Its promise of a new life proved balm for trying times. Here we are, in fire-devastated Los Angeles , once more in need of renewal. Let our story begin in , when year-old Graham and her father rode a ferry to L. For St. Denis, dance could be a mystical, philosophical and sexual pursuit, encompassing traditions from the far East, Native American cultures and Hollywood. Graham was an instant convert. From that moment on, she knew what her mission in life would be.
Denis and her partner, dancer Ted Shawn, soon founded the Denishawn School downtown, where Graham got her start. As dance historians well know but our town has well forgotten, modern dance began in Los Angeles. However much the shocking destruction of neighborhoods, of favorite haunts and of classic L. The fact is that far fewer of our landmarks have been lost to environmental disaster than to unnatural development.
We dispose and build. We create, for better and for worse, a continually changing city. Denishawn is now ancient L. By the early s, Graham had moved to New York. Copland was a Brooklynite. The ballet concerns the wedding of antebellum South settlers in a Shaker village in Pennsylvania.
The ballet had its premiere at the Library of Congress in Its abstracted scenario is a kind of back to the basics, expressing the sanctity of home, devotion and nature.
The couple is starting out together with little. All is sliver thin. Yet L. The climax is a horrendous German burning of a village, as striking for its visual imagery as for its agitated music. The Soviet Union was soon no longer our ally, and the picture was viewed as left-wing Communist propaganda. A decade later, it was edited for television to turn the Ukrainians into bad guys. The film ends with villagers fleeing the fire, in hope of returning and rebuilding when the war is over.
