Biographical Note
Dance professor Betty Lynd Thompson came to Oregon State College in
1927 to teach dance in the Department of Physical Education for Women.
Until 1945, she taught all dance classes -- modern, folk, square, tap, and
ballroom -- as well as basic rhythm and movement. As other dance faculty
were added to the department, she was able to concentrate on her major
interest of creative dance. She wrote a college textbook for dance
instruction, Fundamentals of Rhythm and
Dance, which was published in 1933. In 1931, she founded the
Oregon State chapter of Orchesis, the modern dance honorary.
Thompson earned a B.A. in English Literature from Illinois Wesleyan
University in 1923 and an M.A. degree from the University of Wisconsin in
1926 with an emphasis in modern creative dance. She later pursued
intensive traning in the studios of master artists in New York, including
Martha Graham, who became a friend as well as mentor.
She became
interested in ceramics in the 1940s while volunteering with the USO and
began to sculpt small figurines of dancers after studying ceramics at the
University of Washington for one term. She referred to this work as
"danceramics".
Thompson retired from teaching in 1972. On her 83rd
birthday, colleagues and friends organized a celebration, during which she
danced on stage. She died a month later on March 2, 1985.
Content Description
The Betty Lynd Thompson
Papers document the teaching and dance performance career of Thompson. The
Papers include correspondence; teaching materials and student papers;
writings by Thompson on a variety of topics; publications pertaining to
dance instruction; dance programs, clippings, and ephemera; photographs;
and motion picture films. The bulk of the documentary materials were
created or assembled during her years as a dance instructor at Oregon
State; they also include materials from her high school and college years.
The teaching materials include the two books that she wrote on dance
instruction, Fundamentals of Rhythm and
Dance (1933) and Student Manual for Modern
Creative Dance (1966), as well as papers and projects completed by
students in her classes. The collection also includes sound recordings
that she apparently used for warm-up in her classes.
The
photographs include a variety of formats (prints, film negatives, slides,
and tintypes) and depict a wide range of subjects including dance classes
and performances, her family and friends, pets and animals, her home, and
her student years at Illinois Wesleyan University.
The motion
picture films are 16 mm b/w and color. Most are silent; a film of dance
students made in the 1950s includes sound. The films consist primarily of
footage of students in modern and creative dance classes at Oregon State
University; there is also one film of Thompson and a film of women's field
hockey.
The Papers also include several ceramic figurines of
dancers made by Thompson as well as photographs of the figurines.