Publications

Volume I, Within This Thicket (2006)
Covering Sybil’s life from 1905-1941

“Indisputably one of the greatest dancers of all time,” proclaimed the New York Times about legendary and elusive original, Sybil Shearer. Publication of her letters provides an intimate view of an artist searching for and discovering her creative self. They are fascinating as an insider’s history of modern dance in America. Written and received from 1931 to 1942, the letters chronicle the budding of Shearer’s talents as a unique individual force in dance and her relationships with such key seminal figures as Hanya Holm, Doris Humphrey, Agnes de Mille, and Louis Horst. A Sybil Shearer concert at Carnegie Hall would be, “packed with so many dance celebrities that if the roof caved in, there would be no American dance the next day,” said Walter Terry – Saturday Review. Photographs by Helen Balfour Morrison. Forward by Madeleine Nichols, Curator Emerita, NY Public Library Dance Division.

Volume II, The Midwest Inheritance (2012)
Covering Sybil’s life from 1942-1984

Sybil Shearer, “one of the world’s foremost dancers and choreographers” and a “near legendary figure,” abandoned New York in 1942 and made a surprise move to Chicago. There and in nearby Northbrook, her secluded way of life gave an air of intrigue to her rare public appearances. Soon critics from New York and across the country were coming to Chicago to see her work. Here this “elusive mystic” tells her own story from 1942 until 1984, when her longtime artistic collaborator, photographer Helen Balfour Morrison, died. Also prominent is New York Times critic John Martin, who followed her work from its beginnings at Benington, where they met in 1934. Dance devotees, historians, and others will find much to savor in the book’s roster of noted dancers, artists, critics, and academics of the time. Foreword by John Neumeier, director of the Hamburg Ballet in Germany.

Volume III, The Reality Beyond Realism (2020)
Covering Sybil’s life from 1985-2005

This vivid documentation of the life of Sybil Shearer is the best kind of testament to the power of the arts,” says Ronne Hartfield, former Director of Museum Education at the The Art Institute of Chicago. “It is an exemplary life story, confirming her place in the history of dance, a legacy for the ages.”

“Sybil’s autobiography is an independent woman’s voice making sense of her time, from a tangential place, creating self-referential art all along,” says Joseph Houseal, Director of Core of Culture Dance Preservation.

“What a third act!” says Margo Viscusi, President Emerita of Poets House, New York, and student of Sybil Shearer. “Already in her seventies, she created an astonishingly rich new life as an original and outspoken dance critic, a student of philosophy and spirituality, a sought-after public speaker, and an impresario. This is a unique account of late-life success.”