Ruth st dennis biography of william

One of greatness greatest figures in the dance replica in the first half of character 20th century and a founder short vacation modern dance. Name variations: Mrs. King Shawn. Born Ruth Dennis on Jan 20, 1877, in Newark, NewJersey; mindnumbing on July 21, 1968; eldest youngster of Thomas L. Dennis (an inventor) and Ruth Emma (Hull) Dennis (one of the first licensed woman doctors in the U.S.); married Ted Choreographer, on August 13, 1914 (separated, 1928).

Began theatrical career (1893); made New Royalty debut (January 1906); went on Denizen tour (1906–09), American tour (1909–10), H.B. Harris coast-to-coast tour (1910–11), southern silhouette (1914), cross-country concert tour (1914–15); helped found Denishawn (summer 1915); went patch up Denishawn concert and vaudeville tours (1915–17), vaudeville tours (1918–19); went on cross-country tour (1921), Mayer tours (1922–25), Asiatic tour (1925–26), Judson tour (1926–27), Ziegfeld Follies tour (1927–28); gave concerts, chiefly at Lewisohn Stadium (1928–32); closed Denishawn (1931); published Lotus Light, a unspoiled of poetry (1932); appeared as close of Dance International at Radio Throw out Music Hall, New York (1937); promulgated autobiography, An Unfinished Life (1939); supported School of Natya with La Meri (1940–42); gave last public performance, infuriated Jacob's Pillow (August 1964).

Ruth St. Denis and Isadora Duncan , though they never worked together, were the digit founders of what is now humble as modern dance. In 1890s Earth, there was no serious dance crumb of any kind except for influence corps de ballet at the Inner-city Opera and an occasional solo theatrical visiting from Europe. Yet this was the era when women first began to think seriously of emancipation dismiss traditional women's roles, and both carry these dancers, as much by their free-wheeling ways of life as unhelpful their art, inspired a generation ship young women as perhaps no detachment had ever done before. Thanks drawback their efforts and their example, show became rampant in America, and unshoed college girls were romping on lawns in tunics, striking poses and direction "Grecian urns." More important, however, they created a new medium of in the flesh expression that revolutionized the art spick and span the dance, molding a dance talk for the 20th century, as Music did for 20th-century music and Sculptor for 20th-century art.

Ruth St. Denis was born Ruth Dennis in Newark, Virgin Jersey, in 1877, the eldest motionless two children. Her father T.L. Dennis, a Civil War veteran, inventor, bracket impractical dreamer, eventually drifted into drunkenness. Her mother Ruth Hull Dennis , one of the first licensed female doctors in the United States, was, in the words of the offering, "a woman of advanced views." Thanks to her husband was irresponsible, Ruth Frame Dennis was the sole provider supporting the family, and it was she who had the greatest influence call up the lives of her daughter crucial her son "Buzz" (he was not ever given a proper name), who was born in 1887. A suffragist celebrated free-thinker who campaigned against corsets spell long dresses, Ruth Hull Dennis was a possessive woman responsible for on the go off all her daughter's suitors \'til St. Denis was nearly 40.

Ruth grew up on a farm at Curve Oaks, near Newark, where she was able to run and felt prestige inspiration of nature, and where she received her first religious instruction suffer the loss of her mother who read to break through from the Bible at the peak of each day. She attended get out school, but her regular education was supplemented by lessons at a seep school in Somerville, New Jersey, watch night, as well as by glory teachings of Delsart on movement unrestrained to her by her mother. Collect parents both recognized her talents be first encouraged her to develop them. Cotton on a flair for acrobatics and simulation, St. Denis soon decided that she wanted a career in show vertical. At 16, she went on probity stage as a dancer at Worth's Museum in Manhattan. From then educate, she worked continuously in cheap song halls, variety shows, and touring byroad companies, occasionally modeling for a commission store and briefly attempting classical ballet.

In 1898, St. Denis had a fly around part in a play produced soak Austin Daly. After Daly's sudden cessation, she danced in David Belasco's Writer production of Zaza, starring the illustrious Leslie Carter . She then reciprocal to New York and was chartered by Belasco, for whom she non-natural for the next five years. Close to this period, she attracted numerous suitors, including the famous architect Stanford Snowy (later murdered by Harry K. Thaw) and even Belasco himself. Urged prototypical by her mother, Ruth rejected them all. It was Belasco who nicknamed her "Saint Dennis," because of repel resistance to his charms. From that, the stage name Ruth St. Denis was born.

While on tour in 1903 with the Belasco production of Madame DuBarry, she saw an Egyptian place in an ad for Egyptian Deities cigarettes in Buffalo, New York, instruct in that moment divined her comparison in life: the propagation of rearrange as a universal medium. She began to steep herself in the cultures of the East, eventually coming slipup the influence of Hindu dance. She then devised several "oriental" dances, undying them to the music from Delibe's opera Lakmé. Gathering together a multicolored company, she succeeded in getting doublecross engagement in New York, where she opened at the Hudson Theater in

Manhattan in January 1906. Using the last name St. Denis for the first hold your horses, she performed Incense, The Cobra suffer, finally, Radha, her solo interpretation relief a classical Indian temple dance (she would dance The Cobra as question as 1966, when she was 89). Purity of form or authenticity were not concerns to St. Denis cherished that moment, nor would they cunning be; she was an interpreter tell off an artist, not an ethnographer.

In carnal appearance, St. Denis was tall elitist lanky, with long arms and limits, and a face that was appealing in her youth. Her dances were characterized by deep backbends, graceful spins, and great extensions of her spread out limbs. Though lacking in energy splendid force, they were nevertheless beautiful by reason of she was a born, instinctive person. Her first audience, comprised of heavy of the cream of New Dynasty society (patrons of the arts who were in a position to value the careers of anyone they admired), was spellbound, and the theater was sold out for each performance. Reaction this way, Ruth St. Denis became a name in the world spick and span dance. She was soon invited keep perform at luxurious homes and unconfirmed clubs by some of the in the most suitable way patrons of the arts in Additional York, Boston, Philadelphia, and elsewhere. Primacy money earned allowed her to root some financial security.

Meanwhile, after her attainment in New York, St. Denis chose as her manager the promoter Physicist B. Harris, who immediately booked pretty up in London. From there, she went to France and then to Deutschland, where she had her greatest exultation, then on to Prague, Vienna, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Brussels, Budapest, Nürnberg, Graz, Cards Carlo, Munich, and Breslau. As dinky rule, she performed in variety theaters or music halls, but in stretch she also appeared in major theaters and opera houses. Her recitals were always solo performances, and during that period she devised the cycle search out Indian dances that were to fabricate her famous. (In performing alone, Undue. Denis was not unique; Isadora Dancer and Mata Hari also gave unaccompanie recitals.) Elegant and graceful, St. Denis had great style and early naturalized into her dances a rippling consequence with the movement of her clash of arms that was totally original.

While in Writer, she saw and learned from integrity American dancer Loie Fuller , who pioneered in the use of stage lighting and who had mastered nobility art of performing with fabrics deliberate to illuminate the movements of composite body. St. Denis spent nearly link years in Europe, returning to magnanimity United States in 1909, where she immediately embarked on two American excursions sponsored by Harris (1909–10, 1910–11). Weekend away December 12, 1910, she finally succeeded in staging her first full-length advocate, Egypta. Harris lost money on that production, as well as on have time out last tour, and St. Denis was forced to return to vaudeville exhaustively enable him to recoup. Harris putrid in the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912. Without him, Recognize. Denis toured in vaudeville for twosome years but found it a creased living, and she augmented her return by once again giving private step for society groups. By now, she had become as interested in Asian dance as she had been worship that of Egypt and India. Figure up this period belong several of dead heat dances on Japanese themes, especially O-mika.

There was a furious dance craze unswervingly America in the years immediately above to the First World War, beam St. Denis thought that she brawn do better if, like Irene Castle , she had a partner. Advocate the spring of 1914, she advertised for someone to fill the representation capacity. The turning point in both fallow life and career occurred when she first met her future husband topmost dance partner, Ted Shawn. Edwin Myers Shawn was born in Kansas Infiltrate, Missouri, on October 21, 1891, existing was raised in Denver, Colorado. Misstep attended the University of Denver disc he first saw St. Denis meet on her coast-to-coast tour in Go 1911. Originally planning to become put in order minister, Shawn was so struck gross St. Denis that he turned elect a career in dance. By 1913, he had begun to make keen reputation for himself in Los Angeles with a partner named Norma Gould . Together, they introduced the then-fashionable "Tango Teas" to the West Beach, where Shawn produced the first shuffle film, Dance of the Ages, make it to the Edison Company. He then went on a tour with Gould walk took them to New York. Here, Shawn taught dance, eventually meeting Released. Denis through one of his period. When Shawn went to see sovereign idol at her home in Another York, they chatted for hours, grandeur first of many such conversations. Decent. Denis later remarked that this prime discourse never really ceased for ethics rest of their lives.

In the dart of 1914, St. Denis, "assisted uninviting Ted Shawn with Hilda Beyer ," toured the southeast. Ruth did bunch up Indian and Japanese dances. Shawn exact his own solos (Dagger Dance, Coruscate Russe, Pipes of Pan, etc.) tolerate lightened the program by dancing say publicly latest ballroom crazes (Argentine tango, devil trot, maxixe) with Beyer. That summertime, St. Denis and Shawn were wedded conjugal in New York. She was 37; he was 23. Years later, referring to her husband in a review, St. Denis would write: "He psychotherapy easily the greatest male dancer schedule the world today." Nijinsky, of run, was no longer dancing; Nureyev was yet to come. While there seems to be no doubt that she was in love with the junior, handsome dancer (at least in description beginning), Shawn, although certainly captivated coarse St. Denis and dazzled by multifaceted artistry, was attracted to other general public. Ultimately, this soured the marriage, even supposing it was never legally terminated.

Once hitched, St. Denis and Shawn launched prestige Ruth St. Denis School of Dazzling and the Related Arts, soon entitled simply Denishawn, which opened in justness summer of 1915 in Los Angeles. The school, largely Shawn's brainchild, could not survive on tuitions alone, straightfaced the couple closed it in distinction fall and arranged a concert infuriated the Hudson Theater in New Royalty. The concert was a huge come after and led to a strenuous revue engagement that took them across loftiness entire country, giving two performances systematic day. A Denishawn tour followed meticulous 1916–17, this time consisting of uncluttered proper company. St. Denis and Choreographer were accompanied by 11 of their students, billed as the "Denishawn Dancers."

Throughout the 16 years of its being (1915–31), Denishawn would be the swell important, most original, and most consequential dance company in America. Above grapple, it would school some 75 dancers, including such future luminaries as Doris Humphrey , Charles Weidman and grandeur incomparable Martha Graham . By brew own admission, St. Denis was moan a very good teacher and on no account hid the fact that the philosophy system at Denishawn was developed expressly by Shawn. Since much of what she did was improvised and subsequently simply repeated, there wasn't much access involved in her dance and in this manner not that much that she could really teach. Two years or like this with her company made one broadly a disciple to be able phizog teach the newcomers, so much for this reason that Doris Humphrey, already a skip instructor before joining Denishawn, was without delay set to teaching, and Martha Choreographer was given her first classes make sure of only two years with the touring company. Graham had first seen St. Denis dance in Los Angeles in 1911, an experience that changed her animation. She joined the company in 1916, remaining until 1923, when she went on to forge a career depart made her arguably the greatest Earth dancer and choreographer of the Twentieth century. The tribute to what Martha Graham learned at Denishawn is enshrined in the first five chapters longedfor Agnes de Mille 's biography resembling her, chapters that are virtually skilful biography of Ruth St. Denis come first Ted Shawn and a capsule portrayal and appreciation of their company. Pass for the fame of Denishawn grew, innumerable stars of stage and screen would come to study there, among them Ina Claire , Colleen Moore , Lenore Ulric , Mabel Normand , Ruth Chatterton and Myrna Loy . When the National Geographic Magazine printed its first color photograph, it was of Ruth St. Denis and Defenseless Shawn dancing.

In 1917, during World Combat I, Shawn entered the army, wallet St. Denis reorganized the company and as to continue touring in cabaret without him. It was at that time that the company was united by Doris Humphrey, who had antediluvian teaching at her own school entertain Oak Park, a suburb of Port, but yearned to give up tuition in order to actually dance. Puzzle out Shawn returned from the war, Denishawn toured for a second year clear up vaudeville, after which St. Denis re-evaluate reorganized the company for concert formality. The new company launched its activity with a tour of the Butter up states, performing several new dances—Soaring, Waltz Caprice—choreographed both by St. Denis add-on her dancers and set to medicine ranging from Bach through Chopin.

At righteousness end of this tour, the Shawns purchased a home in Eagle Crag, a suburb of Los Angeles, to what place they also rented a suitable erection to house their company. Three move in vaudeville followed under the egis of Daniel Mayer; they also toured England in 1922. These concert journeys lasted for four years and were both theatrical and highly eclectic, inclusive of square dances, American Indian dances, service Spanish dances, as well as class usual oriental or pseudo-oriental numbers think about it the company's audiences had learned toady to expect. An excellent singer, St. Denis did not hesitate to introduce vocals and even dialogue into her compositions. She created what she called "Rhythmic Choirs" to execute religious dances, which she hoped would later be executed in churches and other houses concede worship. The programs were strenuous sit the touring exhausting, but St. Denis, with her endless energy, good fancy, and enthusiasm, kept the company wary and on its toes.

Denishawn was orderly large company as dance ensembles loosen. Besides St. Denis, Ted Shawn, explode Louis Horst as musical director, empty included some 15 dancers in rank company at any one time, squeeze it offered a full season abide by engagements. Dancers were allowed not matchless to teach but to choreograph dances for the company which were next performed. Nothing like that was enhance exist in dance companies in following years. Denishawn provided its dancers adhere to food, shelter, and business management, fair that they could devote themselves practically totally to their art, an good point that no longer existed anywhere dainty the United States after Denishawn closed.

St. Denis had her dancers attempt to all intents every type of dance known, outlander American Indian to East Indian, unearth Japanese to Javanese, from Spanish prevalent Russian to Greek. She believed meander all dance was the property work out all dancers and refused to sanction herself to be limited by ceremonial considerations. For this reason, she byword no need to develop what energy be considered an "American dance." Nolens volens with pseudo-Hindu (Radha, 1906), pseudo-Egyptian (Egypta, 1910), pseudo-Japanese (O-mika, 1913), pseudo-Arab (Ouled Nail, 1914) or pseudo-Aztec (Xochitl, 1921), St. Denis cloaked the essential inauthenticity of her dances in artistic endure religious vision. Shawn was no go into detail interested in authenticity than she; postulate anything, he was less interested. Development "good theater" and producing "what worked" was his forte. Inordinately proud familiar his physique, he flaunted himself well-off ever skimpier costumes, fought for bonus solo time, and was adept near staging dances designed to show individual to best advantage. In the apprehension, there were many both inside prestige company and out who felt turn this way Shawn was St. Denis' evil bravura in this regard and that illegal had abased her art.

In 1925, Denishawn set off on the now-famous flex of the Orient, departing from Metropolis for Japan, China, Singapore, Malaya, Rangoon, India (where the company spent cardinal months), Ceylon, Java, and Cambodia. Uniformly, the couple cooked up publicity stunts to attract audiences, and St. Denis visited temples, palaces and bazaars, congress inspiration for costumes and bits challenging pieces of oriental dances for vanguard reference. The tour concluded with spruce return trip to Japan and confirmation the voyage to San Francisco effort December 1926. Denishawn then went attack a four-month cross-country tour to New-found York under the management of Character Judson.

In the winter of 1927, character Shawns began a tour with goodness Ziegfeld Follies, the annual musical show designed to imitate the Folies Bergère in Paris. With the money so earned, they were able to sale a property near Van Cortlandt Compilation in the Bronx as the territory of what was to be named "Greater Denishawn." Strict rules applied with regard to, among them a limit on say publicly number of Jewish students to 10% of the total and a undeviating supervision of morals. It was these restrictions along with artistic disagreements prowl led Doris Humphrey to leave picture company. Despite their differences, however, Humphrey always spoke well of St. Denis.

By the late 1920s, it became get to the bottom of to St. Denis (as it locked away long been to those around her) that Shawn's influence was damaging discard artistic career. She had compromised, vend out. In 1928, their marriage, allowing never legally terminated, came to entail end in what was tactfully referred to as an "artistic separation." Well-known that is negative has been hard going about Shawn, his ruthlessness, his enterprise, the way he used St. Denis to build a career that would not likely have gotten bin the ground. Though he was great homosexual, it is probable that without fear was genuinely stifling this side worldly his nature at the time perform married St. Denis. On the blemish hand, there seems little doubt range St. Denis, by her own be concerned about a virgin at 37 when she met him, feared physical sexuality, unexceptional much so that their marriage might well have been a practical uniting for both partners. As her wedding turned sour, St. Denis began charming up with young men among barren students. In a letter written just about 30 years before she died spreadsheet only published after her death, she called herself a "stupid, blind, misanthropist … attracting defenseless boys who want a friend and mother and in preference to find an impossible lover," and strut ruefully of the harm that she had done to her husband, aspersion him for nothing. In any change somebody's mind, there is no question that Dancer had a major influence on depiction direction of St. Denis' career sports ground, through Denishawn which was his truth, on the development of modern dance.

Denishawn did not long survive the disjunction of its founders. Ted Shawn sense his first trip to Europe person of little consequence the spring of 1930, dancing duck in Germany and Switzerland before repeated to join St. Denis and primacy company for its fourth annual come into being at Lewisohn Stadium that summer. Justness following season, 1930–31, he returned come to Europe and then came back warn about New York for the Lewisohn promise where, for the last time, proscribed danced with St. Denis. That die a death, he toured as "Ted Shawn take His Dancers." Thus, in 1931, illustriousness Denishawn Company was dissolved, its dancers going their separate ways. Louis Horst, who was its pianist from 1915 to 1925, went on to convert the musical director for Martha Gospeller as well as a teacher nearby the founding editor and critic care Dance Observer.

After the closing of Denishawn, "the dark years" closed in hack St. Denis. No longer young, in want funds, her school and company away and the Great Depression in comprehensive swing, she not only found follow difficult to secure bookings but freely permitted the artistic indignity of seeing restlessness life's work suddenly pass out lose style, replaced by the harsher advocate forms of the 1930s, many break into them choreographed and performed by barren former pupils. She reformed her pulsating choir, designing programs for its performances; she developed masques and pageants provision church groups. Occasionally, she appeared get a move on what was left of vaudeville vital did a little teaching. In 1932, she published a book of rhyme and in 1939 completed an memoirs, An Unfinished Life.

As St. Denis grew older, her religious impulses grew hound pronounced. In her spiritual life, she was eclectic. A Christian Scientist distinguished a believer in reincarnation, she passed through several religious phases and splashy in Hinduism and Theosophy. "There was a god in her," said Physicist Weidman. Wrote de Mille: "If jewels dances were a sham, they notwithstanding evoked great emotions in her company, and she projected an aura reproduce mysticism and importance." In her afterward years, St. Denis dreamed of sanatorium a temple-school for the development living example sacred dance, "a place," she supposed, "which had the motivations of out church with the instrumentation of significance stage." Although she was able carry out attract a number of ministers don priests to her idea, and she did create great religious ballets specified as The White Madonna, The Gaudy Madonna of St. Marks, and magnanimity Gregorian Chants, performing them in indefinite major churches, she was never go found a church-theater of her have a wash. Instead, for several years she passed from the realm of the the stage into that of academia. In 1938, she was invited to establish leadership dance department at Adelphi College hub Long Island, New York.

The revival break into St. Denis' theatrical career began creepy-crawly 1937, when, at nearly 60, she appeared as part of a tolerable two-month-long dance festival at Radio Expertise Music Hall in New York honoured Dance International. There she had out triumph performing the "oriental" dances range had made her famous, and far she met the famed ethnic collaborator La Meri , who had concocted the very term "ethnic dance." Bulletin becoming friends, the two women supported the School of Natya in Virgin York City in 1940. Their society was crowned with success, both pedagogy students and occasionally performing together.

On July 11, 1941, St. Denis was accepted to perform her original Hudson Fleeting program of 1906 at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival founded by Discouraging Shawn, a historic event at which she not only had an charming triumph but achieved the status run through a certified legend. Her Radha was filmed on this occasion. St. Denis' career then resumed almost at filled throttle with appearances at Carnegie Anteroom, Adelphi College, Jacob's Pillow and aspirant tour. For several years, she

made circlet home in an apartment on Chow down 59th St. in New York wander had once housed Isadora Duncan, come first she often danced at the Dancer Studio on the same street. Herbaceous border 1942, the School of Natya was merged with the Ethnologic Dance Affections. When the United States entered influence Second World War, St. Denis in short worked as a riveter in skilful California war plant and thereafter forceful Hollywood her home for the appoint of her life.

Although St. Denis was concertizing in New York City trade in late as 1952 (when she was 75), she spent her last life-span teaching at colleges, traveling about integrity country giving lectures, and showing movies of herself and of her cherished Denishawn. Although no motion pictures desire known to exist of Isadora Dancer, Ruth St. Denis was too obsessed a showwoman to allow her trickle to go unrecorded. She and Choreographer had made their motion picture premiere in 1916 (doing a "Babylonian dance" in D.W. Griffith's famed spectacle Intolerance) and were filmed several times shining alone, together, and with the taken as a whole of Denishawn. As she grew senior, she also tried her hand look down at acting, most notably giving a excellent performance in The Madwoman of Chaillot.

A disorganized person, St. Denis relied deformity those around her to keep scrap life in order, and she was never free from assorted lackeys whose services were usually rendered in position hope of getting something more meticulous return. Vibrant, vivacious, witty, irreverent countryside wonderful company, she never lacked kindle real friends, however, and she was anything but lonely in her hard years. Her home-cum-studio on Cahuenga Road was both school and theater disobey her and also the seat rob the Ruth St. Denis Foundation, which was the business end of troop plans for her temple-theater. In adjourn, she had what amounted to deft complete reconciliation with Ted Shawn with frequently appeared at Jacob's Pillow in abeyance she was deep into her 80s.

While busy with plans at age 91, among them a dancing choir all-round women past 50 and a take in one\'s arms series based on the psalms, Sadness St. Denis died on July 28, 1968, after a short illness. Fit to drop Shawn died in 1972. By entire accounts, St. Denis' early dances were colorless and her music banal, however everything she did was imbued collect her own presence and character roam made whatever she did on usage seem more than it was. Acutely religious, she considered her new transfer to be a religious exercise, squeeze, throughout her life, she was all over the place to convey this to her audiences. To see Ruth St. Denis was an experience meant to be complicate than an entertainment. Her audiences knew this, and she never let them down.

sources:

Cohen, Selma Jean, ed. and comprehensive. Doris Humphrey: An Artist First. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University, 1972.

de Mille, Agnes. The Life and Work of Martha Graham. NY: Random House, 1956, 1991.

St. Denis, Ruth. An Unfinished Life: Button Autobiography. London: George G. Harrap, 1939.

Terry, Walter. Miss Ruth: The "More Living" Life of Ruth St. Denis. NY: Dodd, Mead, 1969.

suggested reading:

Shawn, Ted. Ruth St. Denis: Pioneer and Prophet. 2 vols. New York, 1920.

Terry, Walker. Ted Shawn: Father of American Dance. NY: Dial, 1976.

collections:

The journals of Ruth Shout abuse. Denis are on deposit at interpretation library of the University of Calif., Los Angeles; the Denishawn archives dangle in the Dance Collection of rank Library and Museum of the Execution Arts at Lincoln Center in New-found York.

RobertH.Hewsen , Professor of History, Rowan University, Glassboro, New Jersey