The National Youth Administration (NYA) Dance Group of San Francisco (and elsewhere). Plus: NYA dancer Pearl Primus!

Above: Some of the dancers of the National Youth Administration (NYA) Dance Group of San Francisco. Photo by E.R. King, Associated Press, part of a larger group of photos appearing in multiple newspapers in July 1937; provided courtesy of Newspapers.com, and used here for educational, non-commercial purposes.

Above: Ann Whittington, left, supervisor of the NYA Dance Group of San Francisco, and Rosalie Wagner, assistant supervisor. Photo by E.R. King, Associated Press, part of a larger group of photos appearing in multiple newspapers in July 1937; provided courtesy of Newspapers.com, and used here for educational, non-commercial purposes.

The Forgotten NYA Dance Group

The NYA Dance Group is almost certainly the least remembered art program of the New Deal. It seems to have existed from 1936 to 1938 (with some indication that it may have lasted into 1940), and operated in at least three locations - California, Pennsylvania, and New York. The Group appears to have been a component of the WPA's Federal Theatre Project (FTP) and perhaps also the FTP's semi-autonomous Federal Dance Project.

Ann Whittington was the supervisor of the NYA Dance Group of San Francisco; and, in addition to being a modern dance performer, was an accomplished cellist. After the NYA, she married and became Ann Whittington Oppenheim, and lived in Mill Valley, California. In 1951-1953, she was one of three founders of what is today the Marin Symphony Association (see, "Guild Believes 'They Shall Have Music'," Daily Independent Journal (San Raphael, California), February 28, 1953, p. 27; and "History & Who We Are," Marin Symphony, accessed September 21, 2020). 

According to the website "Ancient Faces,"Ann Whittington Oppenheim lived from 1912-1997.  

The assistant director of the NYA Dance Group of San Francisco was Rosalie Wagner. After her time in the NYA, she moved to Hawaii and taught and performed dance there for at least a few months. In January 1939, however, it was announced that she was marrying Robert G.K. Smith (described as a well-known photographer in San Francisco) and I could find little information about her after that ("Talented Island Dancer to Marry on Mainland," Honolulu Star-Bulletin, January 21, 1939, p. 24).

In an interesting 1938 article about Rosalie Wagner, it was stated that the NYA Dance Group of San Francisco "reached a high point of achievement with a concert in Oakland in 1937 with the Federal Symphony [i.e., the WPA's Federal Music Project], the first performance of a local dance group with a symphony seen in the Bay area in many years" ("Feminine World," The Honolulu Advertiser, August 16, 1938, p. 6). This was probably the same performance reviewed by Jack Mason, of the Oakland Tribune, in October 1937. Mason wrote:

"The Federal Symphony Orchestra took a step aside last night at the Auditorium Theater to make way for a guest Muse - the Dance, exemplified by the Modern Dance Group of the National Youth Administration. The dancers took over the second half of the program and enhanced it by ten original and stimulating numbers... The dances concentrated on rhythmic line, geometric pattern, and comedy... all [dancers] exhibited a fine talent for pantomime... it was an evening of singular enjoyment. Choreography for the dances was by Ann Whittington and Rosalie Wagner" ("Dance Group Shares Honors At Federal Symphony Concert," Oakland Tribune, October 23, 1937, p. 2). The night's performance was in memory of the prestigious music composer & conductor Henry Hadley, who had died the month before.

Meanwhile, the NYA's dance group in Pennsylvania was performing at a variety of locations, for example, high schools, a government employees' picnic, a juvenile detention center, a home for disabled children, and the Woods Run Settlement House in Pittsburgh.

Pearl Primus, NYA Dancer

Above: Legendary dancer, anthropologist, and recipient of the National Medal of Arts, Pearl Primus, 1943. Photo by Carl Van Vechten, provided courtesy of the New York Public Library, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.

Pearl Primus (1919-1994) got her professional dancing start in the National Youth Administration: "She was born in Trinidad, British West Indies, and was graduated from Hunter College in New York City in 1940 with a bachelor of arts degree in biology and pre-medical courses. Finding no laboratory work available in New York, she continued studying at night school and during the daytime danced in the National Youth Administration dance group as an understudy" ("Pearl Primus to Give Dance at Middlebury," Rutland Daily Herald (Rutland, Vermont), February 6, 1948, p. 10).

The New York Age reported that Primus "pirouetted to choreographic fame via the National Youth Administration and the New Dance Group of New York" ("Pearl Primus Listed in April Issue of Current Biography," The New York Age, April 15, 1944, p. 10).

Reflecting on her life, Primus said, "I didn't choose to dance about a flower or a running brook or something. I chose to answer the ills of society with the language of dance" ("Pearl Primus," Los Angeles Times, April 24, 1994, pp. 5 & 56 of the "Dance" section). This is similar to a statement by Helen Tamiris, another legendary dancer, who was the driving force behind the Federal Dance Project: "The validity of modern dance is rooted in its ability to express modern problems and, further, to make modern audiences want to do something about them" ("Helen Tamiris, Dancer, Is Dead," New York Times, August 5, 1966).

It seems that performers of modern dance frequently had something very important to communicate to the world and, in one way or another, the New Deal helped at least some of them say it.