In in Baltimore, a unique collaboration occurred between the chemistry department of Johns Hopkins University and the dance program at the Peabody Institute.
Film of the performance was deteriorating among dozens of canisters in the Peabody archives when, in , dance faculty member and centennial programming director Lisa Green-Cudek started hunting for old material. With a grant from the Maryland Humanities Council, a version of the exhibition travels the state during the rest of this year, accompanied by talks and performances. A conference for dance historians was held in March.
Dance as dance officially started at the Peabody in , when the school brought Gertrude Colburn to lead the program, adding ballet trainingβone of the few outposts in the United States outside of New York to have such a thingβand barefoot aesthetic dancing in the mode of Isadora Duncan, the mother of modern dance. Support for dance at the Peabody also came from railroad heiress and amateur dancer Alice Warder Garrett. In the early twenties, Warder Garrett hosted the Russian avant-garde designer Leon Bakst to transform her Baltimore mansion, Evergreenβspecifically adding a theater with a small stage where she could take ballet class every morning.
For years, Warder Garrett would invite Peabody dancers to practice their barefoot repertoire on the grounds of the estate and perform in her theater, the only theater in the world designed by Bakst. Colburn laid the foundation for integrative dance at Peabody, training Lillian Moore, who went on to dance with Balanchine and become one of the first dance historians in the United States.
Colburn brought onto the modern dance faculty Bessie Evans, who researched extensively with Native Americans across the country in order to publish American Indian Dance Steps in , with her sister May. The book is still considered the authoritative manuscript on Native American Dance, offering step-by-step instruction on how to recreate the dances. The Evans sisters were part of a new interest in historical and world dance sweeping through the American dance community, spearheaded by the Denishawn dance company, a short-lived but influential partnership between dancers Ted Shawn and Ruth St.
