"No Daughter of Mine is Going to Be a Dancer!:Dancing for Agnes de Mille and the Giants of Dance in the 40s" by Sharry Traver Underwood
In “No Daughter of Mine is Going to Be a Dancer!: Dancing for Agnes de Mille and the Giants of Dance in the 40s” (ISBN 1470086182), Sharry Traver Underwood recounts her wild and amazing life as a celebrated dancer on the theatrical stage at a critical turning point in photos and words. Her path to the stage was never clear cut or easy, as family expectations forbid her from chasing fame and even taking dance classes.
Despite her father being an accomplished athlete and her mother’s musical prowess, Underwood’s parents prohibited her from theater and dance. At the age of 20, she rebelled and ran away to Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in its inaugural 1942 season. Her first class was with Joe Pilates. She credits its founder, Ted Shawn, for saving the life of her dancing dream. With no money, she took a circuitous route to Broadway, performing in Texas and Georgia while earning a master’s degree in dance. After beginning her career with the Starlight Operetta in Dallas, she took off to New York with no more than $100 to her name.
In the big city, she rejected the traditional approach to dance and won a lead role as the Bloomer Girl for dance giant Agnes de Mille. Throughout “No Daughter of Mine is Going to Be a Dancer!,” readers are taken into performances and classes with some of the top choreographers of the 1940s: Charles Weidman, Hanya Holm, Michael Kidd and Alwin Nikolais. Underwood records the offstage life of dancers, particularly in a society that scorned them, in an era very different from our own.
Underwood’s reminisces are written in the piquant prose style she developed in her mature years as a dance critic in Vermont, and thirty historical dance photographs taken in performance add further documentation. A lively memoir of a spunky dancer who defied both the conventions of her trade and the expectations of her family, “No Daughter of Mine is Going to Be a Dancer!” is an insider’s history of an American dance era that until now, has remained largely unwritten.
“It is a wonderful first person account of being a dancer in the 1940s—it will complement so
many of our collections and benefit our patrons in their research,” said Jan Schmidt, curator of the Jerome Robbins Dance Collection at NYPL at New York’s Lincoln Center.
“No Daughter of Mine is Going to Be a Dancer!: Dancing for Agnes de Mille and the Giants of Dance in the 40s Last Stop This Town” is available for sale online at Amazon.com and other channels.
About the Author: Sharry Traver Underwood was born in 1922 in Harrisburg, Pa. After her family prohibited her from dancing, she ran off and earned scholarships to study dance at Syracuse University and Texas Women’s College. She made her way to New York, dancing in performances with the famed Agnes de Mille. After marrying Wynn Underwood, she moved to Vermont to form a dance company and become a dance critic.
MEDIA CONTACT
Sharry Traver Underwood
E-mail:
Website: www.daughterdancer.com
REVIEW COPIES AND INTERVIEWS AVAILABLE
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Direct link: https://prnewschannel.com/2012/08/09/memoir-of-1940s-dancers-life-highlights-her-spunky-approach-to-life-art/SOURCE: Sharry Traver Underwood
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