History and Provenance
Hocking Hills School of the Dance (1919-1936)
In 2017 Japanese philanthropist Akiro Takahashi donated to Kenyon College a set of archival photographs, negatives, and film clips documenting the Hocking Hills School of the Dance. This marks a significant discovery, with the photo set representing the only known images to exist from the annual summer school, which ran from 1919 to 1936 near Lancaster, Ohio. The photographs and films capture choreographic studies as well as both solo and group movement exercises created by the school’s founders, modern dance pioneers Wilhelmina Marsden and Virginia Sheridan Grant.
Takahashi, the grandson of Marsden, uncovered the collection in a trunk of Marsden’s personal mementos that had been kept by their family. The gift was presented in a small ceremony, with Takahashi joined by two women who had studied at the Hocking Hills School in the 1930s. Speaking at the event, Takahashi remarked: “It is important that these photographs return to their home in Ohio. It is also a destiny in a way. I am lucky to help preserve these artifacts and contribute a little of myself. It brings me much joy to invite others to join in seeing the beauty of these dances."
Wilhelmina “Billy” Marsden and Virginia Sheridan Grant met at Radcliffe College in 1917. A native of Lancaster, Wilhelmina Marsden was the daughter of prominent manufacturer and banker Theodore Marsden. She had trained as a harpist and was studying music education at Radcliffe. Virginia Sheridan Grant grew up in Boston, where her bohemian family was active in the city’s artistic and cultural societies. As a child she attended a performance by the influential choreographer Isadora Duncan at the Boston Opera House, an experience that deeply affected her. While there was little opportunity for her to study dance, she took lessons in Delsarte’s method for expression and was introduced to Dalcroze Eurhythmics. At Radcliffe Sheridan Grant was pursuing a degree in biology and physical education.
In 1918 Marsden invited Sheridan Grant to spend the summer with her family in Ohio, and it was during this visit that the two developed a vision to create a school that could teach artistic expression and natural dance to young women. The pair spent the following year organizing the program, and in 1919 opened the Hocking Hills School of the Dance at the Marsdens' country estate outside of Logan, OH. Over the following seventeen years Marsden and Sheridan Grant nurtured the school into a premiere center for dance education. Following Sheridan Grant’s death from pneumonia in 1936, Marsden and a few students embarked on a six-month performance tour of Asia. It was during this trip that she met and married Japanese ambassador Jirō Takahashi, never again returning to the United States.
Until this archival material was uncovered, little was known about Hocking Hills School of the Dance. The newly rediscovered archive deeply expands our knowledge of not only the regionalized development of dance in Ohio during the early 20th century, but also the formation of modern dance in the United States. Other notable centers for modern dance during this time included Perry-Mansfield (1914-) in Colorado, the Temple of Wings (1914-1923) in Berkeley, the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts (1915-1931) in Los Angeles, Mariarden Arts Colony (1919-1929) in New Hampshire, Jacob’s Pillow (1931-) in western Massachusetts, and Bennington School of the Dance (1934-1942) in Vermont. The new dance forms that developed at these schools emphasized the connectedness of body and soul, moving away from the rigidity of ballet to instead focus on utilizing natural movement and spontaneous expressions of feeling. In cultivating their artistic styles, the schools’ director-choreographers were inspired by popular interests in primitivism and exoticism, creating theatrical dances that drew on imagery culled from Grecian forms, motifs of Orientalism, and Native American mythology.
Created by Elliot Gordon Mercer, Martha Gregory, Michael Cicetti, Tatjana Longerot, and Debe Clark.
Produced in 2019, Hocking Hills School of the Dance is an imagined history undertaken as an educational project in dance studies. The project was completed in collaboration with students at Kenyon College.
This initiative was produced with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Center for Innovative Pedagogy, Kenyon College.