 4.
Nonetheless, after her departure Sokolow chose Mexico for the debut of her piece “Kaddish” (1945), a prayer lament about the Holocaust. One of Sokolow’s most acclaimed and lasting pieces, “Lyric Suite,” also made its debut in Mexico, in 1953.
Bibliography
Texts
del Río, Carlos. “Nelly y Gloria Campobello, creadoras de danzas.” Excélsior, 1930: np.
Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation,” Framework, Vol. 36 (1989): 68–81.
———. “Interview,” México en la Cultura, July 1956: 4.
———. “Los nacionalismos en la danza: construcción del cuerpo social e individual,” in La identidad nacional mexicana en las expresiones artísticas, eds. Raúl Béjar and Héctor Valdés. Mexico: Plaza y Valdés/UNAM, 2008: 81–95.
———, ed. Mujeres de danza combativa. Mexico: Conaculta, 1998.
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Guerrero, E. (2018). 1940s: The Falling Body. In: Dance and the Arts in Mexico, 1920-1950. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92474-8_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92474-8_3
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