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Ailes Gilmour was among the young pioneers of the American Modern Dance movement of the 1930's. She was one of the first members of Martha Graham's dance company. Image File history File links Broom_icon. ... picture of Isadora Duncan - Source: Library of Congress Modern dance is a dance form developed in the early 20th century. ...

Ailes was born in Yokohama, Japan in 1912. Ailes' older brother is Isamu Noguchi the American sculptor. Isamu and Ailes had different fathers. Their mother, Leonie Gilmour was an American ex-patriate living in Japan, working as an English teacher and writer. Leonie Gilmour, met Isamu's father, Yone Noguchi while Yone was living in New York where he trying to get his poetry published. At first she worked for him as his editor. Isamu was born in New York after Yone had gone back to Japan to teach English at Keio University. At the time Leonie believed they were married. However, when she got to Tokyo, Leonie found out that Yone already a child and another family. For the town of Yokohama in Aomori Prefecture, see Yokohama, Aomori. ... 1912 (MCMXII) was a leap year starting on Monday in the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Tuesday in the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Isamu Noguchi , November 17, 1904 - December 30, 1988) was a prominent Japanese -American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. ... Yone Noguchi Yone Noguchi, born (and known in Japan as) Yonejiro Noguchi (野口米次郎 Noguchi Yonejirō, 1875 - 1947), was an influential writer of poetry, fiction, essays, and criticism in both English and Japanese. ... Keiō (Japanese: 慶応) was a Japanese era after Genji and before Meiji, spanning from 7 April 1865 to 8 September 1868 (in the Gregorian calendar, from 1 May 1865 to 23 October 1868). ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

According to Masayo Duus in her biography of Isamu, ^[1], Ailes' son found a page in an old notebook which might have referred to Ailes' father. However, the corner of the paper where a signature would be written had been torn off apparently to conceal his identity. Ailes said in a biographical statement for Marion Horosko's book about Martha Graham, that her father was a Japanese poet. ^[2] Martha Graham and Bertram Ross in Visionary Recital, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1961 Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991), an American dancer and choreographer, is known as one of the foremost pioneers of modern dance. ...

Leonie chose the name Ailes for her daughter from a poem Beauty's a Flower by Moira O'Neill, the pseudonym of Agnes Shakespeare Higginson. It is a striking coincidence that the words in that poem seemed to predict Ailes' career as a dancer. Moira wrote, "Ailes was girl that stepped on two bare feet..." Performing barefoot was an important innovation by modern dance pioneeers like Martha Graham. Moira ONeill was the pseudonym of Agnes Shakespeare Higginson (1870 - 1951), a popular Irish-Canadian poet who wrote ballads and other verse inspired by County Antrim, where she lived at Cushendun. ...

Ailes grew up in a little Japanese style house that Leonie had constructed in Chigasaki, a seaside town near Yokohama. Isamu as a boy actually worked with the carpenters who built it. The Japanese woodworking tools they taught him to use were among his most treasured possessions all his life. Chigasaki (茅ヶ崎市 Chigasaki-shi) is a city located in the middle part of Kanagawa Prefecture, and is famous for its sea beach. ... For the town of Yokohama in Aomori Prefecture, see Yokohama, Aomori. ...

Ailes was remembered by neighbors in Chigasaki as a happy child who liked playing in the garden, chasing butterflies and cicadas. Chigasaki (茅ヶ崎市 Chigasaki-shi) is a city located in the middle part of Kanagawa Prefecture, and is famous for its sea beach. ...

In 1920, Leonie and her daughter managed to return to America. Isamu was still in high school in LaPorte, Indiana. He got his high school diploma there and was accepted into Columbia University's pre-med program in 1922. At that time, Leonie and Ailes also go to live in New York City. Leonie sends Ailes to the Ethical Culture elementary school which was founded in 1876 by Felix Adler, She herself had been a student there. It was known as a progressive school. Leonie had completed her education at Bryn Mawr College and the Sorbonne in Paris. For her daughter, she chooses the Cherry Lawn School [1] in Connecticut. It was a boarding school which was known for its progressive, co-educational program. The director of the school was Dr. Christina DeStael von Holstein, a descendant of the Madame DeStael, a French woman writer in the early 19th century. Dr. Christina DeStael's husband, Dr. Boris Bogoslovsy had been an official in the Kerensky government and later served an observer at the Nurenberg trials. He taught science at Cherry Lawn. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Nickname: Big Apple, Gotham, NYC, City That Never Sleeps, The Concrete Jungle, The City So Nice They Named It Twice Location in the state of New York Coordinates: Country United States State New York Boroughs The Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan Queens Staten Island Settled 1676 Government  - Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) Area... The Ethical Culture Movement is a non-sectarian, ethico-religious and educational movement. ... Felix Adler (1851–1933) was a Jewish rationalist intellectual who founded the Society for Ethical Culture in New York, New York. ... Bryn Mawr is also the name of an official neighborhood of the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota. ... The Sorbonne, Paris, in a 17th century engraving The Sorbonne today, from the same point of view The Sorbonne is frequently used in ordinary parlance as synonymous with the faculty of theology of Paris or the University of Paris in its entirety. ... It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles. ... State emblem of the Russian Provisional Government The Russian Provisional Government was formed in Petrograd after the deterioration of the Russian Empire and the Czars abdication. ...

In 1928, Ailes was the literary editor of The Cherry Pit, the Cherry Lawn's student magazine. After she graduated from high school there in 1929, she went on to the Neighborhood Playhouse to study dance and performing arts as a scholarhip student. There she met the young Martha Graham and joined her new professional dance troupe. Ailes told Marion Horosko that she introduced Martha Graham to her brother, Isamu, in 1929. At the time he was trying to make a living in New York City taking commissions for portrait busts, an activity he disparagingly termed "doing heads." Martha had a bust made of herself in bronze. The Neighborhood Playhouse is an actor training school in New York City, generally associated with the Meisner technique of Sanford Meisner. ... Martha Graham and Bertram Ross in Visionary Recital, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1961 Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991), an American dancer and choreographer, is known as one of the foremost pioneers of modern dance. ... Martha Graham and Bertram Ross in Visionary Recital, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1961 Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991), an American dancer and choreographer, is known as one of the foremost pioneers of modern dance. ... Nickname: Big Apple, Gotham, NYC, City That Never Sleeps, The Concrete Jungle, The City So Nice They Named It Twice Location in the state of New York Coordinates: Country United States State New York Boroughs The Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan Queens Staten Island Settled 1676 Government  - Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) Area...

On December 31, 1933 Ailes mother, Leonie Gilmour dies in the charity ward of New York's Bellevue Hospital. The cause of death was listed as pneunomia perhaps brought on by the toll taken on her by many years of poverty and hardship. December 31 is the 365th day of the year (366th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ...

Isamu and Ailes put a small gravestone for Leonie in her family burial plot in Cypress Hills cemetery in Brooklyn. Isamu made a Japanese style unglazed haniwa statue to guard their mother's grave. It was only many decades later that Isamu achieved renown and success as an artist. The Cypress Hills are a region of hills in southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta, Canada. ... Brooklyn (named for the Dutch city Breukelen) is one of the five boroughs of New York City. ... The Haniwa (埴輪) are funerary figures (literally, clay rings), found in thousands of kofun era tombs (3rd-6th century CE) scattered throughout Japan. ...

During the Depression Era, dancers like Ailes and artists like Isamu struggled to find work. In 1932 when Radio City Music Hall opened Ailes performed at the debut with Grahham's company. Their work, "Choric patterns" lasted on stage for just one week. Ailes ruefully observed to Marion Horosko that Radio City Music Hall could only succeed when it became a movie movie theater with Rockettes. The Great Depression was a global economic slump that began in 1929 and bottomed in 1933. ... Radio City Music Hall at Christmas 2005 Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue located in New York Citys Rockefeller Center. ...

Ailes name appears in the 1930's on dance programs with a dancer-choreographer named Bill Matons [2]. Matons was the director of the "experimental unit" of the New Dance League. This organization evolved from the Workers Dance League between 1931 and 1935. Among the group's later to- become-famous-members were male dancer-choreographers like Jose Limon and Charles Weidman. Ailes and Matons performed in a WPA dance recital at the Brooklyn Museum in 1937. They were in Adelante, a WPA sponsored Broadway musical in 1939. Matons did the choreography for the 1937 Lenin Peace pageant at Madison Square Garden. The Brooklyn Museum, located at 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York, is the second largest art museum in New York City, and one of the largest in the United States. ... Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG, known colloquially simply as The Garden, has been the name of four arenas in New York City, United States. ...

Ailes was married to Herbert J. Spinden. Ailes son is Jody Spinden.

Additional Reading

Duus, Masayo. The Life of Isamu Noguchi: Journey without Borders. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Horosko, Marian. Martha Graham: The Evolution of Her Dance Theory and Training. University Press of Florida, 2002.

Noguchi, Isamu. A Scupltor's World. New York: Harper and Row, 1968.