Mary-Averett Seelye | |
|---|---|
 Mary-Averett Seelye, from a 1958 magazine | |
| Born | March 11, 1919 Chatham, New Jersey, US |
| Died | March 30, 2013(2013-03-30) (aged 94) Mitchellville, Maryland, US |
| Occupations | Performance artist, dancer, theatre professional |
| Relatives | Talcott Williams Seelye (brother);Dorothea Seelye Franck (sister);Kate Seelye (niece);Julius Hawley Seelye (great-grandfather) |
Mary-Averett Seelye (March 11, 1919 – March 30, 2013) was an American performance artist, dancer, actress, choreographer, and director.
Seelye was born inChatham, New Jersey, the daughter of Laurens H. Seelye and Kate Chambers Seelye.[1][2] She was raised inBeirut, where her father was a university professor and her mother taught at a girls' school.[3][4] She earned a bachelor's degree atBennington College in 1940, and completed a master's degree at theUniversity of North Carolina in 1944.[5]
Her younger brotherTalcott Williams Seelye was an American diplomat, ambassador to Tunisia and Syria; his daughterKate Seelye became a journalist.[6] One great-grandfather wasJulius Hawley Seelye, president ofAmherst College, and his brotherLaurenus Clark Seelye was president ofSmith College. Other noted members of the extended Seelye family includedBenjamin Rush Rhees, president of the University of Rochester, and his son, the philosopherRush Rhees; and geologistBenjamin Kendall Emerson. Another of Seelye's great-grandfathers, William Frederic Williams, was a Presbyterian missionary in Turkey and Syria.[1]
Seelye was co-founder and director (from 1949 to 1958) of the Theatre Lobby, an experimental theatre company in Washington, D.C.[7] She was an arts associate on the staff of theAmerican Association of University Women (AAUW) from 1950,[8] and toured the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, giving workshops on creativity and performance, under the AAUW's sponsorship.[9][10][11] She was co-author ofPeople Space (1969, with architectMelita Rodeck).[12] Seelye was also involved in founding the Capital Area Modern Dance Council, withPola Nirenska,Erika Thimey, and other Washington-based dancers.[13][14]
In 1979, she gave an oral history interview for the Bennington Summer School of the Dance Project at theColumbia Center for Oral History Research.[15] That same year, she was named one of seven distinguished alumnae at Bennington College's fiftieth anniversary celebrations.[16]
Seelye was often described as tall, thin, and angular, all characteristics which gave shape to her performances, which she called "poetry-in-dance", and which she sometimes accentuated with flowing costumes.[17] She sometimes included Turkish or Arabic poetry in her performances. Near the end of her career, she created a video archive of her works with filmmaker Vin Grabill.[5]
Seelye died in a nursing home inMitchellville, Maryland in 2013, aged 94 years.[18] Her papers are part of the Williams-Chambers-Seelye-Franck Family Papers atAmherst College.[1][5]
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