Until I became involved in dance, I believed that art is public property. It seemed there was a definite connection between the personal, even intimate character of the artist's process and the generosity with which he or she relinquishes a work when it is completed. This interchange might partly define the altruism that people have associated with artists—up to the twentieth century anyway.

Since the last millenium, Western culture has undergone many drastic shocks that have redefined the transaction known as artmaking. Mechanical and electronic reproduction techniques have put the uniqueness of the art object into question. They have transformed visual arts and music into commodities—”cheapened” them by diminishing their exclusivity and multiplying the number of people who can enjoy them. Yet dance continues to elude capture by the potent, ever-present media of films, video and computers. A dance is still a singular event—but, it seems to me, one that's even more vulnerable now to disappearance. Dance images submerge almost instantly in the flood of other visual stimuli that's constantly washing over us; dance is everywhere but the choreographic entity has resisted translation to film. As an inherently live phenomenon dance preserves its aura of spontaneity and surprise, but it loses some of the visibility, and the standards and protections, that benefit artworks with a more permanent format.

Modern dance pioneer Doris Humphrey (1895–1958) is remembered today primarily for her dances and her theory of choreography, but her contributions to the dance extend far beyond the development of repertory and composition. She was a beautiful and accomplished performer, velvety and strong. She was a gifted educator, who influenced recreational students as well as professional dancers and teachers. She was also a brilliant technical innovator who, using the natural movements of the human body as the basis of her technique, developed a unique language of movement with which to communicate her experiences as an artist living in twentieth-century America.

Based on principles of movement, Humphrey's technique is less idiosyncratic than the technique of other modern dancers. Systematic in its practice, if not in its curriculum, the technique was never codified into a syllabus of repeatable exercises. The way in which it was taught by Humphrey and others is distinctive, and is as important an aspect of the technique as the movement principles upon which it was founded. Humphrey's teaching methodology grew from a progressive philosophical perspective towards education to which she had been exposed during her years as a student at the Francis W. Parker School. This paper will examine the Parker approach and trace its influence on Humphrey's emerging technique and teaching methodology.

In 1954, when I was dancing in Harriette Ann Gray's company, Doris Humphrey (with whom Harriette had danced in the 1930s) invited us to see a run-through of the reconstruction of With My Red Fires she had staged with Juilliard students. Karen Kanner was an astounding six-foot-tall Matriarch. I remember sitting in a cramped studio of International House feeling not as if I were watching dance, but as if I were surrounded by forces on the verge of slipping out of control. The following year, Day on Earth was presented on one of the mixed bills Bethsabée de Rothschild sponsored at the ANTA theater. I think I remember (could it have happened?) Day on Earth and Cave of the Heart back to back! José Limón, Letitia Ide, and Ruth Currier performed; I thought it was the best modern dance I had ever seen (although I hadn't seen much and vastly preferred doing to watching).

Humphrey's Dawn in New York in 1956 galvanized me into auditioning for Juilliard Dance Theater—then a semi-professional company under Doris's direction, open to anyone. Accepted, I took Doris's composition course—her last, it would turn out. I had studied Modern Forms with Louis Horst, but I had also been taught to think of composing a dance in terms of locating a great emotional eruption within and running with it. Harriette Ann Gray had shown me the impulsive, ecstatic side of Humphrey-Weidman dancing and its potential for communicating feeling. Doris's guidelines for composing dances were refreshingly objective. I later came to see a slight rigidity in her viewpoint; much 1960s vanguardism would have fallen beyond her pale. At the time, I found it liberating.

Doris Humphrey's deep humanistic concerns, as stated in dances such as New Dance and Passacaglia, and her dedication to the group as the most essential element of choreography might have allied her with those enthusiastic and vociferous dancers in the 1930s who were dedicated to effecting social change through movement. But although her image of a perfect society would seem to echo the visions of social equality promised by the new Soviet Union, visions which deeply influenced the work of many artists on the political left, she was not readily welcomed by the leftist contingent in dance. In part this was the result of Humphrey's ambivalence about the creative role of the group and her understanding of the singular nature of the artistic process. In part it was the result of her interest in abstraction and her disinterest in more concrete depictions of reality. Humphrey's approach, while visionary, was not essentially political because it did not deal with the “real” world. Writing about New Dance she described an idealized world, “where each person has a clear and harmonious relationship to his fellow beings” (1). The community in New Dance was an imagined community, perfect because it was not real, perfect precisely because it was removed from the passions and imperfections of 1930s America. This article explores the role of the group in articulating Humphrey's social vision and places it alongside experiments in group choreography by leftist dancers during this period.

Immersion in the 1955 summer session of the Connecticut College School of Dance was a notable experience in my life. The opportunity to reminisce about Doris Humphrey and other seminal figures in residence in New London takes me on a splendid journey into the past. It was the eighth season of the American Dance Festival and the assembled artists/faculty represented the créme de la créme of modern dance. These teachers who inspired and nurtured approximately 160 students included: Louis Horst, assisted by Doris Rudko; Martha Graham with teachers from her company, David Wood and Alice Uchida; Margaret Dietz, a disciple of Mary Wigman; Pauline Koner, assisted by Lucy Venable; José Limón, assisted by Betty Jones; Lucas Hoving with his wife Lavina Nielsen; and the subject of this Centennial Celebration, Doris Humphrey, assisted by Ruth Currier. Other artists such as Pearl Lang and her company were in residence, but did not teach. In addition to these luminaries were composers, musicians, designers and critics. Norman and Ruth Lloyd, Simon Sadoff, Hazel Johnson, George McGeary, Pauline Lawrence, and George Beiswanger, among others, added their gifts to that summer's harvest.

The majority of the faculty not only taught but choreographed, performed, and/or directed work for the American Dance Festival scheduled for 18–20 August. Repertory for five different programs included seven premieres among the eighteen works of that season. Most of the pieces for the festival emanated from the Humphrey/Limón Group. Martha Graham, the other dominant artistic contingent, was not represented. Pearl Lang, long associated with Graham (as a principal soloist) presented her own choreography. The lineup of work by choreographer/performer members of the José Limón and Dance Company included: Limón (two new works); Hoving and Nielsen (two works, one of which was new); Currier (two new works); Koner, Guest Artist with the Limón Company (one new work); and Humphrey (one new work and one revival).

Nona Schurman, one of the foremost authorities on the Humphrey style and technique, studied and danced with the Humphrey-Weidman concert group from the late 1930s to the mid 1940s. Now a tireless octogenarian, Schurman still uses the movement principles developed by modern dance pioneer Doris Humphrey as the basis of her teaching and choreographic work. Co-author of Modern Dance Fundamentals (1), a technical manual based on Humphrey-Weidman principles, Schurman is currently writing a book on choreographic devices which will complement Humphrey's seminal work on the subject, The Art of Making Dances (2).

“The way to understand Doris,” Nona Schurman has said, “is to see her dances. We can talk all we want, but Doris is revealed through her work” (3). The clues to understanding the dances lie less in their specific performance or production features than in the technique and choreographic structures Humphrey employed. It is in the form of Humphrey's dances, Schurman feels, that the enduring essence of Doris Humphrey, the dance thinker, can be found.

Doris Humphrey was declared by Walter Terry to be America's “prima choreographa assoluta” more than four decades ago (4), and she is still recognized today as a master choreographer. This is perhaps due to the many college recontructions of her work and despite the fact that few companies keep her dances in active repertory. Besides being remarkably creative (5), Humphrey was enormously innovative, shaping choreographic change even before her launch into independence with Charles Weidman and Pauline Lawrence, through the development and extension of “music visualizations” with Ruth St. Denis at Denishawn. As an independent artist, she continued to revolutionize the art of choreography, creating a “library of masterworks” (6) which included dances in silence, dances with a vocal chorus and alternative sound accompaniment, and dances with speech, with music and with song.

In this article, I will speak about a subject I hold very dear—the 92nd Street Y. Besides the coincidence of its being my current place of employment, the Y has long been part of my life. I knew it both as a member of Don Redlich's company when we rehearsed there as the Y's resident dance company, and as an audience member thrilling to the likes of Pearl Lang in Kaufmann Concert Hall. It is my hope to enlighten you about the nature of this extraordinary institution, its importance in the development of modern dance, and Doris Humphrey's deep involvement in its history.

Why the Y? Or, to use the Passover phrase of inquiry, “Why is this Y different from all other Y's?” What were the convergences that would bring together a Jewish Community Center and the foremost practitioners of the developing modern dance? What benefit could the institution and the artists mutually realize? To unravel this complex fabric of relationships, it is useful to have as background a brief overview of the origins of the Y and the philosophy expressed by its founders.

On March 22, 1874, a group of German-Jewish businessmen and professionals signed a charter creating a new organization in New York City. The wording of that document is as follows: “We the undersigned, desiring to promote harmony and good fellowship among Hebrew young men and to unite them in an organization tending to improve their social, moral and mental condition, do form an association under the name and style of the ‘Young Men's Hebrew Association’” (1). Thus was born the first YMHA, with the express aim of serving the Jewish community, in particular the cultural and intellectual advancement of Jewish young men.

Research in the performing arts to a greater degree than other disciplines relies upon literature that crosses and resides within many other disciplines. Researching dance in particular can become a rather interwoven process. Not only is the literature of dance laid across the landscape of the Library of Congress subject headings, but its very subject scope often evolves within other disciplines. Research in dance is environmental and ephemeral, with much of the valuable information found in primary sources as well as in secondary and tertiary sources. When looking at the bibliography of dance as a research inquiry, the direction of the search cannot be narrow. Often, the scope of such research will evolve, taking the researcher circui-tously, but intellectually, around the course of the various disciplines in the arts and the humanities, and the social and physical sciences as well. Moreover, such research requires locating different formats of information, found within a variety of bibliographic structures and searching environments.

By utilizing the bibliographic search techniques developed in the Dance Heritage Coalition's workshop, “Choreographing Your Search” (1) bibliographic research in dance can be more fully explored and its findings more easily displayed than through more traditional library research methodology. The purpose of the workshop “Choreographing Your Search” is to provide a basic and general introduction to available on-line resources that can lead to information sources and materials relevant to dance and dance history.