Nature Moving Naturally in Succession: An Exploration of Doris Humphrey’s Water Study

Abstract

Water Study was the first major ensemble work Doris Humphrey choreographed following her departure from Denishawn in 1928 and it continues to be staged today, most recently in New York City and Turin, Italy, in 2008.¹ The Humphrey-Weidman Company first performed Water Study on 28 October 1928 at the Civic Repertory Theater, New York. Mary F. Watkins, dance critic at the New York Herald Tribune, found in the dance ‘the authentic feeling of the sea casting itself relentlessly, in torpid or in stormy mood, against the wall of some New England shore. Real genius has gone into the creating of this’ (Cohen, 1995: 86). The work continued to receive acclaim in subsequent years. In 1930, Watkins described Water Study as ‘inimitable … calling forth the evening’s loudest applause’ (King, 1978: 54). Margaret Gage in Theatre Arts Monthly described Water Study as ‘typically modernistic, expressing one central idea and unfolding it with clarity and completeness, yet with economy of detail’ (ibid.: 55). In 1932, Watkins wrote of Water Study, ‘perhaps the most remarkable of earlier group works, proved itself the peer of much that has come later’ (ibid.: 114). Margaret Lloyd, long-time critic for the Christian Science Monitor and advocate for modern dance, talked about Water Study being ‘a novelty of its time and a delight to see’ (Lloyd, 1987: 87).

This chapter is taken from an extended investigation of Water Study in L. Main, Directing the Dance Legacy of Doris Humphrey. The Creative Impulse of Reconstruction, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011.