Louis Horst - Biography and Work

Biography and Work

Horst was the musical director for the Denishawn company (1916 to 1925) before working as musical director and dance composition teacher for Martha Graham's school and dance company (1926 to 1948).

One of Horst's advices in his lessons became particularly famously, in the 1930s he said to dancers, sometimes in a sarcastic and sardonic tone, "when in doubt, turn." This is a variant of Ted Shawn's famous line "When in doubt, twirl." The Grateful Dead Almanac adopted it as their motto.

Apart from being a personal friend and mentor to Graham, Horst worked and wrote scores for many other choreographers, including:

• Ruth St. Denis
• Ted Shawn
• Helen Tamiris
• Martha Hill
• Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman
• Agnes de Mille
• Ruth Page
• Michio Ito
• Nina Fonaroff
• Adolph Bolm
• Harald Kreutzberg
• Pearl Lang
• Jean Erdman
• Anna Sokolow, Horst's assistant and demonstrator

Horst composed scores for the Denishawn company, including Japanese Spear Dance (1919). He composed several of Graham's early group works: Primitive Mysteries (1931), Celebration (1934), Frontier (1935), and El Penitente (1940). For Anna Sokolow, Horst composed Noah (1935). He also composed several movie scores.

Horst taught art of choreography at Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater (1928-1964), Bennington College (1934-1945), Mills College, Connecticut College (1948–1963), Barnard College, Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University, and The Juilliard School (1951-1964).

Horst lectured often on "Dance Composition", "Music Composition for Dance", and "Modern Dance and Its Relation to the Other Modern Arts". He wrote and published two books: Pre-classic Dance Forms (1937) and Modern Dance Forms (1960). He founded and edited Dance Observer Journal (1933-1964).

In 1964 he became the second recipient of the Heritage Award of the National Dance Association.