Doris Humphrey began studying dance and movement in 1916 with the Denishawn Company. In 1918 sh joined with Charles Weidman to form the Humphrey Wiedman Company. Soon she was working out on her choreography not only innovative ideas of body movement, but also her philiosophy of the individual relationship to society.  

In 1935, at Bennington, she premiered New Dance. Highly ambitious, New Dance was a work of acclamation, a portrait of a world as she thought it should be. In it, a group of women, and another of men are gradually led to accept a unifying way of life, at ultimately to fonction harmoniously in Society.

But these are the litteral ideas behind it. It can be viewed as well as a classic celebration of pure movement.  

New Dance represents a world where each person has a clear and harmonious relationship to his fellow beings. To achieve this the leaders (originally Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman) mold and unify the group in a series of stages or “themes”. The triumphant and joyous ending, Variations and Conclusion, depicts an ideal society that allows for individual expression within group unity. Performed at the American Dance Festival with Linda Tarnay and Peter Woodin in the roles of Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman.

Source: Dance Works of Doris Humphrey Part 1

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Doris Humphrey was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1895 and grew up in Chicago. Her father operated a residence home for vaudeville performers called the Palace Hotel, and her mother offered piano lessons. As a girl, Humphrey studied piano, ballet, ballroom dance, Americanized Delsarte and Dalcroze's system of Eurythmics. A talented dancer, she began teaching ballet and interpretive dance to children when she was 15. During the next few years, Humphrey traveled the Santa Fe railroad line with a variety troupe, giving performances to railroad employees of her home-made aesthetic dances and Spanish numbers. When she returned home to Oak Park she began her own studio with her mother as accompaniest and business manager.

By 1931, the Humphrey and Weidman companies and their joint studio/school were firmly established in New York City. With Graham, Humphrey was considered by most critics to be a primary innovator of the new modern dance. Her theory of "fall and recovery"-- and the technique that sprang from it--was the foundation of her teaching method and her choreography. Underlying it, according to Humphrey, was the German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche's idea about the split in the human psyche between each person's Apollonian side (rational, intellectual) and our Dionysian side (chaotic, emotional). The true essence of the modern dance was the movement that happened in between these extremes, which Humphrey labeled "the arc between two deaths."

Source: University of Pittsburg

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pitt.edu

Specialists in the publishing and distribution of dance books and dance videos for over 35 years, with a list of over 500 dance related titles. We publish under the imprint Dance Horizons and distribute for The Dance Notation Bureau and Dance Books Ltd. In March of 2000 we launched a new imprint to publish books of general interest, Elysian Editions, with The Magic Of Provence: Pleasures of Southern France by Yvone Lenard. Visit our Elysian Editions pages to see Ms. Lenard's books as well as other titles under this imprint.  

Source: Princeton Book Co. Publishers

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