Stodelle, Ernestine, 1912-2008

Ernestine Stodelle, one of the foremost chroniclers of modern dance in America, was born in 1912 in Oakland, California. Her professional dance career began when she became a member of the pioneer modern dance company of Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman (1929-1935). She jointly choreographed works with Jose Limon, Eleanor King and Letitia Ide in the Little Group, a subsidiary ensemble of the Humphrey-Weidman Company, and later became a partner and choreographer with Jose Limon and his company. During the later 1930s, Stodelle gave concerts of her own work in Paris and Switzerland, and introduced American modern dance to European audiences by giving lecture-demonstrations of Doris Humphrey's technique. After the war, she returned to America and established dance studios in several Connecticut locations, and began publishing articles in periodicals and newspapers. Stodelle became well-known as a dance critic and writer, and authored two books, one on Doris Humphrey and one on Martha Graham. While in Europe, Stodelle had married her first husband, theater director and stage designer, Theodore Komisarjevsky. After his death she married John R. Chamberlain, a nationally-known journalist. Together they opened her dance studio in Cheshire, Connecticut, where for the next fifty years, she continued to teach modern dance to both children and adults and to oversee her resident dance company, the Silo Concert Dancers. As the living witness of the genius of Doris Humphrey, Stodelle's life's work focused on reconstructing and teaching the dances of her mentor, and she staged recreations of Humphrey's work in England, The Netherlands, Canada, and throughout the USA. She also was an adjunct professor of dance criticism and aesthetics at New York University from 1970 until 1991. At age 85, Stodelle was still coaching young dancers at the Doris Humphrey Society in Oak Park, Illinois, helping them produce several videos on Humphrey's work. She lived to be 95, dying in Santa Barbara in 2008.