King, Eleanor, 1906-1991

Eleanor King was born in Middletown, Pennsylvania in 1906. After studying locally with Clair Tree Major, she moved to New York to work with Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman at their studio. She also received training in mime with Etienne Decroux, and in Oriental dance forms of Japan, Sri Lanka, and Bali.

King created roles in many of the early work of Humphrey and Weidman. Her performances for Weidman were in the premieres of The Conspirator (1930) and The Happy Hypocrite (1930); roles created for Humphrey included Water Study (1929), Life of the Bee (1929), The Shakers (1932), The Pleasures of Counterpoint (1932), and Suite in F (1933).

Eleanor King began to choreograph in The Little Company, a group consisting of herself, Ernestine Henoch (Stodelle), Letitia Ide, and José Limon. Her first solo credits came from another small company of concert dancers, the Theatre Dance Group, which included dancers Fé Alf, George Bockman, Sybil Shearer, and William Bales. She then worked extensively touring the United States and Canada as a concert dancer and with a company of her own based in Seattle, Washington. Her first large work was Icaro, with poetry of Lauro de Bosis and music by David Diamond and Franczeska Boas, which premiered at the Brooklyn Museum Dance Center in May, 1937.

In 1955, King became associate professor in the Department of Speech and Dramatic Arts at the University of Arkansas, teaching dance and mime, and also choreographing for the Theatre of the Imagination. She took a sabbatical (1960-1961) to study dance in Japan, where she also lectured.

From the guide to the Eleanor King letters to Grace Stevenson, 1942-1984, (The New York Public Library. Jerome Robbins Dance Division.)

Eleanor Campbell King was born February 8, 1906, in Middleton, Pennsylvania. She was one of six children born to parents George Ilgenfritz King and Emma Kate Campbell King. In 1926, when she was 20, the family moved to Brooklyn, New York. King lived at home until age 28, when she moved to an apartment in Manhattan.

King began dance lessons at age 20. Her first teacher was Priscilla Roineau, who taught at Clare Tree Major’s School of the Theatre in New York City. Her professional dance training and performing began with her enrollment in Denishawn in 1927. King joined the original Humphrey-Weidman Company (1928-1935). She performed solo, duet, and group roles, and toured with the company in 1934-1935.

King became an independent dancer in New York from 1935 to 1942. Her first choreographed large scale work was Icaro, based upon a poem by Lauro de Bosis, with music created by David Diamond and Franczeska Boas. Jack Cole danced the role of Icarus. Icaro premiered at the Brooklyn Museum Dance Center in May 1937.

After leaving New York City, King moved to Northfield, Minnesota to teach at Carleton College for the 1942-43 school year. In the summer of 1943, King moved to Seattle, Washington and there she taught at the Cornish School of the Arts. For the next eight years, King taught, choreographed, and traveled throughout the Pacific Northwest, as a soloist and with her own dance company.

“In the summer of 1947, she created One World in Dance, a cooperative dance program in which 13 different ethnic groups were represented. This program led to the creation of the Friends of the Dance of the Pacific Northwest, a group which provided performance opportunities for dancers of the region and which promoted audience participation and understanding of the many kinds of dance in the area.”

In 1951 King began teaching dance and mime as an associate professor in the Department of Speech and Dramatic Arts at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

King retired from teaching at the University of Arkansas in the spring of 1971. She moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico where she became involved with the burgeoning dance and theater culture of the area.

Eleanor King traveled four times to the Far East to study Asian dance. As a Fulbright Research Scholar, she was in Japan in 1958, 1960-61, and 1967. With a Vogelstein Foundation grant she studied in Bali in 1976. She returned to the Far East again in 1977, traveling to Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Korea.

She was a prolific writer, authoring several journal articles and three books. In 1978, King’s autobiography, Transformations: the Humphrey-Weidman Era was published. She also wrote Transformations II: To the West, which has not been published. In addition King wrote The Way of Japanese Dance: A Dancers Journal, which was optioned by Shambhala Press, but never published. However, a special edition of 100 copies of chapters one and two were bound in Japanese papers by Virginia Gannon. This was an

“illustrated journal covering all types of Japanese dance in relation to the history, religion and culture of the people of Japan”. In 1989, Nicole Plett edited a collection of essays titled Eleanor King: 60 Years in American Dance .

King had a talent for sketching. She produced several thousand sketches, many of which were included in her The Way of Japanese Dance . Early sketches were of still life and nudes. Later sketches were produced from many trips to the numerous museums of the Santa Fe, New Mexico, area. Sketches from the middle years were nearly all from her many trips to Asia.

“King’s dances were largely unknown to audiences of the 1980’s when Annabelle Gamson staged highly praised revivals of her work in 1987 and 1988 in New York. The solos were praised in the New York Times for their eloquence and for Miss King’s careful shaping of ideas and feelings.”

In 1989 King moved to the Actor’s Home in Haddonfield, New Jersey. At the time of her death (March 1991), she was a co-director of the American Dance Repertory Theater with Mino Nicholas. The American Dance Repertory Theater created revivals of Miss King’s dances as well as the dances of Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman.

Eleanor King never married and had no children. She died on February 27, 1991.

From the guide to the Eleanor King papers, 1916-1991, 1951-1991, (The New York Public Library. Jerome Robbins Dance Division.)