Marsh, Lucile, 1899-

Lucile Marsh was born November 13, 1899 and attended high school in Bridgeport, Connecticut, graduating in 1916. She received a B.A. from Barnard College in New York in 1920, and studied at the Dalcroze School of Eurythmics that summer. While at Barnard she began teaching dance, dramatics and speech in her own studio. Marsh spent the next four years studying and teaching at Smith College in Massachusetts, publishing her first book during this period, Dance in Education (1924), co-authored with her sister (and frequent collaborator) Agnes. She returned to New York to earn a Master's Degree from Teacher's College, Columbia University in 1925.

In her professional life, Marsh made significant contributions to the development of both dance education and dance criticism. She taught at several private schools in New York, at Hunter College, New York University and Columbia, and directed the summer program in dance at the University of Georgia for several years, beginning in 1927. This program gave her the opportunity to develop The Fountain of Light, the performance vehicle she used to present her "Project Method" for teaching dance, which was published in 1929. She also operated her own schools at various times, the Marsh School of the Dance and Allied Arts in New York, and the Lucile Marsh School of Dance in Winnetka, Illinois. Marsh's role in the development of dance education is discussed in Thomas Hagood's book, A History of Dance in American Higher Education: Dance in the American University. As a critic and journalist, Marsh had the distinction of being among the first dance columnists hired by the leading daily newspapers of the time, along with John Martin (New York Times) and Mary E. Watkins (NY Herald Tribune), in 1927. (This event forms the centerpiece of Lynne Conner's book, Spreading the Gospel of the Modern Dance: Newspaper Dance Criticism in the United States, 1850-1934.) Marsh continued her weekly column "World of the Dance" for the New York World until it merged with the NY Telegram in 1931. During this period, she also had a weekly radio spot with reviews and commentary on dance on WEVD from 1929-1932. Marsh also wrote numerous articles for a variety of publications, including Dance Magazine, American Dancer, Dance Culture, Dance Digest, general interest magazines such as Parents Magazine and academic journals such as Quarterly Journal of Speech and Journal of Health and Physical Education. During the mid-1930s, she was Director of the National Dance League, an organization whose purpose was to promote dance and publicize its artists, teachers and students, as well as editor of its house publication, Dance Digest, and she later served as editor for Dance, and Dance Magazine (1942-1945). Lucile Marsh died on June 15, 1982.

...