Ruth Page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Page

Ruth Page (22 March 1899 – 7 April 1991) was an American ballerina and choreographer, considered a pioneer in creating works on American themes. To the classical ballet vocabulary she added movements from sports, popular dance and everyday gestures.

Born in Indianapolis, Ruth Page studied with Adolph Bolm in New York, and after a tour of South America with the company of Anna Pavlova, she joined Bolm's Ballet Intime. In 1919 she came to Chicago to dance the leading role in Birthday of the Infanta, based on a play by Oscar Wilde, choreographed by Bolm to a score by John Alden Carpenter. Page and Bolm appeared in a short experimental dance film Danse Macabre (1922) directed by Dudley Murphy.

After dancing in a Broadway musical, she returned to Chicago in 1924 as principal dancer with Bolm's Allied Arts Ballet. From 1926 to 1931 she was principal dancer and choreographer for the Ravinia Opera Company. While dancing and directing the ballet ensemble for the Chicago Opera Company (from 1934 to 1945, with several off-seasons), Page co-directed with Bentley Stone the Dance Project of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Theatre (1938 and 1939). From 1954 to 1969 she directed the ballet for Chicago Lyric Opera and toured America in the company known as Ruth Page's Opera Ballet, choreographing full-scale ballets on opera subjects. She was choreographer for several of Vladimir Rosing's state centennial spectaculars, including The Kansas Story in 1961.

In 1965 Page choreographed a large-scale production of The Nutcracker, which was presented annually through 1997 by the Chicago Tribune Charities in the Arie Crown Theatre. On retiring from active choreography, Page created the Ruth Page Foundation, which established the Ruth Page Foundation School of Dance, as it was originally known, and which later became the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, as it is known now (http://www.ruthpage.org/).

Page wrote an autobiography, Page by Page, which was published in 1978.

She was married to attorney Thomas Hart Fisher from 1925 to 1969 and to artist Andre Delfau from 1983 until the time of her death. She is buried in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. Page's brother, Irvine H. Page, was a noted physician and scientist who married Beatrice Allen Page, who was, herself, a dancer and a published author and poet. Ruth Page's great-niece, Emily Page, is an artist who focuses much of her artwork on dance.