As a teenager growing up in Cherryvale, Kansas, Louise Brooks was clearly passionate about dance. She studied dance and choreography, and attended many dance performances with her mother, including several Denishawn performances. At a 1921 Denishawn performance at the Crawford Theater in Wichita, Kansas, Brooks and her mother went backstage hoping to meet dancers from the company. There, Brooks met Ted Shawn who was apparently impressed with the young dancer and invited her to dance with Denishawn the following summer. 



That summer, when Louise Brooks had just turned 15, she moved to New York to dance with Denishawn. Brooks describes the intensity of her classes at Denishawn in "Lulu in Hollywood," writing that,  

During a sweltering July and August, I went to weekday classes from ten to twelve in the morning and from one to three in the afternoon.

This hard work paid off, and by the end of the summer, Brooks was invited to join Denishawn's touring dance company. ("Denishawn")





However, Louise Brooks often rebelled against the strict structure of the company and the directors, and famously clashed with Denishawn founder Ruth St.Denis. In 1924, St. Denis dismissed Brooks from Denishawn in front of her peers, an insult from which Brooks may have never recovered. After her time with Denishawn, Brooks began dancing in the chorus of George White’s Scandals, described as "a risqué version of Ziegfeld’s Follies." The Ziegfeld Follies was a famously flashy theatrical revue on Broadway, often credited with transforming the Broadway musical (and acting as a bridge between the modern musical and Vaudeville revues), as well as being known for its showgirls, advertised as "the most beautiful women in the world." (“Ziegfeld")

Through her work with the Scandals, Brooks was discovered by Follies producer Flo Ziegfeld himself, who cast her in a musical comedy, in what would be a highly sought after role for many young dancers at this time. Yet Louise was disillusioned, as well as still hurt by her dismissal from Denishawn, and is quoted as having said, “for me, who had danced with Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn and Martha Graham, my little dances at the Follies were boring.” (Somerville)

From there, Louise Brooks began to transition into acting for film, and starred in several flapper movies, taking her place as one of the "It Girls" of the 1920s.

 In her films, Brooks was famous for a restrained, posed, gestural style. At Denishawn, Brooks would have trained extensively in Francois Delsarte's system of expressions-- a series of poses designed to symbolically express emotions. These poses are apparent in Brooks's film work, clear evidence of the impact of her time at Denishawn.

In particular, Louise Brooks's most famous role was that of Lulu in G.W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1929). Pandora's Box is a melodrama that follows Lulu, an alluring woman who draws in many powerful men, and whose life ultimately ends in tragedy. When Pabst originally cast Brooks, he was unaware of her former dance experience, until on the first day of shooting he asked her improvise dance steps for an early scene in the movie. In this scene, in which Lulu performs a waltz, the Denishawn influence is evident in Brooks's long reaches from her chest, and gestural Delsartaen style. (Preston)



Works Cited:
“Denishawn Dance Company Tour 1922-1923.” Louise Brooks Society, 2019, www.pandorasbox.com/louise_brooks_dancer_showgirl/denishawn.

Preston, Carrie J. “Posing Modernism: Delsartism in Modern Dance and Silent Film.” Theatre Journal, vol. 61, no. 2, 2009, pp. 213–233. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40587390.

Somerville, Kristine. "The Thoroughly Modern World of Louise Brooks." The Missouri Review, vol. 35 no. 3, 2012, p. 103-127. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/mis.2012.0069.

“Ziegfeld Follies | History Detectives.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/ziegfeld-follies/.