Doris Hering (1920-2014)

October 27, 2014

Doris Hering, one of
Dance Magazine
‘s senior advising editors, passed away on October 15 at the age of 94. A Brooklyn native, Hering studied music and dance as a child and majored in Romance languages at Hunter College. She discovered dance journalism after attending secretarial school and working for an advertising agency.

In the late 1940s, Hering began reviewing for Dance Magazine, and was the magazine’s associate editor and principal critic from 1951-1971. In her decades as a critic, she chronicled events like the growth of New York City Ballet, the American debuts of the Bolshoi and Kirov Ballets and the experimental work of Merce Cunningham and the Judson Dance Theater, among many others.

After a 1957 assignment that sent her to a regional ballet festival in Alabama, she increased the magazine’s coverage of regional news and reviews. In 1972, when the National Association for Regional Ballet was formed (later renamed Regional Dance America), Hering was named executive director. She returned to freelance criticism for Dance Magazine and other publications in 1987, and kept writing into her 90s. Hering received a Dance Magazine Award in 1987.

 

Her work also includes books, such as
25 Years of American Dance
(which she edited), and Giselle & Albrecht: American Ballet Theatre’s Romantic Lovers



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