Ruth St. Denis was an American dancer and choreographer, who was one of the founders of modern dance and was noted for being a co-founder of the American Denishawn School of Dance. Her work was characterized by its religious and Far Eastern content.
Background
She was born on Januiary 20, 1879 as Ruth Dennis in New Jersey, United States, the daughter of Thomas Laban Dennis, a machinist and amateur inventor, and Ruth Emma Hull, who was the second female graduate of the University of Michigan Medical School but was prevented from practicing medicine by a nervous ailment. Her parents met at an artists' colony near Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and after Dennis divorced his first wife in 1878, they entered into a "marriage by contract, " without benefit of clergy or license.
Education
St. Denis attended the nearby Adamsville School and Somerville High School in New Jersey. She took classes in ballroom and skirt dance from a local teacher, and her mother drilled her in exercises based on the Delsarte theory of expression. She studied at the Dwight Moody Northfield Seminary in Massachusetts. During 1896-1897 she also attended the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn.
Career
In early 1894 St. Denis obtained her first professional job as a skirt dancer at Worth's Family Theatre and Museum. From 1900 to 1904, St. Denis appeared with David Belasco's theatrical company in plays such as Zaza and Madame Du Barry. While touring abroad with the Belasco company, she visited the Paris World's Exposition of 1900 and was deeply affected by the Oriental exhibitions, the art-nouveau-influenced dance of Loie Fuller, and the mime of the Japanese artist Sada Yacco.
Still touring with the Belasco company in 1904, St. Denis spied in a drugstore window in Buffalso, New York, a poster depicting an Egyptian goddess. The poster became a catalyst in the creation of her solo dance career. She left the Belasco company, assembled a company of East Indian immigrants, and choreographed a dance, Radha, which was performed at the New York Theatre in January 1906. For subsequent performances at the Hudson Theatre, she added "St. " to her surname. Radha made St. Denis famous. A blend of exotic spectacle and morality tale, the dance depicted a Hindu goddess who wrestles with, but overcomes, the temptations of the flesh. The dance established the basic form, theme, and exotic trappings of St. Denis' choreography for the next fifty years.
With the success of Radha, from 1906 to 1909 she toured Europe, where she danced for King Edward VII of England and was lionized by artists and intellectuals, including the Austrian poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Returning to America, St. Denis toured as a solo artist until World War I, pioneering a place for dance on the legitimate concert stage.
In the summer of 1915 along with her husband she opened the Ruth St. Denis School of Dancing and Related Arts in Los Angeles. Denishawn, as the school became known, catered to silent-film actresses and aspiring dancers, including Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey. The Denishawn company toured the United States from 1915 through 1929, creating an American audience for dance and pioneering a modern dance style under the direction of "Miss Ruth" and "Papa Shawn. "
In the summer of 1925 the company embarked on a fifteen-month tour of the Far East, where its pseudo-Oriental dances were performed to great acclaim. Denishawn became the focus of the central conflict in St. Denis' career. Though her roots were in variety and vaudeville, she thought of herself as an artist with a spiritual mission. In 1919 she formed the Ruth St. Denis Concert Dancers to experiment with "music visualization, " but financial difficulties soon forced her back into the more popular and financially secure Denishawn fold. This conflict ultimately destroyed St. Denis' marriage.
In 1929, as the stock-market crash signaled financial ruin for Denishawn, the Shawns separated, though they never divorced. St. Denis, now middle-aged, found her art eclipsed by her own students, among them Martha Graham. She spent the 1930's impoverished, trying to resurrect her career.
With the onset of World War II, she moved to Hollywood, where her brother built her a studio. In April 1945 she appeared with Ted Shawn at Carnegie Hall, their first joint concert in fifteen years.
In 1966, at the age of eighty-seven, St. Denis made her last public dance appearance at Orange Coast College in California.
She died in Hollywood.
Achievements
Ruth St. Denis was the first in the Western world to introduce to a legitimate audience Oriental and Eastern dancing. Founding the Rhythmic Choir, she devoted herself to liturgical dance, choreographing such works as The Masque of Mary at Riverside Church in New York City in 1934. She also published a volume of poems, Lotus Light. In 1938 she founded a dance department within Adelphi University's School of Arts, the first program of its type in the country. In 1940, with La Meri (Russell M. Hughes), she founded the School of Natya to continue the teaching of South Asian dance. Besides, Ruth formed a Church of the Divine Dance in Hollywood, where she conducted dance masses and rituals.
With the publication of her autobiography, An Unfinished Life (1939), and the revival of her historic dances, St. Denis created for herself a new role as matriarch of American modern dance.
Religion
She had a lifelong study of Oriental philosophies, particularly Vedanta, and during this period became a Christian Scientist.
Views
With the help of some Indian friends, Miss St. Denis danced the radha, a freestyle Indian dance. The dances were accompanied by European music performed on Western musical instruments.
Ruth was to develop two then-unique concepts, 'music visualization' which links movement with musical structure and 'synchotic orchestra' which ties a single dancer's steps to an individual instrument.
Connections
In 1914 she hired a partner, the young dancer Edwin Myers ("Ted") Shawn. On August 13, 1914, St. Denis and Shawn were married, despite the protests of St. Denis' mother, who jealously guarded her daughter's career. With Shawn assuming charge, St. Denis found her art institutionalized. Ruth and Shawn broke-up in 1931, though they never divorced and did continue occasional joint projects such as the Jacob's Pillow Festival, so named for its home, the Massachusetts farm which Shawn bought in 1931.
In 1964, despite their long separation, the couple celebrated with great fanfare their golden wedding anniversary at Shawn's summer dance festival at Jacob's Pillow, Massachussets.
