Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T07:59:41.116Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Remembering Virginia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2014

Rosalind Pierson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

I don't remember my first dancing lesson; I only remember begging my mother to send me to tap class with my best friend Kenny. I wanted a pair of shiny tap shoes and I wanted to be as special as he was. My mother, a dean's wife and an admitted theatrical snob, found tap dancing “inappropriate.” After surveying a number of university wives, she sent me to a young woman who was to make history in the teaching of creative dance for children. Her name was Virginia Tanner.

At that time, Tanner's school was in a Victorian building perched high on a hill just north of Temple Square in Salt Lake City. The McCune School of Music and Arts was a very spooky place to a six-year-old who was scared of almost everything, but I braved the dark staircase with its marble busts and dark red carpeting as I climbed to the sunny top floor. In time, I learned to bypass the busts by taking the spiral servants' staircase at the back of the building, which seemed a much safer route. My climb was always rewarded with an hour's bliss.

I wish now that I could remember in detail what we did in those classes. I remember learning rhythm patterns from sized and colored pieces of paper and dancing them out. I remember making “toe toast” and sailing to far off places in a sailboat made of my rocking body and my unfurling arms. I remember being a “cute little grub,” a stalk of wheat swaying in the wind, a donkey hee-hawing. I remember dancing out my name and feeling that the movement version defined me far better than words ever could.

Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , Winter 2000 , pp. 14 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Bennett, Robert B. 1955. “Virginia Tanner Teaches.” Dance Magazine. June, 45–48, 64.Google Scholar
Berrett, Marilyn. 1997. Interview by author. South Jordon, UT, May 16.Google Scholar
Berrett, Marilyn. 1998. Letter to author, August 19.Google Scholar
Burtner, Elizabeth. 1998. Telephone conversation with the author, August 15.Google Scholar
Clark, MaryBeth Jarvis. n.d. Unpublished manuscript about studies with Virginia Tanner. From the collection of Mary Ann Lee.Google Scholar
Dance and the Child: An International Conference. 1978. Produced by Access Alberta. 16 min. Videocassette.Google Scholar
Dance Magazine. 1984. Obituary of Evelyn Davis. June, 102–104.Google Scholar
Dance With Us. 1954. Producer/director: Wetzel O. Whitaker. 22 min. Motion picture produced by Brigham Young University (transferred to videotape).Google Scholar
Davis, Evelyn. 1957. The First Umbrella. Washington D.C.: The Evelyn Davis Dance Playhouse.Google Scholar
Fieldsted, Margaret. 1954. “Virginia Tanner: A Life of Creativity.” The Salt Lake Tribune. September 26, n.p. [clipping] (VTP) Box 3, Folder 3.Google Scholar
Forsberg, Helen. 1978. “Miss Virginia Loves Music, Dance, Kids.” The Salt Lake Tribune. Sunday, November 5, E 1, 3. [clipping] (VTP) Box 3, Folder 16.Google Scholar
Gifford, Joseph. 1947. Letter to Doris Humphrey, August 5. Doris Humphrey Collection. Folder C625, no. 7. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (hereafter NYPL).Google Scholar
The Gospel and Covenants. 88:15.2000. The Official Scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, [cited October 30]. Available at http://www.lds.orgGoogle Scholar
Hansen, Klaus. 1981. Mormonism and the American Experience. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Humphrey, Doris. 1929. Letter to her parents, November 23. Quoted in Selma Jeanne Cohen, 1972, Doris Humphrey: An Artist First. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Humphrey, Doris. 1959. The Art of Making Dances. New York: Grove Press, Inc.Google Scholar
Larsen, Lisa. 1953. “Little Angels from Utah: Mormon Children Make a Triumphant Ballet Junket.” Life. August 24, 93, 94, 97.Google Scholar
Lee, Mary Ann. 1998. Telephone conversation with the author, August 31.Google Scholar
Manley, Mary-Elizabeth, with Lee, Mary Ann. 1991. “The Buttermilk Tree: The Nurturing Qualities of Virginia Tanner's Choreographic and Teaching Process.” Proceedings of the 1991 Conference of dance and the Child International. Edited by Stinson, Susan W.Google Scholar
The Modern Dance [Humphrey Technique]. [193?] Produced by Pictorial Films. 11 ½ min. Film. NYPL.Google Scholar
Pierson, Rosalind. 1998. Telephone conversation with author, April 3.Google Scholar
Pierson, Rosalind. 1998. Telephone conversation with author, August 20.Google Scholar
Profile of Virginia Tanner. 1979. Produced by WKSL-TV, Salt Lake City. Interview by Shelly Osterloh. Videocasette.Google Scholar
Scanlon, Elaine. 1941. “The Dance Playhouse of Washington, D.C.” Dance Observer. March, 37–38.Google Scholar
Siegel, Marcia B. 1987. Days on Earth: The Dance of Doris Humphrey. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Linda B. 1997. Interview by author. Salt Lake City, May 17.Google Scholar
Smith, Linda B. 1998. Telephone conversation with the author, 29 August.Google Scholar
Sokolow, Anna. (no citation information given). Quoted in Forsberg 1978.Google Scholar
Stowe, Dorothy. 1978. “A Tribute to Utah's ‘First Citizen of Dance.’” Deseret News. November, n.p. [clipping] VTP Box 3, Folder 16.Google Scholar
Suzanne, (no last name given). 1978. Letter to Virginia Tanner. VTPBox 3, Folder 15.Google Scholar
Tanner, Virginia. 1949. “A Children's Dance Theatre Comes to Salt Lake City.” Dance Magazine. December, 14–17, 39.Google Scholar
Terry, Walter. 1953. “A Dance Pilgrimage.” The New York Herald Tribune. July 26, n.p. [clipping] VTP Box 3, Folder 4.Google Scholar
A Tribute to Virginia Tanner. 1978. Concert Program. November 10 and 11, n.p.Google Scholar
Virginia Tanner Papers, 1945–1979 (VTP). Special Collections, Jackson Library, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC.Google Scholar
Hayden, Dolores. 1976. Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, 1790–1975. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Holloway, Mark. 1966. Heavens on Earth: Utopian Communities in America 1680—1880. New York: Dover Publications.Google Scholar
Jackson, Naomi. 2000. Converging Movements: Modern Dance and Jewish Culture at the 92nd Street Y. Middletown, CT: Wesley an University Press.Google Scholar
Leone, Mark P. 1979. The Roots of Modern Mormonism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marquis, Kathy. 1993. “Diamond Cut Diamond: The Mormon Wife vs. the True Woman, 1840–1890.” In Women in Spiritual and Communitarian Societies in the United States. Edited by Chmielewski, Wendy E., Kern, Louis J., and Klee-Hartzell, Marlyn. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, George D., ed. 1994. Religion, Feminism, and Freedom of Conscience: A Mormon/Humanist Dialogue. Buffalo: Prometheus Books.Google Scholar