Hocking Hills School of the Dance

Hocking Hills School of the Dance is an imagined school of modern dance in rural Ohio during the early 20th century. Documented as a fictitious archival collection of photographs that recreate dance aesthetics of the progressive era, the project narrates a faux-history of dance pioneers Wilhelmina “Billy” Marsden and Virginia Sheridan Grant from1919 to 1936.

Beginning in the mid-1910s several regional schools of modern dance were founded across the United States. Developing alongside the women’s physical culture movement, these dance schools connected a scientific study of the body with codified exercise systems for acting and elocution.

Hocking Hills School of the Dance was supported by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Digital Storytelling Grant.

hockinghills.kenyoncip.org