
Expanding upon the legacy of its founders, Helen Balfour Morrison and Sybil Shearer, the Morrison Shearer Foundation inspires and nurtures the creative processes of dance artists, media artists, and their collaborators.

John Neumeier in Converstion
Chicago Dance Legacies with Dr. Susan Manning and Dr. Lizzie Leopold
Presented by the Harris Theater and the Morrison-Shearer Foundation
Milwaukee-born John Neumeier has been the Director and Chief Choreographer of the Hamburg Ballet since 1973. Yet his dance career and formative training took place in mid-century Chicago, most notably with modern dancer Sybil Shearer and the Stone-Camryn Ballet. This video documents a conversation between Mr. Neumeier and dance scholars Susan Manning and Lizzie Leopold, co-editors of Dancing on the Third Coast: Chicago Dance Histories.

Art Institute of Chicago Purchases Ray Johnson Moticos and Ephemera from the Foundation
It was an astonishing find in the attic of the Morrison-Shearer Foundation back in 2013. There it was; a pristine collection of Ray Johnson “moticos” tucked inside their original envelope with the postmark December 30, 1955.
With this discovery, the exciting times of Sybil Shearer and Helen Morrison’s connection to Ray Johnson suddenly sprang to life. John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and Robert Lippold, were together at Black Mountain College in the late 1940’s where Ray Johnson was a student. Helen’s photograph of sculptor Robert Lippold is in the Smithsonian, Washington DC; her portrait of musical renegade John Cage can be found at the Newberry Library. In 1949, Sybil and Merce Cunningham choreographed solos for one another when she and Morrison organized a series of performances by him and John Cage in nearby Winnetka, Illinois. The rich, creative connections between Shearer and Johnson are only now beginning to be revealed on closer examination of this collection.
It was an astonishing find in the attic of the Morrison-Shearer Foundation back in 2013. There it was; a pristine collection of Ray Johnson “moticos” tucked inside their original envelope with the postmark December 30, 1955.
With this discovery, the exciting times of Sybil Shearer and Helen Morrison’s connection to Ray Johnson suddenly sprang to life. John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and Robert Lippold, were together at Black Mountain College in the late 1940’s where Ray Johnson was a student. Helen’s photograph of sculptor Robert Lippold is in the Smithsonian, Washington DC; her portrait of musical renegade John Cage can be found at the Newberry Library. In 1949, Sybil and Merce Cunningham choreographed solos for one another when she and Morrison organized a series of performances by him and John Cage in nearby Winnetka, Illinois. The rich, creative connections between Shearer and Johnson are only now beginning to be revealed on closer examination of this collection.
Now, fast forward to the present: in February 2022, with the Art Institute of Chicago’s impressive Ray Johnson c/o exhibition underway, the Foundation approached the exhibition’s lead curator, Caitlin Haskell, for advice. Haskell was immediately intrigued and soon determined the collection held important examples of Johnson’s early work and expressed interest in the possibility that the museum might eventually purchase the pieces.
The Foundation’s Board Chair, Alida Szabo, and Executive Director, Scott Lundius, then met with representatives of the Ray Johnson Estate, who happened to be in town for the exhibition closing reception and announcement of Haskell’s additional new role as Director of Ray Johnson Collections and Research for the museum.
Frances Beatty, Managing Director of the Ray Johnson Estate, and Maria Ilario, Director of Collections and Archives, verified their authenticity and were thrilled to see the pieces as they were unknown evidence of Ray Johnson’s connections to artists in the Midwest. The collection of moticos and related ephemera is now the Sybil Shearer Collection of Ray Johnson, a significant addition to the growing collection of Ray Johnson materials in the Art Institute of Chicago Archives. Within the first few days after the transfer of ownership, Haskell reported that, “they have already brought to light several important connections between Ray's collage practice and his involvement in the world of mid-century dance.”
We wonder if Ray Johnson knew that he and Sybil shared an understanding of the power of forming connections. Shearer’s three-volume autobiography is replete with letters she wrote and received. They marvelously concoct the times she lived in, embodying the archetype of the artist exploring and reflecting on her craft. Later in life, Sybil understood the importance of staying connected with dance contemporaries even though earlier she was considered an isolated dance maverick, living more in communication with Nature than with other creatives.
Throughout his life Johnson mailed collages and drawings to friends, colleagues and others who had piqued his interest. Johnson’s friends described him as mysterious. He lived alone and simply. To flesh out an artistic idea, he invited friends to witness what he saw on the New York streets, involving them in the onset of creation, an essential collaborator. Nam June Paik considered him a forerunner and important collaborator in the field of communication art. Johnson’s correspondence was often provocative, inciting the recipient to respond, calling out their creativity, and inducing them to mail it forward. As testament to his lasting influence, there are vibrant mail art networks still functioning internationally and his legacy continues in the movements Pop Art, Fluxus, and Conceptual Art.
Our founders continue to surprise and inspire us to play creativity forward!

The Sybil Shearer Studio at Ragdale
The Sybil Shearer Studio at Ragdale brings about the realization of the dream of modern dance pioneer Sybil Shearer (1912 – 2005) and her longtime artistic collaborator, photographer Helen Balfour Morrison (1901 – 1984). Shearer and Balfour Morrison envisioned creating a tranquil location where artists could hone their skills and advance their artistic self-expression free from distractions.
The state-of-the-art Sybil Shearer Studio and adjacent composer’s studio provides artists with space for contemplative creativity and the opportunity to explore their practice within a group of other artists with housing and meals provided during their residency.
The roughly 2,500 square foot building houses both the Sybil Shearer Studio and a composer’s studio. The Sybil Shearer Studio space boasts a 30’ x 50’ sprung wood floor, flexible lighting options, and audio-visual equipment. Both studios are accompanied by fully accessible, private sleeping spaces and bathrooms. A key design element of the Sybil Shearer Studio is a series of large windows that immerse resident artists in expansive views of nature as Shearer experienced in her original Northbrook studio.
The House of Dance and Music was designed by Woodhouse Tinucci Architects; the general contractor for the project was Jake Goldberg of Goldberg General Contracting, Inc. and landscape design was by Rosborough Partners, Inc.
For information on Ragdale’s Residency and Fellowship programs, visit their website at https://www.ragdale.org/
A Space to Create
A Space to Create is a visually stunning, poetic and complex sixteen-minute film that tells the remarkable story of Sybil Shearer and Helen Balfour Morrison. As artful as the work of these two artists themselves, the film itself is in motion and exquisitely complements the visuals of Helen Balfour Morrison and the choreography of Sybil Shearer.
A committee of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, chaired by Liz Kidera, commissioned Bob Hercules and Media Process Group to create a short film about the work of these two pioneering female artists. This story of Shearer’s original Northbrook dance studio, and the decisions that led the Morrison-Shearer Foundation to build the Sybil Shearer Dance Studio at Ragdale, herald the creation of a new arts resource for dance in the United States.
S P O T L I G H T

Stephanie Martinez
Stephanie Martinez Named 2023 Sybil Shearer Fellow at Ragdale
Award winning choreographer, Stephanie Martinez, has been selected as the second recipient of the Sybil Shearer Fellowship for an artist’s residency in the new Sybil Shearer Studio at Ragdale. Stephanie is the Founder and Artistic Director of PARA.MAR Dance Theatre in Chicago.
Through this fellowship, Stephanie will explore the work of Chilean poet and scholar Gabriela Mistral as a companion to her most recently completed work, Dos Lados, which she began working on 6 years ago through Ballet Hispanico’s Instituto Coreográfico. Now realized as a full-length contemporary ballet, Dos Lados explores the conflict between the public and private self and the stories we are "allowed" to tell. The piece recently enjoyed its first fully-staged production at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre.
“In this residency…I will interrogate three specific poems from Locas Mujeres: La Fervorosa, La Que Camina, and The Abandoned Woman – all of which reference and examine the generational oppressions, sacrifices, and courage necessary to survive in a world where you are conditioned to mute yourself to fit in. In these poems I am reminded of my mother, my grandmother, and all the women who have had to contort themselves to survive a world that wasn't built to accept them. Mistral uses her voice, her honesty, her creative expression as an act of bravery and protest to survive. In this residency I will use my voice for all the women who couldn't use theirs.
Award winning choreographer, Stephanie Martinez, has been selected as the second recipient of the Sybil Shearer Fellowship for an artist’s residency in the new Sybil Shearer Studio at Ragdale. Stephanie is the Founder and Artistic Director of PARA.MAR Dance Theatre in Chicago.
Through this fellowship, Stephanie will explore the work of Chilean poet and scholar Gabriela Mistral as a companion to her most recently completed work, Dos Lados, which she began working on 6 years ago through Ballet Hispanico’s Instituto Coreográfico. Now realized as a full-length contemporary ballet, Dos Lados explores the conflict between the public and private self and the stories we are "allowed" to tell. The piece recently enjoyed its first fully-staged production at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre.
“In this residency…I will interrogate three specific poems from Locas Mujeres: La Fervorosa, La Que Camina, and The Abandoned Woman – all of which reference and examine the generational oppressions, sacrifices, and courage necessary to survive in a world where you are conditioned to mute yourself to fit in. In these poems I am reminded of my mother, my grandmother, and all the women who have had to contort themselves to survive a world that wasn't built to accept them. Mistral uses her voice, her honesty, her creative expression as an act of bravery and protest to survive. In this residency I will use my voice for all the women who couldn't use theirs.
As a dancemaker with a career spanning over thirty years, I have learned that dancemaking is more than a process, it is a practice. It is a practice of rigorous physical and emotional exploration, discovery, deep reflection, humility, and the ability to persevere in the face of adversity.
This practice is also part of what gave me the courage to follow my own voice, one that has been traditionally marginalized as a female, Latin and Native American artist, to create a new company, PARA.MAR Dance Theatre, devoted to a vision of empowering and elevating diversity in contemporary ballet, so that all can have an opportunity to practice the telling and hearing of stories that become a catalyst for connection and understanding.”
Congratulations Stephanie! We can’t wait to see the results of your practice in this residency.

Volume III of Sybil Shearer’s Autobiography
Volume III of Sybil Shearer’s autobiography, Without Wings the Way Is Steep: The Reality Beyond Realism, holds insights by the 20th Century modern dance pioneer during her later years, living alone in Northbrook (1985-2004) as critic, writer, and Anthroposophist. In it, her two worlds — dance and Anthroposophy — are melded through reflections, reviews, and three extraordinary correspondences: with Ballet Review editor Francis Mason, Waldorf educator and astronomer Norman Davidson, and biodynamic farmer and eurythmist Marjorie Spock. Also important is her connection with John Neumeier, former student and longtime director of the Hamburg Ballet. With this volume, Sybil’s autobiography is complete, revealing her genius as thinker, modern dance pioneer, spiritual seeker, writer, friend, and warm human being. One reader’s comment was, “What a third act!”
Purchase Volume III, The Reality Beyond Realism
More Information: The Autobiography of Sybil Shearer, in Three Volumes