97. THE “TEMPLE”
June 6, 2026
From the TimesMachine:
For those who believe in fate and cycles there is something definitely impressive in the announcement that the famous studio at 110 East Fifty-ninth Street which was once Isadora Duncan’s has now been taken over by that other great figure in the shaping of the American dance, Ruth St. Denis, and will be opened next Sunday as a center for her activities.
The opening event will be the first of a series of “dance appreciation teas,” at which Miss St. Denis will give informal talks and there will be short programs by former Denishawn dancers and “others interested in bringing their ideas before a select audience.” There will be two of these events each week on Tuesday (except Election Day) and Sunday afternoons at 5, until Dec. 14.
The new headquarters will not be a school of the dance, as Miss St. Denis is anxious to make clear, but a center, “a sort of chez St. Denis.” Here she will house her large collection of oriental costumes, jewelry, art objects, programs, photographs, etc. Here, also, she will continue the religious dance programs which she began at Denishawn House in 1927 and which were the beginning of her Society of Spiritual Arts. The “Temple” programs will take place on Thursdays, starts at some future date, and will include dramatizations of the “World Scriptures,” the dancing of her own mystical poems by Miss St. Denis, and the appearance of guests as both speakers and dancers. The nucleus of these programs will be a full rhythmic choir of twenty-four dancers.
Miss St. Denis sees in the center “a place for the meeting of audience and artist in a new relationship.” Not all her activities will be confined here, however, for she is to give a series of recitals at the Carnegie Chamber Hall Dec. 3-6, at which, among other things, she will present a revival of “Radha,” the work with which she won her first recognition in 1906.
(Source: Martin, John. 1941. “Ruth St. Denis Center in Former Duncan Studio—Ballet Theatre Plans.” The New York Times, October 19.)
Not the famous studio at 100 East Fifty-ninth Street; in the famous studio 61 at Carnegie Hall.
Image: Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library. “Yeichi Nimura, Lisan Kay, and Ruth St. Denis at Ballet Arts” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1959.
Related: IN TUNE, DANCE TO BELONG, DANCE LESSONS, STUDIO 61, ROOT-AND-FLOWER, DEMONSTRATION, RODEO, THE YOGI