Denishawn is not just a historical organization frozen in time, but a dynamic institution that lives on to this day through the legacy of the educators who taught there. Some of those individuals are known today for the impact they had on dance in America and in the world. Many others connected to Denishawn have been nearly forgotten but also profoundly influenced the dance of today.
The Ruth St. Denis School of Dancing and its related arts (third year — 1917) catalog lists some of those educators.
Find out more about Ted Shawn
More about the rest of the faculty and staff
Louis Horst
Louis Horst, Denishawn musical director, was one of the most pivotal figures in the development of the new art form of concert dance, was teacher at most of the early dance institutions, and was mentor to many who would go on to shape the dance field as we know it today.
In the early years of the new art form of concert dance, many of the pioneers and founders spent nearly a third of a century engaged in movement exploration inspired by new ideas about the body, notions of the place of human beings in the universe, and the role of the individual. They explored the dances of other cultures; the importance of the breath in movement; the use of natural forces of the universe like gravity, inertia, and momentum; and the relevance of individual experiences and emotions.
By the 1930s, dancers began to place increased importance on how those new ideas could be adapted for the stage and how they could reach a broader audience. Three people were key in this development.
Louis Horst (1884-1964) - musical director at Denishawn - taught movement exploration through his modern forms curriculum which encouraged choreographers to find inspiration from the other arts and, through the teaching of pre-classic musical forms, introduced choreographers to such musical devices as ABA; canons; and rondos, as ways to organize dances. His Modern Dance Forms in Relation to the Other Modern Arts (1961) with Carroll Russell and Pre-Classic Forms (1937) are still used in choreography classes today.
Along with Horst, two other artists influenced the choreography of the new art form.
Rudolf Von Laban (1879-1958), developed a notation system and form of movement analysis that opened up ways to look at all possible human movement.
Doris Humphrey (1895-1858) - a member of the Denishawn Company - developed a dance composition curriculum that provided a guide for ways to design the body and ways to design the stage space. Just before her death she published, The Art of Making Dances, one of the most important books on choreography, that is still referred to today. She later became Jose Limon’s choreographic mentor as he created some of the seminal works of the 20th century.
Louis Horst influenced a generation of choreographers and dancers and was Martha Graham’s musical director, mentor, and partner. He was also a scholar and critic who founded and edited the journal Dance Observer from 1933-1964 to document the development of American modern dance.
Find out more about Louis Horst
An important aspect of the Denishawn School was its focus on the individual students.
