George Dorris (born August 3, 1930) is an American dance historian, educator, editor, and writer. As managing editor of ''Dance Chronicle'' for thirty years, he laid foundations and established standards for dance scholarship not only in the United States but in many other countries of the world. In 2007, he was honored with a lifetime membership in the Society of Dance History Scholars and by the award for Outstanding Service to Dance Research presented by the Congress on Research in Dance.
Early life and education
George Edward Dorris was born into a prominent family in
Eugene, Oregon, the son of Benjamin Fultz Dorris and Klysta (Cornet) Dorris. In 1892, his great-uncle George Dorris had purchased a farm in Springfield, about five miles for Eugene, and had experimented with various crops before establishing a hazelnut orchard in 1905. The mild weather, abundance of rain, and well-drained soil of the Willamette Valley provided ideal conditions for growing nut trees. Over the next fifty years the , as the farm was known, was enlarged, as Ben Dorris joined his uncle and developed the property to some seventy-five acres with a nursery and thousands of trees. Young George Dorris was not, however, interested in a career in the nut industry, being more attracted to languages and literature than to agriculture.
Accordingly, after graduation from high school in 1948, he studied Spanish and English literature at the University of Oregon in Eugene. Upon receiving his bachelor of arts degree a year early, he spent a year working in San Francisco, where he had opportunities to attend concerts, plays, and performances of opera and ballet. Thereafter, he enrolled in the graduate school of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, to pursue his studies in Restoration and eighteenth-century English literature. In his second year he was awarded a university fellowship that paid his tuition and living expenses, and in 1955 he was awarded a
Fulbright Scholarship for study in Italy. After some months there, he returned to Northwestern as a graduate assistant in the Department of English. While finishing his doctoral dissertation on poet, librettist, and translator
Paolo Antonio Rolli
Paolo Antonio Rolli (13 June 1687 – 20 March 1765) was an Italian librettist, poet and translator.
Biography
Paolo Rolli was born in Rome, Italy and like Metastasio was trained by Gian Vincenzo Gravina. The earl of Burlington brought hi ...
(1687-1765) and the Italian circle in London, he took his first teaching jobs and was finally awarded a doctoral degree in 1962.
Academic career
Before completing his dissertation, Dorris began his professional career as an instructor of English literature at
Duke University in
North Carolina
North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and ...
(1957-1960). He then moved on to
Rutgers University
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...
in
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
(1960-1962), the University of the Pacific and its constituent Raymond College in California (1962-1964), and to Queen's College of the City University of New York (1964-1967). The remainder of his teaching career (1967-1998) was spent at York College, also a component of the City University of New York. There he rose from assistant professor to associate professor of English literature, teaching courses in Restoration and eighteenth-century drama, poetry, and prose as well as occasional courses in criticism and dance history.
In February 1965, after attending a performance of
New York City Ballet
New York City Ballet (NYCB) is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company. Léon Barzin was the company' ...
, Dorris had the good fortune to meet the poet
Jack Anderson, who was then working at ''Dance Magazine''. Dorris had long been interested in dance, having seen programs presented by American Ballet Theater, Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, the Royal Ballet of London, and the
Martha Graham Dance Company
The Martha Graham Dance Company, founded in 1926, is known for being the oldest American dance company. Founded by Martha Graham as a contemporary dance company, it continued to perform pieces, revive classics, and train dancers even after Graham's ...
. His interest in dance history increased upon meeting Anderson, who, along with their friend George Jackson, was also writing for the English magazine ''Ballet Today''. In his academic field, Dorris had found that there was "not much new to say about John Dryden or Alexander Pope," but he came to realize that "there were enormous areas of dance just waiting to be discovered."
Avocation as dance historian
Following the lead of Anderson and Jackson, Dorris soon began contributing occasional reviews of dance performances to ''Ballet Today''. Then, at a party in 1966, he met
Arlene Croce
Arlene Louise Croce (born May 5, 1934) founded '' Ballet Review'' magazine in 1965. She was a dance critic for ''The New Yorker'' magazine from 1973 to 1998.
Career
Prior to Croce's long career as a dance writer, she also wrote film criticis ...
, who had recently founded a magazine called ''Ballet Review'', and he joined the ranks of its early contributors, thus beginning a long, distinguished career as a dance historian. He was encouraged in his endeavors by
Selma Jeanne Cohen
Selma Jeanne Cohen (September 18, 1920December 23, 2005) was a historian, teacher, author, and editor who devoted her career to advocating dance as an art worthy of the same scholarly respect traditionally awarded to painting, music, and literatur ...
, a leading light in dance scholarship, who became a lifelong mentor and friend. Beginning in 1967, Dorris served for ten years as music editor for ''Ballet Review'', and, eventually, as its regular reviewer of musical recordings (1993–present). In 1975, he joined the board of directors of Dance Perspectives Foundation as secretary, serving in that capacity until 1981. In 1977, Dorris and Anderson were the founding editors of ''Dance Chronicle: Studies in Dance and Related Arts'', a journal published by Marcel Dekker that became the acknowledged leader in the field of dance scholarship. They continued to produce several issues a year—four at first, then three—until 2007, when they relinquished their roles to younger scholars.
During these years, Dorris was also active in several professional organizations focused on dance history and criticism. In 1978, he was a founding member of the
Society of Dance History Scholars, for which he served on the board of directors (1979-1983, 1990-1993) and on the editorial board (2001-2004). He also served on the board of directors of the Dance Critics Association (1980-1983, 1996-1999) and the World Dance Alliance (1991-2012) and was a longtime member of the
Congress on Research in Dance
Congress on Research in Dance was a professional organization for dance historians in the United States and worldwide that was founded in 1964 and then merged in 2017 with the Society of Dance History Scholars to form the Dance Studies Association ...
. He had a significant effect on the policies and direction of all these organizations, helping each one to move forward toward its stated goals.
In 1981, Selma Jeanne Cohen invited Dorris to become an associate editor of the ''International Encyclopedia of Dance'', a major undertaking of the Dance Perspectives Foundation. As the area editor for dance from 1400 to 1800 and for Western music, he worked on the project for many years, until its successful publication in 1998. Soon after, he was invited to become one of a group of principal researchers for Popular Balanchine, a project of the
George Balanchine Foundation devoted to documenting Mr. Balanchine's work on Broadway shows and Hollywood films, He completed his research on the operettas ''Rosalinda'' (1942) and ''The Merry Widow'' (1943) in 2002. Soon after, in 2005, he collaborated with
Frank Andersen
Frank Andersen (born 15 April 1953 in Copenhagen) is a former Danish ballet dancer who was twice artistic director of the Royal Danish Ballet. He has been an influential supporter of the Danish choreographer August Bournonville.
Biography
Ander ...
, artistic director of the Royal Danish Ballet, and Danish dance critic Erik Aschengreen in organizing a symposium held at the international festival in Copenhagen celebrating the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of choreographer
August Bournonville.
Selected writings
* ''Paolo Rolli and the Italian Circle in London, 1713-1744''. The Hague: Mouton, 1967. The published version of his doctoral dissertation at Northwestern University.
* Numerous articles as music editor, ''Ballet Review''. New York: Ballet Review, 1967-1977.
* "Music for the Ballets of John Weaver." ''Dance Chronicle'' 3.1 (1979), 46-60.
* "Massine in 1938: Style and Meaning." In ''Proceedings'' of the tenth annual conference of the Society of Dance History Scholars, University of California at Riverside, June 1988, pp. 200–211.
* "The Choreography of Robert Joffrey." ''Dance Chronicle'' 12.1 (1989), 105-139, and "A Supplement," 12.3, 383-385.
* Numerous articles as reviewer of recorded music, ''Ballet Review''. New York: Ballet Review, 1993–present.
* "Don Quixote in the Twentieth Century: A Mirror for Choreographers." ''Choreography and Choreographers'', special issue on Dance in Hispanic Culture, 3.4 (1994), pp. 47–53.
* "Leo Staats at the Roxy, 1926-1928." ''Dance Research'' (London) 13.1 (1995), 84-99.
* "Bernstein, Leonard," with coauthor Kenneth LaFaye, in ''International Encyclopedia of Dance'', edited by Selma Jenne Cohen and others (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), vol. 1, pp. 438–439.
* "
Jean Börlin Jean Börlin was a Swedish dancer and choreographer, who was born in Härnösand on March 13, 1893 and who died in New York on December 6, 1930. He worked with Michel Fokine, who was his teacher in Stockholm.
Biography
Jean Börlin was held in hig ...
as Dancer and Choreographer." ''Dance Chronicle'' 22.2 (1999), 167-188.
* "The Choreography of Jean Börlin; A Checklist with the Tours and Personnel of Les Ballets Suedois." ''Dance Chronicle'' 22.2 (1999), 189-222.
* ''The Royal Swedish Ballet, 1773-1998''. Edited and introduced by George Dorris. London: Dance Books, 1999.
* "Twenty-five Years of ''Dance Chronicle''." With Jack Anderson as coauthor. ''Dance Chronicle'' 25.1 (2002), vii-viii.
* Summary essays on research: ''Rosalinda'' (1942) and ''The Merry Widow'' (1943, revival 1957), for Popular Balanchine, a project of the George Balanchine Foundation; dossiers submitted in 2002 and deposited in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in 2005. See Popular Balanchine, Guide to the Dossiers, at http://balanchine.org/balanchine/03/pc.
* "Aaron Copland (1900-1990)," for America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures, the First 100. Washington, D.C.: Dance Heritage Coalition, c.2003, published online 2012.
* "The Polish Ballet at the New York World's Fair, June 1939." ''Dance Chronicle'' 27.2 (2004), 217-234.
* "Dance and the New York Opera Wars, 1906-1912." ''Dance Chronicle'' 32.2 (2005), 195-262.
* "The Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Fresh Starts: Rosina Galli and the Ballets Russes, 1912-1917." ''Dance Chronicle'' 35.2 (2012), 173-207.
* "The Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Fresh Starts: Galli in Charge, 1919-1921." ''Dance Chronicle'' 36.1 (2013), 77-106.
Personal life
George Dorris and Jack Anderson, longtime companions, have traveled widely over the years and have made friends with dance historians in North America, South America, and Europe. They were married on July 22, 2008 in the Studio Theater on the campus of York University in Toronto, Canada.
[Wedding announcement, ''International New York Times,'' July 23, 2008. https://www.nytimes.com/gst. Retrieved March 16, 2015.] On February 12, 2015, in the company of friends and colleagues at their home in Greenwich Village in New York City, they celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their first meeting and lifetime union.
See also
*
Dance critique
*
LGBT culture in New York City
*
List of LGBT people from New York City
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dorris, George
1930 births
Living people
American dance critics
American male journalists
21st-century American historians
American male non-fiction writers
Dance historians
Dance writers
American LGBT writers
LGBT people from Oregon
Northwestern University alumni
Writers from Eugene, Oregon
LGBT academics
21st-century American male writers