Water Study, choreographed by Doris Humphrey in 1928, is described by dance writer Marcia B. Siegel as “still one of the most extraordinary works in American dance.” One of Humphrey's earliest works, it was created during the period in which American modern dancers Humphrey, Charles Weidman, and Martha Graham broke away from the ersatz ethnicity of Denishawn to begin choreographing their own works. “As small and strange as it is,” Siegel continues, “Water Study is a masterpiece of the choreographic art”.

The piece begins with ten to twelve dancers crouched low on the floor, scattered throughout the stage area, and all facing stage right. They slowly rise and sink in canon, as though a wave passed over them and back again. The movement grows until it brings them onto their feet: they separate and rush toward one another, leaping and falling like waves splashing together and subsiding. Then, grouped together, they surge back and forth from one side of the stage to the other like shifting tides. One cluster of dancers breaks away while another leaps, turns, and falls, forming a progressive, whirl-pool-like spiral to the floor. A side-to-side rocking motion gradually brings the dancers into unison as they spread throughout the stage area again. They return to the crouching position and ripple upward again in one last splash before finishing with a slow crawling action that leaves them prone like the last remnant of a wave creeping up the shore.

Water Study focuses attention on movement by minimizing other theatrical elements. The dance does not tell a story; it is performed in silence with no scenery; lighting changes are minimal; and dancers are costumed in plain, flesh-colored leotards. Although these kinds of choices tell their own story, as will be examined later, they serve to “turn the volume up” on the movement “channel” of communication.

José Limón's The Moor's Pavane, subtitled “Variations on the theme of Othello,” premiered on August 17, 1949, at the American Dance Festival in New London, Connecticut. The original cast consisted of José Limón as The Moor, Lucas Hoving as His Friend, Pauline Koner as His Friend's Wife, and Betty Jones as The Moor's Wife. With costumes by Pauline Lawrence and music arranged by Simon Sadoff (conductor and pianist for the José Limón Dance Company) from Henry Purcell's Abdelazar, The Gordian Knot Untied, and The Pavanne and Chaconne for Strings, the work was quickly recognized as a major modern dance classic. Now more than forty years old, The Moor's Pavane continues in the repertory of the Limón Dance Company, as well as in that of many ballet companies throughout the world.

John Martin, reviewing the premiere in The New York Times, declared that Limón had “definitely made a place for himself among the best of them” with his latest work. And Louis Horst wrote in The New London, Conn., Evening Day, “With a quartet of dancers… José Limón has, within the strict limitations he has set himself, produced a gripping and absorbing composition.” Horst also praised the dancers, noting that ”[t]he performance by the quartet was on a very high level, especially the stunning portrayal of the Iago role by Lucas Hoving, which was one of unforgettable malevolent intensity”.

Since its publication in 1923 Havelock Ellis's essay, “The Art of Dancing,” found in his book The Dance of Life (pp. 34-63), has had a special place in the hearts of dance lovers from all walks of dance life. In the past several years Ellis's essay has been reprinted in three anthologies: Dance, in the quarterly periodical Salmagundi (1976:5-22), edited by Martin Leonard Pops; The Dance Anthology (1980:238-254), edited by Cobbett Steinberg; and What Is Dance? (1983:478-496), edited by Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen. Their collections, claim the anthologists, contain the best available writing on dance; thus, they include Ellis's essay. In their introductory remarks Steinberg as well as Copeland and Cohen emphasize Ellis's comprehensive view of dance. Both their books contain a section entitled “Dance and Society” where Ellis's essay is presented. Only Pops accurately identifies Ellis, along with most of the other authors in his collection, as an enthusiastic amateur.

Since its publication, ideas from Ellis's essay have been quoted by many writers on dance: critics Walter Terry in The Dance in America (1971), Walter Sorell in Dance Through the Ages (1967), John Martin in America Dancing (1936), and Carl Van Vechten in his essays “The Land of Joy” and “Spain and Music” (1974:135-167); educators Margaret H'Doubler in Dance: A Creative Art Experience (1940), Elizabeth Selden in A Dancer's Quest (1935), Roderyk Lange in The Nature of Dance: An Anthropological Perspective (1975), Frederick Rand Rogers in Dance: A Basic Educational Technique (1941), Richard Kraus in History of Dance in Art and Education (1969), and Sondra Fraleigh in Dance and the Lived Body: A Descriptive Aesthetic (1987); historian Selma Jeanne Cohen in Next Week Swan Lake (1982); and philosophers Theodore M. Greene in The Arts and Art Criticism (1940) and Francis Sparshott in Off the Ground: First Steps in a Philosophical Consideration of Dance (1988). Early modern dance pioneers Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn imply in their writings that, because Ellis once again identified dance as an art, his status and erudition validated their own ideas about the value of dance (Terry 1976:43). These artists and authors regard Ellis as an authority. To introduce this reconsideration of Ellis's ideas about dance, the ideas these authors select to quote or cite from Ellis's essay will be examined.