Eve Gentry (August 21, 1909 – June 17, 1994;

née A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth ...

Henrietta Greenhood, and

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...

Eve Brooks) was a

modern dance Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance which included dance styles such as ballet, folk, ethnic, religious, and social dancing; and primarily arose out of Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th ...

r, and later a Pilates master instructor. She was an original disciple of

Joseph Pilates Joseph Hubertus Pilates (9 December 1883 – 9 October 1967) was a German physical trainer, credited with inventing and promoting the Pilates method of physical fitness. Biography Early life Joseph Hubertus Pilates was born on 9 December 1 ...

, and a master teacher of his technique to generations of instructors. She helped found the

Dance Notation Bureau The Dance Notation Bureau (DNB) is a non-profit organization founded to preserve choreographic works through notating dance scores in Labanotation and collaborating with dance companies to stage reconstructions of those works. Based in New York C ...

in New York City and later in 1991 she co-founded the Institute for the Pilates Method in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Early life

Gentry was born on August 21, 1909 and grew up in

San Bernardino, California San Bernardino (; Spanish language, Spanish for Bernardino of Siena, "Saint Bernardino") is a city and county seat of San Bernardino County, California, United States. Located in the Inland Empire region of Southern California, the city had a ...

. In 1917, she studied ballet, and folk dance. Gentry was studying in Los Angeles when

Martha Graham Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991) was an American modern dancer and choreographer. Her style, the Graham technique, reshaped American dance and is still taught worldwide. Graham danced and taught for over seventy years. She ...

saw her perform and offered her a scholarship in New York City. Gentry performed with

Hanya Holm Hanya Holm (born Johanna Eckert; 3 March 1893 – 3 November 1992) is known as one of the "Big Four" founders of American modern dance. She was a dancer, choreographer, and above all, a dance educator. Early life, connection with Mary Wigman B ...

in the Hanya Holm Dance Company in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

from 1936 to 1942, and later founded her own group, the Eve Gentry Dancers. Additionally she studied

Labanotation Labanotation (the grammatically correct form "Labannotation" or "Laban notation" is uncommon) is a system for analyzing and recording human movement. The inventor was Rudolf von Laban (1879-1958), a central figure in European modern dance, who ...

from

Rudolf von Laban Rudolf von Laban, also known as Rudolf Laban (German; also ''Rudolph von Laban'', hu, Lábán Rezső János Attila, Lábán Rudolf; 15 December 1879 – 1 July 1958), was an Austro-Hungarian, German and British dance artist, choreographer and ...

's students

Irmgard Bartenieff Irmgard Bartenieff (1900 Berlin – 1981 New York City) was a dance theorist, dancer, choreographer, physical therapist, and a leading pioneer of dance therapy. A student of Rudolf Laban, she pursued cross-cultural dance analysis, and generated ...

and Irma Otto-Betz. She danced under the name Henrietta Greenhood until 1945, when she professionally adopted Gentry, her husband's surname.

Career

Her concern for preserving

choreography Choreography is the art or practice of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies (or their depictions) in which motion or form or both are specified. ''Choreography'' may also refer to the design itself. A choreographer is one who c ...

led her to establish the

in New York in 1940, with Ann Hutchinson Guest, Janey Price and Helen Priest Rogers. The Dance Notation Bureau promoted the ideas of Labanotation. She was a charter faculty member of the

High School for the Performing Arts The Baltimore School for the Arts (BSA) is a public performing arts high school located in Mount Vernon, Baltimore, Maryland, United States and is part of the Baltimore City Public Schools system. Established in 1979, The Baltimore School for ...

(now Baltimore School for the Arts). Persistent back and knee problems led her to investigate, and later teach, a system of physical conditioning devised by

. She taught "Contrology" at the

Pilates Pilates (; ) is a type of mind–body intervention, mind-body exercise developed in the early 20th century by German physical trainer Joseph Pilates, after whom it was named. Pilates called his method "Contrology". It is practiced worldwide, es ...

Studio in New York from 1938 through 1968. Gentry also taught "Pilates" in the early 1960s at New York University's,

Tisch School of the Arts The New York University Tisch School of the Arts (commonly referred to as Tisch) is the performing, cinematic and media arts school of New York University. Founded on August 17, 1965, Tisch is a training ground for artists, scholars of the a ...

Theater Department. In 1968, she moved to New Mexico, where she established a Pilates Studio on Camino de la Luz. In 1991, she co-founded the Institute for the Pilates Method in Santa Fe with Joan Breibart and Michele Larsson. Gentry is credited with founding the concept of ''imprinting'' in Pilates. The first workshop was in October 1991 taught by Gentry using eight "Mini-Moves" which became the foundation of the Fundamentals which are the signature of the PhysicalMind Institute, the successor to the Institute for the Pilates Method. There are now 28 Fundamentals and they have been copied by most of the subsequent Pilates Certification companies who followed the distribution system originated by Joan Breibart. She died at the age of 84 on June 17, 1994, at her home in

Santa Fe, New Mexico Santa Fe ( ; , Spanish for 'Holy Faith'; tew, Oghá P'o'oge, Tewa for 'white shell water place'; tiw, Hulp'ó'ona, label= Northern Tiwa; nv, Yootó, Navajo for 'bead + water place') is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. The name “S ...

Awards

In 1979, she was given the "Pioneer of Modern Dance Award" by

Bennington College Bennington College is a private liberal arts college in Bennington, Vermont. Founded in 1932 as a women's college, it became co-educational in 1969. It claims to be the first college to include visual and performing arts as an equal partner in ...

. She was also deemed a Living Treasure by the State of New Mexico in 1989.

References

External links

Reminiscences of Eve Gentry: oral history, 1979.
Columbia University * Video
Dance On with Billie Mahoney, Eve Gentry, Part 1
(1990) {{DEFAULTSORT:Gentry, Eve 1909 births 1994 deaths American female dancers Dancers from New York (state) Tisch School of the Arts faculty People associated with physical culture 20th-century American women 20th-century American dancers