Collection context
Summary
- Creators:
- Pierre, Dorathi Bock.
- Abstract:
- Collection of photographs, performance programs, publicity information, and clippings related to dance, gathered by Dorathi Bock Pierre, a dance writer and publicist.
- Extent:
- 27 linear ft. (67 boxes)
- Language:
- Finding aid is written in English. and Materials are in English.
Background
- Scope and content:
-
The collection consists mainly of material related to dance companies and choreographers, photographs, newspaper and periodical clippings, production programs, scrapbooks and ephemera. Covering the 1910s through 1996, the collection includes items from both local and international dance communities. Photographs and clippings are the largest component of the collection.
The diversity of Pierre's career as an actor, dancer, editor-publisher, dance historian, educator, lecturer and publicist is emphasized in the materials she collected.
- Biographical / historical:
-
Born after the turn of the century in Chicago, Dorathi Bock, daughter of a well-known Midwest sculptor Richard Walter and Martha Methven, began her career by posing in dance positions for her father. As a child she also danced in motion pictures performing movement experiments before the camera. Her first acknowledged dance performance in 1914 was in the backyard of Mrs. Doris Humphrey, a disciple of Isadora Duncan in Oak Park, Illinois. To help preserve the Indiana Dunes as a state park, she also performed an expressionistic dance on the dunes. In the 1920s she performed with choreographer and dance director Michel Fokine's Ballet Company for two years. An injury to her foot ended her dancing career, although she continued to act in musical comedies and stage dramas through the twenties.
After marrying Jacques J. Pierre, a theatrical producer, she moved from the Midwest to California. While in California, she wrote the "Hollywood Column" for Viewpoint Magazine, a Chicago women's publication. She began teaching dance education. During the Depression she joined her father at the University of Oregon to research and lecture on dance theory and education. She returned to California in the late thirties, becoming the western representative, critic, and contributor to American Dancer magazine. She became the magazine's education and research editor from 1947-1982. In the late thirties she founded the periodical Journal of Educational Dancer and remained its editor for four years.
She took off a year in 1946-1947 to become Administrative Director of the Katherine Dunham School of Cultural Arts in New York City.
Her career in dance publicity and press representation began in the late forties and continued through the sixties. She was a press representative for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo (1949-1952, 1954), Huntington Hartford Enterprises (1952-1953), Slavenska-Franklin Ballet (1953), American Ballet Theatre (1957-1958), Old Vic Company's United States tour (1958-1959), Greek Theatre and the National Repertory Theatre (1959-1961, 1963-1966, 1965-1968).
She also handled press and public relations for the American Festival of Performing Arts, Boston; restoration of the Fords Theatre, Washington, DC; and George Campbell Associates. She also represented the Royal Dramatic Theatre of Sweden and the Comedie Francaise in their first American appearances in 1962.
Professional activities included writing and editing articles for Dance Magazine and Educational Dance, as well as preparing Hollywood Bowl programs. She also published the book Only a Few Can Tell in 1944.
Other accomplishments included helping to establish the Los Angeles Ballet Company and a theatre for dance. She also retained membership in the Publicists Guild, International Platform Association, National Collegiate Players, Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers, National Federation of Business and Profit, Women's Club, Inc., and Pi Epsilon Delta. She was founder and first Vice-President of the Southern California chapter of the National Repertory Theatre.
Pierre died in February 1997, in her nineties.
- Acquisition information:
- Transferred from Beverly Hills Public Library, March 2012.
- Arrangement:
-
Arranged alphabetically.
- Physical location:
- Stored off-site at SRLF. Advance notice is required for access to the collection. Please contact UCLA Library Special Collections for paging information.
- Rules or conventions:
- Finding aid prepared using Describing Archives: a Content Standard
Access and use
- Location of this collection:
-
A1713 Charles E. Young Research LibraryBox 951575Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575, US
- Contact:
- (310) 825-4988