Marian van Tuyl (October 16, 1907 – November 10, 1987), born Marian Tubbs, was an American dancer, dance educator, writer, and choreographer.

Early life and education

Marian Elizabeth Tubbs was born in

Wacousta, Michigan Wacousta is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Clinton County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The CDP is located within Watertown Charter Township. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 1,440. History The c ...

, the daughter of Charles Samuel Tubbs and Mary Elizabeth McLaughlin Curry Tubbs. Both of her parents attended Oberlin College. Her father, a Congregational minister, died by accidental drowning when she was young. Her mother, who later became a psychology professor at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, remarried in 1914, and Marian Tubbs used her adoptive father Frank Foster van Tuyl's surname thereafter. Van Tuyl attended the University of Michigan, where she earned a bachelor's degree in education in 1928. While she was an undergraduate at Michigan, she was "chairman of dances" for the Junior Girls' Play Committee, "dancing manager" of the Women's Athletic Association Board, and an active member the Women's Physical Education Club; she was also the model for a mural, "Young American Womanhood", in a women-only lounge area on campus. She studied dance with Martha Graham,

Hanya Holm Hanya Holm (born Johanna Eckert; 3 March 1893 – 3 November 1992) is known as one of the "Big Four" founders of American modern dance. She was a dancer, choreographer, and above all, a dance educator. Early life, connection with Mary Wigman Bo ...

Doris Humphrey Doris Batcheller Humphrey (October 17, 1895 – December 29, 1958) was an American dancer and choreographer of the early twentieth century. Along with her contemporaries Martha Graham and Katherine Dunham, Humphrey was one of the second gen ...

, and

Louis Horst Louis Horst (born January 12, 1884, Kansas City, Missouri – died January 23, 1964, New York City) was a composer, and pianist. He helped to define the principles of modern dance choreographic technique, most notably the matching of choreography t ...

Career

Van Tuyl taught dance and directed musical productions at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

from 1928 to 1938. While in Chicago, she was one of the founders of the Chicago Dance Council. She taught at

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was ...

in California from 1938, when previous dance program head

Tina Flade Tina Flade (9 March 1905 – 27 September 1997), born Albertine Flade, and later known as Tina Flade Mooney, was a German modern dancer. From 1934 to 1938, she taught dance at Mills College in California. Early life Flade was born in Dresden, ...

left to marry. Under van Tuyl's leadership, the dance program became an independent academic department, instead of being housed in the Physical Education department. "The only thing we share with physical education is the space and the showers, and dancers are too busy to take many showers," she once explained. Like Flade, she often collaborated with composers in the Mills College community, including

Darius Milhaud Darius Milhaud (; 4 September 1892 – 22 June 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as ''The Group of Six''—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions ...

, Henry Cowell,

Lou Harrison Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer, music critic, music theorist, painter, and creator of unique musical instruments. Harrison initially wrote in a dissonant, ultramodernist style similar to his for ...

, and John Cage. From 1935 to 1947, she performed and toured with her group, the Marian van Tuyl Dance Company. She made two "experimentalist dance films", ''Horror Dream'' (1947) and ''Clinic of Stumble'' (1948); the former involved a score by John Cage. She was the longtime editor and publisher of ''Impulse: An Annual of Contemporary Dance'', from 1951 to 1970, and from that published ''An Anthology of Impulse'' (1969). She also wrote ''Modern Dance Forms in Relation to the Other Arts'', and was an editor of the ''Dance Research Journal''. She served on the California Arts Commission, and was a founding 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 ...

. She was a fellow of the Bennington Dance Festival.

Personal life

Marian Van Tuyl married Douglas Gordon Campbell, a psychiatrist. They had three children, Bruce, Robert, and Gail. She was widowed in 1983, and she died from cancer in 1987, in San Francisco, aged 80 years. John Cage contributed a composition to her memorial service. Her papers are in the special collections library at Mills College. There is a recorded 1977 oral history interview with her in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:van Tuyl, Marian 1907 births 1987 deaths University of Michigan alumni Mills College faculty American dancers American choreographers