page_title: Ethel Myers
section_title: Producer, Concert Manager & Publicist for Virginia Myers
hierarchical_section_title: Ethel Myers / Producer, Concert Manager & Publicist for Virginia Myers
caption_attribution_description: English: Virginia Myers program for performance in 1913
context_page_description: Mae Ethel Klinck Myers better known as Ethel Myers was a New York Realist artist and sculptor strongly influenced in her work by the goals of the Ashcan School and its leader and famous teacher, Robert Henri. Her earliest subjects for pictures involved her capturing the life of the Lower East Side as well as journeying to slums in other cities such as Boston. Her greatest fame came some years later, after her marriage to New York artist Jerome Myers, when she became known for her figurative bronze statuettes and figurines "with a quite uncommon sense of humor, and with more than this, a feeling for form and movement that gives them life and conviction." "Her three powerfully expressed sculptured figurines impress this reviewer with the fact that she is worthy of a place alongside of Daumier, Meunier and Mahonri Young."
context_section_description: Around 1909, when she was three years old, Ethel's daughter Virginia revealed herself to be possessed of strong artistic talent as well.  One day, as Ethel was playing the piano, she looked up to see Virginia naturally dancing to the rhythm and the emotional feeling of the music. This was a time when the impact of Isadora Duncan's dancing had totally captured the imagination of the artistic community of New York, as well as much of the rest of the world, and Ethel took note of Virginia's gift for spontaneous and instinctive movements.  She encouraged her daughter to perform, both privately and publicly.  Virginia starred in an Edison-produced film, Dream Dances of Virginia Myers, when she was five years old, doing 20 minutes of her own improvised solo dances as the first half of a "split-reeler."   The film was to spread her fame to all of America, far beyond the limits of just her acclaim in New York City.   In 1913, her talent was celebrated in an article in Vogue Magazine titled "When Virginia Dances," in which she was called "a child of the century."
  What started out as private performances in the Myers small studio for friends and art collectors ("millionaires sitting in tears on ironing boards"), Virginia's performances soon demanded better and larger locations.  In spite of having limited financial resources to draw from, Ethel took on all management and organization of Virginia's blossoming career.  She organized a series of recitals throughout New York City, booking theatres, handling contracts, and coordinating costumes, set design, musicians, publicity, and the printing of tickets and programs.
  As a result, Virginia became known as a "child wonder" of the dance, and people come from all over to see her, including the Parkhursts from England.  Ridgely Torrence and Percy MacKaye both wrote poetry about her." Over the years, Ethel and Jerome organized seventeen recitals in theaters in New York City with many articles written about Virginia's dancing genius.  When she was 16, the law at last permitted her to appear as a star dancing on the main stage at Carnegie Hall. Her first solo appearance there with orchestra was in April 1923, and the second in December of 1923.
caption: Virginia at 5 - First full concert performance of her dances at the Berkeley Theatre, NY, 1913
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