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 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.

Early life

Flade was born in

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

, and trained as a pianist as a young woman. She studied modern dance with

Mary Wigman Mary Wigman (born Karoline Sophie Marie Wiegmann; 13 November 1886 – 18 September 1973) was a German dancer and choreographer, notable as the pioneer of expressionist dance, dance therapy, and movement training without pointe shoes. She is con ...

Career

Flade performed with Wigman's concert group in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. She made her American debut in 1933, in New York; "she was gay, light, exuberant and altogether charming" recalled the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' dance critic, John Martin. She danced in Los Angeles later in 1933. "There is a woodsy, faun-like loveliness", commented the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...

'' critic. "She is filled with the joy of dancing and made her audience feel that dancing is a natural expression." In 1934, she was appointed head of the dance department at

in California. She developed her own dance compositions, and gave a solo show at the Bennington School of the Dance in 1935. In 1937 she taught modern dance at the Mills College Summer School, and served on a committee to study modern dance for high school physical education classes. She often collaborated with her Mills College colleague, composer and musician Henry Cowell. She also worked with San Francisco-based composer

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 ...

. Among the dancers who studied with Flade were King Lan Chew and choreographer

Valerie Bettis Valerie Elizabeth Bettis (December 1919 – 26 September 1982) was an American modern dancer and choreographer. She found success in musical theatre, ballet, and as a solo dancer. Biography Valerie Bettis was born on either December 19 or Dec ...

. After marriage in 1938, she moved to Ohio, and taught classes for dance instructors at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

Personal life

Flade married an American college professor, Ross Lawler Mooney, in 1938. The Mooneys traveled to Israel in 1964, when Ross Mooney was a consultant to the Israeli Ministry of Education, and she taught in a children's cultural program in Jerusalem. She was widowed in 1988, and died in Columbus, Ohio, in 1997, aged 92 years. She was buried at Union Cemetery, Franklin, Ohio. There are interviews with Flade in the Dance Files of the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute,

.Guide to the Dance Files, 1900–2014
Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, Ohio State University.

References

External links

"Reminiscences of Tina Flade 1979"
(transcript and audio), interview by Theresa Bowers, 1 October 1979, Columbia Center for Oral History {{DEFAULTSORT:Flade, Tina 1905 births 1997 deaths People from Dresden German female dancers Modern dancers 20th-century American dancers Mills College faculty German emigrants to the United States Dancers from Saxony