UPCOMING EVENTS
Talk and Showing of the Film: Within This Thicket
Thursday, July 31, 7:30 - 9pm
Momenta
605 Lake Street
Oak Park, IL 60302
708-848-2329

Three of Sybil Shearer's formative years in New York were spent in the exciting milieu of the Humphrey-Weidman Company. This was prior to her 1941 solo debut at Carnegie Chamber Music Hall where she was named most promising new dancer of the year by the New York Times.

As part of a series of evening events for the Doris Humphrey Pedagogy Workshop at MOMENTA in Oak Park, Illinois, the film Within This Thicket will be presented. Created and narrated by Shearer, the film includes many of her most famous solo dances. There will also be a lecture by a member of the Sybil Shearer Company.

The Doris Humphrey Pedagogy Workshop, July 29 through August 6, the tenth since 1990, is a week and a half of intensive focus on the choreography and technique of Humphrey. There will be instruction on phrases from such masterworks as Air on a G String and The Shakers and her fundamental principles of fall, rebound, suspension, successional flow, weight,dyamics, phrasing and rhythm.

For more information, contact: stephanieclemens@hotmail.com

All Around Us: The Dances of Sybil Shearer on Film
curated by Annie Anderson in association with the Morrison-Shearer Foundation

Julius Caesar Gallery
3144 W. Carroll Avenue
Chicago, IL 60612
August 3-23, 2008
Opening reception Sunday, August 3, 4-7 p.m.
Viewing hours are Saturdays 12-4 p.m. and by appointment.
312.823.9355
www.juliuscaesarchicago.com

 

NOW AVAILABLE!
Sybil Shearer's autobiography, WITHOUT WINGS THE WAY IS STEEP,
Volume One, WITHIN THIS THICKET

Within This Thicket, the first of three autobiographical volumes, is now available.  It traces Ms. Shearer's early life as an aspiring artist and includes a DVD with archival dance footage.  Ensuing volumes will trace Ms. Shearer's prime as an acclaimed soloist/choreographer and her later years as a dance writer/critic.  The abundance of letters in all three volumes provides a unique historical and personal view.

ORDER NOW! Click here to download order form.

 

ABOUT THE FOUNDATION 

The Morrison-Shearer Foundation was established in 1991 to preserve and exhibit the works of the photographer, Helen Balfour Morrison, and to preserve and document materials relating to the career of dancer, choreographer, and writer, Sybil Shearer. The Foundation's activities include publications, archives, grants, and plans for an artists' retreat at Northbrook, Illinois.  Since the death of Sybil Shearer in 2005, the Foundation is managed by a Board of Trustees, named by Ms. Shearer and guided by her wishes.

 

ABOUT SYBIL SHEARER   (February 23, 1912 - November 17, 2005) 

Sybil Shearer was a leading pioneer of modern dance and arguably one of the finest dancers of the 20th century.  She began her career at Bennington and in New York with the Humphrey-Weidman Company and Agnes de Mille.  After a critically acclaimed solo debut at Carnegie Hall in 1941, Ms. Shearer moved to Chicago, where she worked independently, close to nature, and in her own unorthodox way. Soon after arriving, she met photographer, Helen Balfour Morrison, who became her lighting director, photographer, filmographer, and artistic collaborator for the next forty years.

Ms. Shearer has been described as an original, provocative, unpredictable, a maverick, a poet of movement, a near legendary figure, and a gentle rebel.  Critic Walter Terry called her "one of the world's foremost dancers" (Saturday Review, Feb 7, 1979), stating that her "technical skill, creative independence, and unpredictable innovations have made her what is known as 'a dancer's dancer'."

Praise from critics, click here

 

ABOUT HELEN BALFOUR MORRISON   (August 1, 1901 – November 6, 1984) 

In the 1930s and 1940s, Helen Balfour Morrison photographed more than 100 notable personalities, among them Robert Frost, Helen Hayes, Nelson Algren, Frank Lloyd Wright, Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein, Mies van der Rohe, Amelia Earhart, Jane Addams, and Saul Bellow; as well as persons from all walks of life. Most of these portrait sessions took place in Chicago or in New York.  Morrison was said to be able to "photograph the soul" (art critic J. B. Newman); and to possess the "uncanny ability to look into people and let the surface of a person reveal the inner being on a momentary as well as an eternal basis" (Sybil Shearer, 1990). Her collaboration with Sybil Shearer produced some extraordinary dance photography as well as an intense and sensitive documentation of the life of this artist. 

 

CONTACT US

Morrison-Shearer Foundation
401 Lee Road
Northbrook, IL 60062
Phone (847) 291-9161
Fax (847) 291-1867
info@morrisonshearer.org