Christensen Brothers: An American Dance Epic

Debra Hickenlooper Sowell

Apr 2014 · Routledge

About this ebook

With members of four generations deeply involved in music and dancing, the Christensen Brothers are indisputably the United States' closest equivalent to the European tradition of dance dynasties. Their story sheds light on the history of ballet in twentieth-century America, both through their accomplishments as dancers, teachers, and company directors, and through their association with some of the most significant figures of the dance world such as Lincoln Kirstein, George Balanchine, Sol Hurok, and the Ford Foundation's W. McNeil Lowry. This triple biography encompasses the brothers' Mormon pioneer heritage, the circumstances that led them to enter vaudeville with a ballet act, and the rise and fall especially in the American West of companies with which they were associated for over six decades of their lives. This book provides an alternative to the New York-oriented volumes that so often pass as histories of American dance.
Debra Hickenlooper Sowell received the De la Torre Bueno Special Ci

About the author

Debra Hickenlooper Sowell has a Ph. D in Performance Studies from New York University. She teaches at Brigham Young University and is an authority on dance among the Mormons. A formner member of the Cambridge Court Dancers, she has interests that extend to Renaissance court performances and to the romantic ballet in Italy. In 1992she received the John M. Ward Fellowship at the Harvard Theatre Collection. She has served on the board of directors of the Society of Dance History Scholars.