About Doris Humphrey

Acknowledged as one of the greatest choreographers of the American modern dance movement of the twentieth century, Doris Humphrey (1895-1958) is championed not only as a modern dance pioneer but also as a prolific choreographer, teacher, mentor, and author. Her influence on dance continues to resonate in the works of those choreographers whom she touched and in those who have come after her. Her book, The Art of Making Dances, is still used around the world as a guide for fledgling choreographers.

Her training began in childhood and she was encouraged to study music and all forms of dance. Her professional career began in 1913 as part of a Santa Fe Railroad tour of workmen’s clubs and four years later she traveled to Los Angeles to study at Denishawn, the enterprising school and company spearheaded by its founders, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. While a Denishawn dancer, Humphrey performed all over America and Asia as principal dancer in many of the extravagant Denishawn pageants and spectacles and in the works which she herself was encouraged to create. Tired of the perfumed exoticism of the Denishawn ballets, she abruptly departed in 1928 with her partner, Charles Weidman, to break new ground with their own works that would reflect the American spirit.

These works, revolutionary and mysteriously different for their time, were crafted and based on her innate musical ability and sense of form. Many of her groundbreaking works were based on the principles of fall and recovery, utilizing the body’s potential to travel fearlessly between the polarities of balance and imbalance. During this time she composed some of the all-time hallmarks of twentieth century modern dance repertory including the Color Harmony, New Dance, With My Red Fires, Water Study, Shakers, Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, Duo-Drama and countless others.

When arthritis forced her to retire from performance in 1946, she turned her attention to her protégé, José Limón, and his new company for whom she would serve as artistic director until her death in 1958. For them she would create works that are still regarded as masterpieces. Foremost of these works are Day on Earth, Ruins and Visions, Night Spell, Ritmo Jondo and the epic Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias.

Central to Humphrey’s approach to dance was her belief in its power to communicate the richness, complexity, and pathos of life and to convey the deepest yet subtlest intricacies of human experience. Through motion and gesture, she used the human body as the most eloquent narrator of that experience.

-Authored by Minos G. Nicolas