TABLE OF CONTENTSScope and Content of the Collection Detailed Description of the Collection Series 1: Ruth St. Denis Manuscript Series 2: Publications by Ruth St. Denis Series 3: Publications about Ruth St. Denis Series 7: Adelphi Course Descriptions Series 8: Adelphi Course Bulletins Series 10: Ruth St. Denis and Children’s Theatre Series 12: School and Organizational Programs Series 13: Performance Programs |
![]() Ruth St. Denis CollectionFinding Aid
Biographical HistoryRuth Dennis was born on a farm in rural New Jersey in 1879. The daughter of an inventor-father and a physician-mother, she was encouraged to dance at an early age. At the age of 16, Ruth Dennis launched her professional career in a dime museum, Worth’s Museum on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, where she danced “Gavotte d’Amour” eleven times a day. Thus began her busy career as a "skirt dancer,” a female dancer whose legs were visible under her short skirt. In 1898, the young dancer was noticed by David Belasco, a well-known and highly successful Broadway producer and director, who provided her with her stage name “St. Denis.” She toured with Belasco’s company around the United States and in Europe as a featured dancer for five years. While on tour with Belasco in 1904, she saw a poster of the goddess Isis in an ad for Egyptian Deities cigarettes. The image of the goddess sparked her imagination and inspired her to develop a new concept of dance. The first dance she choreographed was Egypta; however, she realized it was beyond her financial means to construct. Consequently, the first danced she produced was Radha, telling the story of a mortal maid who was loved by the god Krishna, which premiered privately in 1905 and publicly in 1906. St. Denis’s career as a solo artist continued to blossom. In 1907, St. Denis and her mother went to Europe and traveled the continent performing her "dance translations,” which by now included The Cobra, Incense, The Nautch, and The Yogi. She was declared a sensation and was particularly successful in Vienna, Austria, and in Germany. In 1909, she returned to the U.S. and gave a series of well-received concerts in New York and other major cities. In 1914, she met and married an already successful young dance-innovator named Ted Shawn. In the spring of 1915, they formed Denishawn Company and School, which had an “all-inclusive” dance concept, including Oriental and other ethnic styles, freestyle movements, and primitive forms, among others. Denishawn produced a number of notable dancers including Charles Weidman, Doris Humphrey, and Martha Graham. In 1931, St. Denis and Shawn parted, but were never legally separated, and Denishawn was reorganized, becoming the Ruth St. Denis School of Dancing and Its Related Arts, while Shawn went on to found Jacob’s Pillow School and Festival and Ted Shawn’s Men Dancers. In the 1930s, St. Denis reassembled her Rhythmic Choir, which was a religious dance group that originated as a discussion group for her Denishawn dancers, and among those who regularly attended were Paul Dawson Eddy, president of Adelphi University from 1937 to 1965, and his wife Isabel. President Eddy invited St. Denis to launch the Adelphi Dance Department in 1938. She and four of her former Denishawn dancers, Jack Cole, Anna Austin, Ada Korvin, and Don Begenau, arrived at the Garden City Campus on September 8, 1938. The inaugural concert of the Adelphi Dance Department was held on October 28, 1938 and was met with great success. Although her endeavors at Adelphi were clearly important to her, her enthusiasm for the department waned as it competed with many other interests. During the summer of 1939, St. Denis was on leave in California and was noticeably absent from the College’s plans for the next semester’s dance program. In a letter to St. Denis, dated August 7, 1940, President Eddy informed her of the Dance Department’s disintegration due to financial struggles and the dismissal of various faculty. St. Denis would no longer be on the Adelphi faculty. Despite this, she maintained a relationship with the Eddys and Adelphi University into the last years of her life by participating with the Children’s Centre for the Creative Arts and its annual Ruth St. Denis Day. In 1947, St. Denis made Hollywood her headquarters and there established the Church of the Divine Dance, whose mission was the realization of building a dance liturgy. She was often called the "First Lady of American Dance" and the "Queen of American Dance.” At this time there was renewed interest in her earlier Asian-influenced dance. During the last two decades of her life she continued to dance. Whenever she was not performing, she traveled as a lecturer and mainly discussed feminist and spiritual issues. On July 21, 1968, she died in Hollywood after suffering a heart attack and was cremated and interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery. Return to the Table of Contents Scope and Content of the CollectionThe Ruth St. Denis Collection contains various materials from different stages of St. Denis’s ca-reer, including her involvement as founder of Adelphi’s Dance Department. The collection large-ly consists of loose and bound manuscripts, including a complete, typed manuscript of An Unfi-nished Life, St. Denis’s autobiography. It also includes correspondences between St. Denis and Paul Dawson Eddy, and Adelphi Dance Department course descriptions and bulletins. There are also materials relating to several activities during her career, such as programs of the various schools and organizations she was affiliated with, and numerous photographs of St. Denis. Return to the Table of Contents Administrative InformationCustodial HistorySome materials in the Ruth St. Denis collection were created and collected by Ruth St. Denis, and she left these to Adelphi University. The Virginia Calkins Class of 1933 donated a manuscript of “Dance Book” and choreographies by St. Denis. The remaining materials in the collection were deposited in Adelphi University at different times by different donors. Since many of them came to Adelphi University before the creation of the university’s Archives and Special Collections, there are no accession records for these materials. Preferred CitationPreferred citation for this material is as follows: Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Ruth St. Denis Collection; Box and Folder number; Adelphi University Archives and Special Collections, Garden City, NY. Processing InformationThe finding aid for the Ruth St. Denis Collection was created by Lauren Jarrell, Mary M. Manning, Rubina Siddiqi, and Aiza Keesey. The collection was processed in 2005, and reprocessed in 2009. Return to the Table of Contents Related MaterialRelated materials on the Ruth St. Denis Collection may be found in the following collections in this repository: Barbara Andres, Ruth St. Denis Collection
Rare Books Collection
Other repositories with collections related to the Ruth St. Denis Collection: Digital Library Collections, New York Public Library
St. Denis (Ruth) Photograph Collection, University of California, Irvine
Ruth St. Denis Papers, 1880-1968, University of California, Los Angeles
Dance Collection, University of Texas at Austin
Suzanne Shelton Buckley Collection, University of Denver
Jacob’s Pillow Archives, Jacob’s Pillow
Still Photograph Archive, George Eastman House
Return to the Table of Contents RestrictionsAccess RestrictionsThe Ruth St. Denis Collection is open to research. Photocopies of fragile materials are provided for researchers in lieu of the originals. Use RestrictionsSingle photocopies may be made for research purposes. Permission to publish materials from the collection must be requested from Adelphi University Archives and Special Collections. Researchers are responsible for copyright compliance. Return to the Table of Contents Subject and Genre HeadingsPersons:St. Denis, Ruth, 1880-1968
Topics:Dance
Modern dance
Return to the Table of Contents Arrangement of the CollectionThe Ruth St. Denis Collection is arranged into nineteen series: Series 1: Ruth St. Denis Manuscript
Series 2: Publications by Ruth St. Denis
Series 3: Publications about Ruth St. Denis
Series 4: Newspaper Clippings
Series 5: Choreographies
Series 6: Correspondence
Series 7: Adelphi Course Descriptions
Series 8: Adelphi Course Bulletins
Series 9: Awards and Honors
Series 10: Ruth St. Denis and Children’s Theatre
Series 11: Denishawn
Series 12: School and Organizational Programs
Series 13: Performance Programs
Series 14: Flyers, Announcements, and Posters
Series 15: Invitations
Series 16: Receipts
Series 17: Photographs
Series 18: Textiles
Series 19: Artifacts
Return to the Table of Contents Detailed Description of the CollectionThe following section contains a detailed listing of the materials in the collection.
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