Ruth St. Denis was an American pioneer of modern dance, introducing eastern ideas into the art and paving the way for other women in dance. She was inspired by the Delsarte advocate Genevieve Stebbins. St. Denis was the co-founder in 1915 of the American Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts. She taught notable performers including Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey. In 1938, she founded the pioneering dance program at Adelphi University. She published several articles on spiritual dance and the mysticism of the body.
Ruth St. Denis
Photographed by Otto Sarony, c. 1900. St. Denis began to investigate Oriental dance after seeing an image of the Egyptian goddess Isis in a cigarette advertisement.
St Denis and Company in Ishtar of the Seven Gates. Photo by White Studio, 1920s. The dancers are Doris Humphrey, Louise Brooks, Jeordie Graham, Pauline Lawrence, Anne Douglas, Lenore Scheffer, Lenore Hardy, and Lenore Sadowska.
Ted Shawn and St. Denis in Egyptian Ballet. They married, created and performed many productions together, and co-founded the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts.
Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance which includes dance styles such as ballet, folk, ethnic, religious, and social dancing; and primarily arose out of Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was considered to have been developed as a rejection of, or rebellion against, classical ballet, and also a way to express social concerns like socioeconomic and cultural factors.
Martha Graham in 1948
Isadora Duncan in 1903
Dancer at the Laban school, Berlin 1929
Martha Graham and Bertram Ross in 1961; photo by Carl van Vechten