The source that helped me to understand the contributions to “French” music that Caryathis made was found in Legacies of Twentieth Century Dance. Caryathis became a dancer against the wishes of her family and ran away from them to Monmartre and began her dance career. She worked with multiple contemporary artists such as Staats and Jean d’Udine. Under d’Udine she began to learn how to do choreography. Her style became characterized by eroticism and also a Spanish style. She also choreographed the dances to Satie’s “La Belle Excentrique”. These pieces used parody and jazz that anticipated Les Biches. [1] This source helped me to understand that Caryathis was performing contemporary music that fit with Satie’s satirical style and that was very contemporary.
The author of this book is Lynn Garafola who is a professor at Barnard College and studies music history. She has written a number of papers and books about this subject. She is writing from a feminist perspective on female choreographers in the twentieth century. She views women in ballet as victims of a system of representation that idealized them and of male-dominated institutions that dominated them. This perspective on the women about which Garafola writes will color how I interpret her writing. In general, I think that she is attempting to bring some academia into the world of dance, where she seems to think there is skepticism and not enough research. Yet, her style of writing is surprisingly void of academic jargon and is very clear.
[1] Garafola, Lynn. Legacies of Twentieth-century Dance. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2005. Print.