Ruth Page (March 22, 1899 – April 7, 1991) was an American ballerina and choreographer, who created innovative works on American themes.
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Family
Page was married to attorney Thomas Hart Fisher from 1925 to 1969, and to artist Andre Delfau from 1983 until her death in 1991. She is buried in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. Page's brother, Irvine H. Page, was a noted physician and scientist.
Born in Indianapolis in 1899, Ruth Page undertook professional studies with Jan Zalewski, Adolph Bolm, Enrico Cecchetti, Harald Kreutzberg and Mary Wigman. She made her professional debut on Broadway in 1917, then with Anna Pavlova’s Company on its tour of South America in 1918, and at Chicago's Auditorium Theater in John Alden Carpenter’s The Birthday of the Infanta in 1919. She danced ceaselessly for the next forty years, with Adolph Bolm’s Ballet Intime, on Broadway in Irving Berlin’s Music Box Revue, with the Chicago Allied Arts, Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the Metropolitan, Ravinia, and Chicago Operas, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Les Ballets Americains, choreographed for all but one of those companies, choreographed the 1947 Broadway show Music in My Heart, and served as director/choreographer for the various manifestations of her own Chicago-based companies well into the 1970s. In 1937 she created An American Pattern (originally titled An American Woman) that is widely recognized as the first feminist ballet created in the United States.[1] The period between 1943-1946 she experimented with "danced poems" that combined her interest in poetry and movement and resulted in a work she titled Dances with Words and Music.[2] These innovative performances provided her a vehicle that gave voice to her subjectivity as a woman and to subvert the stereotypes that were pervasive in the male dominated world of ballet.[3] Among hundreds of dance works to her credit are landmark Americana ballets, dances with words and music, and her innovative opera-into-ballets.[4][5][6] Page's practice of turning operas into ballets was rooted in a synthetic conception of relationships between the arts: the body 'sang' the voice, although the translation from words to movement remained abstract and avoided a literal depiction of the text.[7]
On retiring from active choreography, Page created the Ruth Page Foundation, which established the Ruth Page Foundation School of Dance, as it was originally known, and which later became the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, as it is known now.[18]
She is interred at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, about 5 feet from Cubs legend Ernie Banks.
The Ruth Page Civic Ballet is the official youth training performance company of the Ruth Page School of Dance and one of its Artists In-Residence. The company of talented young dancers is now in its 16th season and was founded in 1998 by Larry and Dolores Long, the original directors of the Ruth Page School of Dance.
Serving as a bridge between ballet training and professional performance, the Ruth Page Civic Ballet provides performance opportunities for advanced dance students from the School as a means of continuing their training. Members of the company will train in this program before moving on to national and international professional dance companies. The Civic's dancers are joined in performances by notable guest artists and choreographers, expanding their sphere of professional work.
Central to the Civic's performance schedule since 2003 is the annual presentation of The Nutcracker. Originally presented in the Arie Crown Theatre from 1965 to 1997, the Ruth Page Civic Ballet performances recreates Ruth Page's beloved original full-length staging. Exquisite dancing, stunning costumes and magical settings in the Land of Snow and the Kingdom of the Sweets, "The Nutcracker" promises world-class entertainment and holiday joy for children of all ages.[19]
Ruth Page Award
The Ruth Page Award has been given by the Ruth Page Center for the Arts on behalf of the Ruth Page Foundation since 1986.[20][21] The award acknowledges, or helps further, an individual's or organization's artistic momentum,[20][21] and recognizes artistic excellence in the field of dance.[22] The honoree is selected through the Selection Committee, composed of members from the Chicago dance community, former Ruth Page Award winners and Ruth Page Center for the Arts staff.[20][21]
Recipients:
^Joellen A. Meglin, Ruth Page: The Woman in the Work (New York: Oxford University Press) 179.
^Joellen A. Meglin, Ruth Page: The Woman in the Work (New York: Oxford University Press) 239.
^Unfortunately, no audio or video recordings exist of Page performing the danced poems. See Joellen A. Meglin, Ruth Page: The Woman in the Work (New York: Oxford University Press) 240.
