Doris Humphrey

Doris Batcheller Humphrey, born October 17, 1895, in Oak Park, Illinois, was an American dancer, choreographer, and composer whose career placed her among the foundational figures of twentieth-century modern dance. She died on December 29, 1958, in New York City and was buried at Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois.

Humphrey grew up in Chicago, the daughter of Horace Buckingham Humphrey, a journalist and hotel manager, and Julia Ellen Wells, a trained concert pianist. A descendant of Mayflower pilgrim William Brewster, she studied with prominent ballet masters in Chicago and with Mary Wood Hinman at the Francis Parker School. Before finishing high school she performed on a concert tour of the western states, with her mother as accompanist, under the sponsorship of the Santa Fe Railroad. At eighteen, in 1913, she opened her own dance school with her mother serving as manager and pianist, offering classical, gymnastic, and ballroom instruction.

In 1917, at Hinman's urging, Humphrey relocated to California to join the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, where she studied, taught, and developed early choreographic works including Valse Caprice, Soaring, and Scherzo Waltz, all of which continued to be performed after her time there. She remained connected to Denishawn for roughly a decade, during which she toured the Orient for two years and performed in American vaudeville theaters.

In 1928, Humphrey and fellow dancer Charles Weidman departed the Denishawn School and established themselves in New York City. That same year she presented Color Harmony, her first independent concert following the break. Her choreographic output from this period included Water Study, in which dancers moved without musical accompaniment, responding instead to natural breathing patterns, and Drama of Motion, which continued her exploration of dance as an autonomous art form built on design, rhythm, and dynamics rather than narrative or emotion. The Shakers, created in 1931 and inspired by the celibate Christian sect known for shaking during worship, became one of her best-known works. Her theoretical framework, which she called fall and recovery and described as the arc between two deaths, examined the body's negotiation between surrender to gravity and the effort to maintain balance, treating that tension as a vehicle for expressing emotional and physical struggle.

The Humphrey-Weidman Company sustained itself through the Great Depression by touring the country and producing work rooted in contemporary American life. In the mid-1930s Humphrey created the New Dance Trilogy, comprising With My Red Fires, New Dance, and the now-lost Theater Piece, all performed to a score by Wallingford Rigger. The trilogy examined the competitive lives of businessmen, working women, athletes, and actors. Humphrey also participated in the Federal Dance Project, the first national program established to provide financial support for dance and dancers, created under Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Second New Deal. She was a founding faculty member of the Bennington School of the Dance in 1934 and later joined the faculty of the Juilliard School in 1951, both institutions directed by Martha Hill.

Humphrey's Broadway work spanned 1933 to 1939 and included The Race of Life, The Dancer, With Red Fires, and The Dream of Sganarelle. In 1932 she married Charles Woodford, a British naval merchant, and the following year their son, Charles Humphrey Woodford, was born.

Arthritis forced Humphrey to retire from performing in 1944, after which she became artistic director of the José Limón Dance Company, having previously mentored Limón as a student. In that role she created Day on Earth, Night Spell, Ruins and Visions, and Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias for the company. In 1952 she founded a children's dance company called The Merry-Go-Rounders. One of her final works, Dawn in New York, reflected her sustained command of large-group composition and sculptural stage form. Because many of her works were annotated, Humphrey's choreography has continued to be taught, studied, and performed following her death.