Background
Tamiris was born in New York City on April 23, 1905. She was the daughter of Isor Becker, a tailor, and Rose Simonoff, who immigrated to the United States in the 1890's. She grew up on New York's Lower East Side.
Tamiris was born in New York City on April 23, 1905. She was the daughter of Isor Becker, a tailor, and Rose Simonoff, who immigrated to the United States in the 1890's. She grew up on New York's Lower East Side.
She began dance lessons at age eight. Tamiris was trained in two forms of stage dance - the interpretative from Irene Lewisohn at the Henry Street Settlement and the natural from a Duncan descendant at Carnegie Hall. She studied Italian ballet with Rosina Galli and Russian ballet with Michel Fokine.
After graduation from high school, she joined the Metropolitan Opera corps de ballet, with which she performed for three seasons. She also performed for one season as second premiere danseuse with the Bracale Opera Company during its South American tour in 1922-1923; for six months in the last Music Box Revue, in 1924-1925; and for one season in the presentations of John Murray Anderson in nightclubs and movie houses during 1925-1926.
During the late 1920's, Tamiris began her revolt against the traditional types of dance. She announced that artists in America, a new civilization, must create new art forms. She chose to present her new art within the open arena of concert dance. American modern dance was growing out of her innovations and those of Martha Graham and of Doris Humphrey, with Charles Weidman, and was aided by the writings of the critic John Martin and the musical forms of the accompanist Louis Horst.
Her opening contribution to modern dance was made during 1927-1929 in twenty-seven solo dances for seven concerts--four in New York and three in Europe. She abandoned traditional mimed stories, theatricality, and atmosphere. Her dances were characteristically contemporary American, using jazz in 1927 (1927, with music by George Gershwin); uniquely no accompaniment for The Queen Walks in the Garden (1927); contemporary music in Impressions of the Bull Ring (1927, Gómez Calleja) and Twentieth-Century Bacchante (1928, Louis Gruenberg); and sounds such as the beating of piano strings in Prize Fight Studies (1928) and sirens in Dance of the City (1929). These dances made bold statements in both theme and accompaniment. They defined in dance, as others were doing in other arts, the dynamic spirit, vigor, speed, verve and motion of American life.
She spoke for humanity and democracy in her dances, most eloquently in a repertoire of solos based on "Negro spirituals" (by which term they are collectively known), which had for her an extemporaneous air of freely expressing the feelings of the moment. The theme of the suffering blacks was set to choral singing: "Nobody Knows de Trouble I Seen" and "Joshua Fit de Battle ob Jericho" (1928); "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" (1929); "Crucifixion" (1931); and "Git on Board Lil Chillen" and "Go Down Moses" (1932).
Tamiris led in the formation of the Dance Repertory Theatre (her contributions were self-accompanied dances), which provided common theatrical support for her and the other modern dancers, but such cooperation among these artists in revolt against all traditional restraints existed for only two brief seasons, 1930 and 1931. In her School of the American Dance, opened in the fall of 1929, Tamiris approached students with a method later infused with ideas from method acting, which emphasized the innate ability of each student to be expressive. Thus, through the years, she developed no identifiable dance technique. Rather, students learned to be creative out of their own resources. Tamiris formed her Group, for which she created the following New York productions: the joyous song Walt Whitman Suite, comprising Salut au Monde, Song of the Open Road (first movement), I Sing the Body Electric, Song of the Open Road (second movement), and Halcyon Days (1934, Genevieve Pitot); the socially conscious manifesto Cycle of Unrest, comprising Protest (Elie Siegmeister), The Individual and the Mass (Hindemith), Affirmation (Alexander Mossolov), Camaraderie (Siegmeister), and Conflict (Henry Brant) (1935); the antiwar dirge Harvest, 1935, comprising Sycophants (Hindemith), Middle Ground (Shostakovich), and Maneuvers (Hindemith-Debussy) (1935); and the percussion piece Momentum, comprising Unemployed, SH!, Legion, Nightriders, Diversion, and Disclosure (Herbert Haufreucht, 1936).
In a 1935-1936 Midwest tour by Tamiris and ten dancers, Tamiris disseminated modern dance, now an identifiable dance genre, one that, she said, had the ability to express modern problems and to make audiences want to do something about them. This sense of mission for dance in large part determined the effectiveness of the Federal Dance Theater of the Works Progress Administration, for which Tamiris choreographed works from 1936 to 1939. A leading figure in the Concert Dancers' League, a supporter of the New Dance League, chair of the American Dance Association, and a member of theExecutive Committee of the New York Dance Project, Tamiris pushed dance into the federal project. She choreographed another major work on the plight of blacks, How Long, Brethren?, and one on the civil war in Spain, Adelante. By the time of this last production, the federal project lost funding and ceased to exist. The onset of World War II canceled any further development of public support of the arts.
Success on Broadway came with Up in Central Park in 1945 and continued until 1957. She became known as a vital creator, unique in her skill at seeing a musical whole, with all its elements balanced to preserve its integrity. Bringing the drive of her new art to revivify dance in the commercial theater, Tamiris choreographed, staged, and directed dances in eighteen Broadway musicals, many of which had long runs: Up in Central Park (1945), which was notable for "The Skating Ballet" and which had national and European productions; Annie Get Your Gun (1946), notable for "Wild Horse Ceremonial Dance, " danced by her husband, Daniel Nagrin, with New York City Center, London, and national productions; a new production of Show Boat (1946); Inside U. S. A. (1948), notable for "Haunted Heart" and "Tiger Lily, " with Valerie Bettis as dancer; Touch and Go (1948), which was notable for "American Primitive" and "Under the Sleeping Volcano, " danced by Nagrin and Pearl Lang, and for which Tamiris received an Antoinette Perry Award; Fanny (1954); and Plain and Fancy (1955), which was notable for "By Lantern Light" and "On the Midway, " featuring Nagrin, and which toured nationally and was also produced in London. Tamiris directed and recreated her dances for the movie version of Up in Central Park (1948). She also created dances for the film Just for You (1952), with Nagrin as soloist.
Tamiris returned to concert work during the summers of 1957 and 1958 and taught during the summer at the Perry-Mansfield School of Theatre and Dance in Steamboat Springs, Colo. , from 1956 to 1958 and at Connecticut College in 1959. The Tamiris-Nagrin Dance Company was formed in 1960 and existed until 1963. The two dancers separated in 1964. Tamiris died in New York City.
Tamiris was beautiful, splendidly vital, tall and statuesque, with golden hair.
In the fall of 1941, Tamiris began a personal relationship with the dancer Daniel Nagrin, and they married on October 6, 1946; they had no children.