Waters, Elizabeth Hannah, 1910-1993

Biography

Ms. Waters was born in Salem, Ore. She studied in Colorado at the Perry-Mansfield School and in New York City with Ruth St. Denis, also working as the famed dancer's personal maid and assistant in 1931. When Ms. Holm, a disciple of the German modern-dance pioneer Mary Wigman, opened the American Wigman School in New York, Ms. Waters became a scholarship student. She was a soloist in the Holm company from 1935 to 1939 and was Ms. Holm's teaching assistant at the Bennington School of the Dance in Vermont.In 1940, she formed her own company, Dancers en Route, with Alwin Nikolais. During World War II, she worked as a welder at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico and taught dance in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Las Vegas, Nev. Ms. Waters taught at the University of New Mexico from 1946 to 1973; among her students was Tim Wengerd, a principal in the Martha Graham Dance Company in the 1970's and 1980's. Ms. Waters choreographed more than 50 works.

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