John Durang
| John Durang | |
|---|---|
| Born |
January 6, 1768 Lancaster, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Died | March 31, 1822 (aged 54) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Spouse(s) | Mary McEwen (d. 1812) |
| Parent(s) | Jacob Durang Catherine Durang |
John Durang (6 January 1768 – 31 March 1822) was the first native-born American to become known as a dancer. Said to be George Washington's favorite performer, he was famous for dancing the hornpipe, a lively, jiglike solo exhibition so called because it was originally performed to music played on a woodwind instrument known as a hornpipe.
John Durang was the eldest of seven children born to parents who had immigrated to the United States from the Alsace region of northeastern France, bordering Germany. His father, Jacob Durang, was from Straßburg; his mother, Catherine Arten Durang, was from Weißenburg. Soon after their arrival in 1767, they settled in York County, Pennsylvania, in the German-speaking region whose inhabitants are still known today as the Pennsylvania Dutch (Pennssilfaanish Deitsch). John Durang was born in Lancaster, in the home of his mother's sister, but he grew up mostly in nearby York (aka Yorktown). He was educated at the Christ Lutheran Church school, where instruction was in German, supplemented by French and English. He had no formal dance training, but he was, according to his memoirs, attracted to the liveliness of the hornpipe, which "charmed his mind," while he was still a boy. As early as 1780, at age twelve, he learned "the correct style of dancing a hornpipe" from a visiting French dancer and made it his specialty. At fifteen he left home, went to Boston, and in 1785 joined Lewis Hallam's theatrical company, where he acted in "La Friçassée," a comic number, and danced the hornpipe between acts.
Hallam's company advertised its performances as "lectures," as plays and ballets were then legally banned, and specialized in presenting patriotic extravaganzas. During his first season with the company, Durang took violin lessons from a musician named Hoffmaster, who composed a tune for him that became known as "Durang's Hornpipe." Hoffmaster's given name is absent from records of the time. As he was quite short, under four feet tall, he is described as a "German dwarf." His tune was an immediate hit and is still popular among bluegrass fiddlers of today. Durang continued to dance to it for many years, as it had become his signature piece, but he augmented his hornpipe repertory with other tunes. In 1790, he danced a nautical-style hornpipe in The Wapping Landlady, a comic piece about an amorous landlady and a group of Jack Tars. His performance of the number solidified his reputation as an unparalleled performer of the dance. The tune for it is still thought of as "The Sailor's Hornpipe."
Around this time, as the federal anti-theater laws were being relaxed, many European performers began to visit the United States. From his collaboration with such choreographers as Alexandre Placide, Jean-Baptiste Francisqui, James Byrne, and William Francis, Durang acquired skills in classical ballet, acting, fencing, acrobatics, tightrope walking (rope dancing), clowning, pantomime, choreography, and theater management. He toured with the Hallam troupe for seven years, performing as Saramouche in a harlequinade called The Touchstone, while dancing and playing other roles. In 1791, he was possibly the first American actor to appear on stage in blackface, as Friday in a production of Robinson Crusoe. In 1794, he appeared in Ann Julia Hatton's Tammany: The Indian Chief, whose hero, also called Tamanend, was a popular figure in local history. It was one of the first operas written in the United States with an American subject and is the earliest known drama about Native Americans. Soon thereafter, Durang danced with well-known ballerina Anna Gardie in La Forêt Noire, the first serious ballet given in America.
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