Figure 1.--This is a poster from the distinguished Paul Taylor Dance Company that performs regularly at Lincoln Center in New York City and elsewhere. The company is noted for highly very imaginative and creative evocations of the past by the use of costumes and choreography that are purely imaginary but that suggest dress of past eras without attempting to reproduce it accurately. The scene depicted here is from a dance routine entitled "The Word" (1998) .

The distinguished Paul Taylor Dance Company performs regularly at Lincoln Center in New York City and elsewhere. Paul Taylor was one of the individuals that played a major role in creating America's indigenous art of modern dance. This is not a children;'s group, but we mention it here because of its imaginative use of costguming. The company is noted for highly very imaginative and creative evocations of the past by the use of costumes and choreography that are purely imaginary but that suggest dress of past eras without attempting to reproduce it accurately.

Dance Piece: The Word

The scene depicted here is from a dance routine entitled "The Word" (1998) which is an attempt to suggest through dancing, choreography, music, and costume the uniformity of behavior and belief of a purely mythical prep school where life is strictly and severely regulated (figure 1). The adult dancers in this piece are thus dressed in school uniforms that combine certain features of the past (knee pants with suspenders, ribbed long stockings of the late 19th or early 20th century) with modern features (contemporary white shirts and striped school ties). The white stockings are historically inaccurate also because teenage schoolboys of the past (whether in Europe or America) would probably have worn black stockings. The costuming here is based on a fantasy of what boys might be thought to wear in some prep school of a dream world or conjured up theatrical presentation. A reader writes, "One of the interesting features of the poster to me is how the designer has given us a purely fictional image of the past while drawing upon certain stereotypes that a modern public might have in its memory but also modernized to connect the stereotype with what they imagine prep school boys would be wearing today. I think the combination of the historical and the modern in the costuming is revealing. It's a very artful and theatrically effective combination."

Assessment

We cannot assess the technica; characteristics of the dance here. We are sure as our reader comments are correct and that artistically the piece is well choreographed and executed. What interests us is the thought behind the pieces. It is true that prep school students come from the upper range of the economic spectrum, but certainly not just the rich. While uniforms were sometimes the case, dress codes were more common. Uniforms were more common in British private schools. Uniforms did not, however, mean that there was an enforced uniformity of behavior (other than politeness) and belief. We notice even younger British children wearing identical uniforms engaging in spirited debates. (The British schools schools in particulat promote debating.) Our British readers will be aware of a large number of Labour (Socialist) leaders that came out of the private sector, including prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. I would say that based on my experience teaching, there was more conformity in the American public schools I taught at than I saw in the British private schools. My American students didn't wear uniforms, but there were definite self imposed clothing standards. And I am sure that many of my girls spent more time planning their wardrobe than in doing homework. I also experienced a very narrow range of ideas because the students were so poorly read and much more concerned with popular culture than real meaningful ideas. I also wonder about modern American universities. I notice all the emphasis on women studies, ethnic studies, ect. Duke for example has a Marxist study program composed of academics without any real background in economics. And with all of this the studies of the great books of Western civilization have fallen out of favor. I suspect that relatively few young Americans can coherently state the case for free market capitalism while themes like social justice are all in vogue on American campuses. To me that smacks of the uniformity that the prep schools are being accused of by the dancers here. Actually I consider myself a liberal. And to me that means in part an openness to the free expression of ideas, including ideas that I do not agree with. While I am not involved in university life, I do follow the American and British media which I think is a good reflection of social trends in universities. And I horrified as to the degree of bias in the media and their promotion of left-wing ideas to the exclusion of conservative thought. The conformity of ideological bias to me is staggering. I wonder why dancers if they want to raise an edgy issue about modern education do create a routine about how are dsyfunctional inter-city schools are destroying the chabce of millions of minority youth from leading productive lives.

Reader Comments

A university professor writes, " I agree with your comments about the increasing shallowness and ignorance of modern students and the domination of popular culture. It is very sad for me because my whole life as a scholar has been to promote the love and understanding of Shakespeare and other great authors. I went to a prep school for rich boys but there was no great emphasis on conformity apart from a dress code that required jackets and ties most of the time. It was up to parents, for instance, about whether boys could wear long trousers. Some boys did, but other boys still wore knickers. We were not teased or bullied about the knickers since they were fairly common. The only thing I remember is that the boys mostly came from wealthy families and were taught to depise Roosevelt and his New Deal policies. I was a schoolboy when Roosevelt died and Truman succeeded to the presidency. A whole group of boys whooped it up on one of the soccer fields, shouting "The tyrant is dead." My family was Republican, but I remember thinking this was an appalling expression of ignorance and intolerance among a lot of the boys who had no understanding of the hardships of the Great Depression because they came from privilege. I was privileged also as a boy, but I didn't share their contempt for the underprivileged, which is why I generally side with the Democrats today. But I completely agree with you about the political one-sidedness that tends to prevail in today's major universities among the faculty. Part of this of course stems from the decline of the liberal arts in higher education and the rise of job-oriented courses based on financial success and the desire to be part of a big corporation. Most of the students at my university, for instance, especially the foreign students, come here to study business rather than art, literature, or other "impractical" subjects. A great exception, of course, is our famous music school, which draws students from all over the world who want to be opera singers, concert pianists, players in symphony orchestras, and the like. So the picture is not entirely bleak. But certainly materialism is in the saddle. Actually, there is a pretty clear division among students in the universities I know between the "get rich quick" set and those who are much more left-wing and concerned about matters such as the environment, sexual equality, income redistribution, etc."