Ruth St. Denis

Ruth St. Dennis, a photo by Cathy (Kate) Johnson on Flickr.

There was a display of old photos by Orval Hixon from the Vaudeville era in the Paradise Playhouse Dinner Theatre on Artcrawl night.  The photos are in the Ray County Museum, normally, in Richmond, MO.  I was inspired by this lady, who was of course in black and white in the photo!  I added color later, at home...

And it looks like the photographer and I BOTH spelled her name wrong...it's Ruth S. Denis, one N. Quite the famous lady in her day, it appears--she was inducted into the National Museum of Dance C.V. Whitney Hall of Fame in 1987.

Holy cats!  She taught Martha Graham!  Wonder what she was doing in the Kansas City area...

And here's more on Orval Hixon, who appears to have been pretty famous in his own right! http://www.orvalhixon.com/

Does she fit here?  I don't know...I sketched her on the spot, in an urban setting, but she wasn't moving much!