Now available in paperback, Days on Earth--originally published in 1988 (Yale University Press)--traces the dance career and artistic development of one of the founders of American modern dance. In this biography of dance pioneer Doris Humphrey, Marcia B. Siegel follows Humphrey's career from her days with the Denishawn Company (among fellos students like Martha Graham) to her creative partnership with Charles Weidman to her tenure as artistic director of protégé José Limon's dance company. Siegel's reconsideration and description of Humphrey's dances, including many that are no longer performed, sheds important light on this pathbreaking dancer/choreographer.

Written just before the author's death in 1958, this book is an autobiography in art, a gathering of experiences in performance, and a lucid and practical source book on choreography.

In honour of Doris Humphrey's centennial, which was celebrated worldwide in 1995, this issue explores her legacy to the world of dance and her place in history. The varied aspects of her work are covered including choreography, teaching approach, Labanotation scores, reconstruction/recreations, and composition. In order to convey a sense of movement into the next century, the articles are presented in "chronological" order, beginning with that of Ernestine Stodelle, who worked with Humphrey during the 1920's and ending with an examination of Mindlin's 1995 experience learning Humphrey's work from Stodelle.

Directing the Dance Legacy of Doris Humphrey looks inside four of Doris Humphrey’s major choreographic works—Water Study (1928), The Shakers (1931), With My Red Fires (1936), and Passacaglia (1938)—with an eye to how directorial strategies applied in recent contemporized stagings in the United States and Europe could work across the modern and contemporary dance genre. Author Lesley Main, a seasoned practitioner of Doris Humphrey choreography, stresses to the reader the need to balance respect for classical works from the modern dance repertory with the necessity for fresh directorial strategies, to balance between traditional practices and a creative role for the reconstructor. Drawing upon her own dance experience, Main’s book addresses an area of dance research and practice that is becoming increasingly pertinent as the dancer-choreographers of the 20th century modern and contemporary dance are no longer alive to attend to the re-stagings of the body of their works. Insightful and thought-provoking, Directing the Dance Legacy of Doris Humphrey calls for the creation of new forms of directorial practice in dance beyond reconstruction. The radical new practices it proposes to replace the old are sure to spark debate and fresh thinking across the dance field.

Two traditionally divided strains of American dance, Modern Dance and Negro Dance, are linked through photographs, reviews, film, and oral history, resulting in a unique view of the history of American dance.