Helen Tamiris
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Helen Tamiris (1903 -1966) choreographer, modern dancer, and teacher (also known as Helen Becker).
A founder of American Modern Dance, Helen Tamiris originally trained in free movement at the Henry Street Settlement (Irene Lewisohn). She danced with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet and the Bracale Opera Company before studying briefly with Michel Fokine and with a disciple of Isadora Duncan. In 1927, she made her premiere as a solo modern dancer and two years later formed her own school and company. Concerned with establishing modern dance as a viable art form, Tamiris was active in organizing the young artists through the Concert Dancers League, Dance Repertory Theatre, Dancers Emergency Association, and American Dance Association. She also played an integral role in establishing the Federal Dance Project under the WPA.
Tamiris believed that each dance must create its own expressive means and as such did not develop an individual style or technique. She was one of the first choreographers to use jazz and spiritual music to explore social themes via dance. She is probably best known for her suite of dances called Negro Spirituals which was created between 1928 and 1941 and for How Long Brethren? (1937), a dance for the Federal Dance Project of the WPA that explored the problems facing African-Americans and won Dance Magazine's first award for group choreography. Tamiris also made works based on American themes working in concert dance (including Walt Whitman Suite and Salut au Monde) and musical theatre, including Annie Get Your Gun (1946), Touch and Go (1949), Flahooley (1951), Carnival in Flanders (1953), Fanny (1954), and Plain and Fancy (1955). She won a Tony Award for Touch and Go.
In 1960, with husband Daniel Nagrin, Tamiris formed the Tamiris-Nagrin Dance Company.
