Helen Tamiris

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Helen Tamiris (1948)

Helen Tamiris (born as Helen Becker on April 23, 1902 or 1905 in New York City ; died on August 4, 1966 there) was a pioneer of American modern dance as a dancer and choreographer , who first worked with jazz and African-American spirituals and social protest brought to the dance stages. She also made a name for herself as a choreographer for musicals on Broadway .

biography

Helen Tamiris grew up as Helen Becker in a poor, Jewish Orthodox family in the Lower East Side of Manhattan . Her father Isor Becker, a tailor, and her mother Rose, née Simonov, had fled to the United States with their eldest son in 1892 from the anti-Semitic pogroms in the Russian Empire . Two other brothers were born in New York.

At the age of eight, she took dance lessons inspired by Isadora Duncan at Henry Street Settlement , a social institution for low-income families in the Lower East Side. Later she trained Russian ballet with Michel Fokine . At the age of 15 she danced for an audition at the Metropolitan Opera and was accepted into the ballet company. As a member of the Bracale Opera Compagnie , she toured South America . There she took the stage name Tamiris in honor of the Persian Amazon Queen, "who overcame all obstacles". In 1924 she appeared in a vaudeville show for six months .

She felt constrained by the strictly regulated classical ballet technique. For a short time she trained at the Isadora Duncan School in New York City. However, she was dissatisfied with the focus on purely personal expression in dance and decided in 1927 to perform her own choreographies, for which she also designed the costumes herself. In 1928 she went on tour to Europe as the second American representative of contemporary dance after Isadora Duncan, where critics hailed her as an interpreter of the new American dance. In 1929 she founded the School of American Dance and her own company, which she directed until 1945. From 1930 to 1932 she teamed up with Martha Graham , Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman to found the Dance Repertory Theater , a cooperative in which the four parties involved shared productions and editions. She performed herself until 1944. Her concern was not only to establish modern dance as an art form in its own right, but also to make it accessible to a wide audience.

Helen Tamiris was married from 1946 to 1964 to the dancer and choreographer Daniel Nagrin (1917-2008), a former student. With him she founded the Tamaris Nagrin Dance Compagnie in 1957 with Nagrin as director, which they dissolved after their separation. She died of complications from cancer in the Jewish Memorial Hospital in New York City. In her will, she bequeathed a third of her fortune to promote American modern dance, which is administered by the Tamaris Foundation.

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Poster for Salut au Monde by Helen Tamiris, premiered in New York in 1936

With her early solo works, she consciously explored the limits of modern dance in a provocative manner for the time. She danced her first self-choreographed solo entitled Dance Moods based on music by George Gershwin in 1927 at the Little Theater in New York City, making her the first choreographer to work with jazz . In her piece Subconscious , she dared to go on stage naked.

Helen Tamiris choreographed a total of 135 dances. Many of them deal with social and political issues. She was best known for a series of eight choreographies entitled Negro Spirituals , which she created between 1928 and 1942. In doing so, she protested against prejudice and discrimination against African Americans . Your piece How Long Brethren? from 1937 depicted the desperation of unemployed blacks in the southern United States and was danced by her ensemble to Lawrence Gellert's Negro Songs of Protest sung by an African-American choir. In Salut au Monde , her group performed a series of dances based on the poem of the same name from Walt Whitman's cycle of blades of grass . Other major works are Trojan Incident (1938), in which Tamiris appeared with a solo dance as Kassandra , and Adelante (1939), a theme from the Spanish Civil War . Outstanding works of her later life are pieces with which she addressed her Jewish heritage and the Holocaust, such as Memoir (1959) and Women's Song (1960).

Despite her innovations in contemporary dance, Tamiris did not develop an individual style or technique. Rather, she believed that each dance had to have its own means of expression and encouraged her students to do so too. Art is international, but the artist is a product of his nationality, so there can be no general rules.

When the work and performance opportunities for dancers and choreographers diminished in the late 1930s, some began to work for music theater and film, including Tamiris. She choreographed 18 musicals with Nagrin as her assistant, including Annie get your gun in 1946 . Her last work was the choreography for the opera The Lady from Colorado in 1964 .

Works (selection)

Modern dance

  • Dance Moods (1927)
  • Prize Fight Studies (1928)
  • Negro Spirituals (1928 to 1942)
  • Salut au Monde (1936)
  • How Long Brethren? (1937)
  • Trojan Incident (1938)
  • Adelante! (1939, based on a motif from the Spanish Civil War )
  • Dances of Walt Whitman (1958)
  • Memoir (1959)
  • Women's Song (1960)

Musical choreographies

  • Annie Get Your Gun (1946)
  • Touch and Go (1949)
  • Up in Central Park (1947)
  • Flahooley (1951)
  • Carnival in Flanders (1953)
  • Fanny (1954)
  • Plain and Fancy (1955)

Awards

  • 1937: First Prize from Dance Magazin for group choreography ( How Long Brethren? )
  • 1949: Tony Award for the best choreography ( Touch and Go )

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Web links

personal data
SURNAME Tamiris, Helen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Becker, Helen (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American dancer, choreographer, modern dance teacher
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1902 or 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH 4th August 1966
Place of death New York City