Doris Batcheller Humphrey was an American dancer and choreographer of the early twentieth century.
20 Facts About Doris Humphrey
2.
Doris Humphrey was born in Oak Park, Illinois, but grew up in Chicago, Illinois.
3.
Doris Humphrey was the daughter of Horace Buckingham Humphrey, a journalist and one-time hotel manager, and Julia Ellen Wells, who had trained as a concert pianist.
4.
Partly due to financial concerns Doris Humphrey opened her own dance school, with her mother as manager and pianist, in 1913 at the age of 18.
5.
Doris Humphrey toured the Orient for two years followed by a successful career in American vaudeville theaters.
6.
Doris Humphrey's theory explored the nuances of the human body's responses to gravity, embodied in her principle of "fall and recovery".
7.
Unlike the Denishawn approach in choreography, finding inspiration from abroad, Doris Humphrey sought inspiration from within her home, America.
8.
Doris Humphrey was a participant of the Federal Dance Project, created in the 1930s as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Second New Deal.
9.
Doris Humphrey expanded her choreographic work to Broadway in 1933 with School for Husbands and again the following year with Life Begins at 8:40.
10.
Doris Humphrey was on the original faculties of both The Bennington School of the Dance and The Juilliard School, both directed by Martha Hill.
11.
In 1952 Doris Humphrey started directing a new dance company for children called The Merry-Go-Rounders.
12.
Doris Humphrey died in New York City on December 29,1958, and was buried at Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois.
13.
Doris Humphrey theorized that moving away from center should be followed by an equal adjustment to return to center to prevent a fall.
14.
Doris Humphrey believed that movement should represent emotion but not to the same extent that Graham had.
15.
Doris Humphrey's eye was more clinical, in a way, with most of her works relating to the interactions of an individual or group.
16.
Doris Humphrey wanted the dancers to move to their natural breathing patterns as they represented the natural movement of water.
17.
Doris Humphrey wanted dance to be an art that could stand on its own without the need of music or emotion and concentrated on the formal elements of movement such as design, rhythm, and dynamics.
18.
Doris Humphrey's best known work however, brought music and emotion back into play.
19.
Thirty-five of Doris Humphrey's dances are documented in Labanotation by the Dance Notation Bureau.
20.
Siegel makes a case for Doris Humphrey being one of the more important figures of modern dance.