MURA DEHN

Most jazz aficionados may not have heard of Mura Dehn (1902-87), but she played a significant role in the genre’s development. A white woman, Dehn discovered jazz as a young girl studying classical dance in her native Russia. Her appreciation deepened when she moved to Paris in the 1920s to further her studies, hanging out with progressive artists such as Josephine Baker. Dehn eventually came to New York, where she was a regular at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom, and “immersed herself in Black social dance.” As Vaccaro, professor emerita of dance at Rider University, puts it, Dehn “boldly wrote about it, beginning in the 1930s, when few others were paying attention.” Vaccaro has written this revelatory biography “to uncover what led a white, Russian, Jewish woman to an act of cultural preservation, and serves to credit, name and bring to the fore some of the artists who were the creators and originators of Black social dance during her lifetime.” She focuses on three main areas of Dehn’s career: the Academy of Swing, which Dehn co-founded in “an attempt to define the form and rhythm of jazz dance”; a film, The Spirit Moves, four volumes of footage shot between 1950 and 1984 that Vaccaro calls “one of the most important films made of the chronology of jazz dance in her time”; and Dehn’s Traditional Jazz Dance Company, the achievements of which included the show Rag to Rock and worldwide tours under the auspices of the State Department, including an eight-country tour of Africa. Vaccaro interviews figures who worked with Dehn, including Allen Blitz, who served as the dance company’s manager. And she does a good job of showcasing Dehn’s achievements, as well as the resistance she encountered from those who distrusted her because she was an outsider, a woman, and white.