Martha Hill and the Making of American Dance

Martha Hill (1900-1995) was an influential dance educator who helped establish dance as a serious area of study at the university level and solidify its position as a legitimate art form. She led her colleagues in the development of American modern dance from the Kellogg School of Physical to Bennington College and The American Dance Festival to the Juilliard School and Lincoln Center. She created early opportunities for Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman and Hanya Holm, Jose Limon, Merce Cunningham an many others. This riveting biography sets Hill's story in the context of American postwar culture and women's changing status and draws on primary sources previously unavailable. The book is illustrated with a wealth of photographs and provides an intimate look at the struggles and achievements of a woman dedicated to taking modern dance out of the college gymnasium and into the theatre.

JANET MANSFIELD SOARES, author of Louis Horst: Musician in a Dancer's World (1992), was a student, colleague, and teacher of dance composition with Martha Hill at the Juilliard School. She is a professor emerita of dance at Barnard College, Columbia University, and lives in Tucson, Arizona, and Lyme, Connecticut.