Doris Humphrey's Mission
“My dance is an art concerned with human values. It upholds only those which make for harmony and opposes all forces for decoration, entertainment, emotional release, or technical display, but primarily it is composed as an expression of American life as I see it today.
I believe that the dancer belongs to his time and place and that only he can express that which passes through or close to his experience. The one indispensable quality in a work of art is a consistent point of view related to the times, and when this is lost and there is substituted for it an aptitude for putting together bits of this and that drawn from extraneous material and dead methods, there can be no integrity.
Since my dance is concerned with immediate human values, my basic technique lies in the natural movements of the body. One cannot express contemporary life without humanizing movement, as distinguished from the dehumanization of the ballet. The modern dancer must come down from the points to the bare foot in order to establish this human relation to gravity.
I wish my dance to reflect some experience of my own in relation to the outside world; to be based on reality illumined by imagination; to be organic rather than synthetic; to call forth a definite reaction from my audience; and to make its contribution to the drama of life.”
Doris Humphrey's Mission
“My dance is an art concerned with human values. It upholds only those which make for harmony and opposes all forces for decoration, entertainment, emotional release, or technical display, but primarily it is composed as an expression of American life as I see it today.
I believe that the dancer belongs to his time and place and that only he can express that which passes through or close to his experience. The one indispensable quality in a work of art is a consistent point of view related to the times, and when this is lost and there is substituted for it an aptitude for putting together bits of this and that drawn from extraneous material and dead methods, there can be no integrity.
Since my dance is concerned with immediate human values, my basic technique lies in the natural movements of the body. One cannot express contemporary life without humanizing movement, as distinguished from the dehumanization of the ballet. The modern dancer must come down from the points to the bare foot in order to establish this human relation to gravity.
I wish my dance to reflect some experience of my own in relation to the outside world; to be based on reality illumined by imagination; to be organic rather than synthetic; to call forth a definite reaction from my audience; and to make its contribution to the drama of life.”
Our Mission
The mission of the Doris Humphrey Foundation for Dance is to bring together those individuals and institutions who wish to participate in the regeneration of the Humphrey oeuvre and to actively engage these persons in the power and responsibility of maintaining this tradition through education, workshops, director training, and performance.
Our Mission
The mission of the Doris Humphrey Foundation for Dance is to bring together those individuals and institutions who wish to participate in the regeneration of the Humphrey oeuvre and to actively engage these persons in the power and responsibility of maintaining this tradition through education, workshops, director training, and performance.
The Doris Humphrey Collection
On Thursday, February 7, 2008, executive director of the Doris Humphrey Institute and founder of the Doris Humphrey Repertory Dance Company Minos G. Nicolas, and Charles H. Woodford, son of American modern dance pioneer Doris Humphrey, signed an agreement to donate their Doris Humphrey memorabilia to Goucher College.
The memorabilia is cataloged and placed in the Doris Humphrey Collection, which is on display and available for research in the Goucher College Library Archives. The collection includes costumes, recordings, sets, light plots, films, videos, original musical scores, and choreographic notes related to Humphrey’s various works.
For information about the Doris Humphrey Collection, please contact Amanda Woodson at awoodson@goucher.edu.
The Doris Humphrey Collection
On Thursday, February 7, 2008, executive director of the Doris Humphrey Institute and founder of the Doris Humphrey Repertory Dance Company Minos G. Nicolas, and Charles H. Woodford, son of American modern dance pioneer Doris Humphrey, signed an agreement to donate their Doris Humphrey memorabilia to Goucher College.
The memorabilia is cataloged and placed in the Doris Humphrey Collection, which is on display and available for research in the Goucher College Library Archives. The collection includes costumes, recordings, sets, light plots, films, videos, original musical scores, and choreographic notes related to Humphrey’s various works.
For information about the Doris Humphrey Collection, please contact Amanda Woodson at awoodson@goucher.edu.