Verla Flowers was a Seattle dance teacher who graduated from Ballard High School in 1931. She operated a studio teaching ballet, jazz, tap, acrobatics, baton, belly dancing, ballroom, Spanish, and breakdancing until 1990.
Although she had numerous accomplishments of her own, pioneering Seattle dance teacher, choreographer and dancer, Verla Flowers (1913-2002), is best remembered through her association with her most famous student, Mark Morris. Flowers, who grew up in Seattle's North End and attended the West Woodland School and Ballard High School, first learned dancing from her mother, Augusta (who later would be a social dancing instructor at the Cornish School). Her dance training was eclectic. Among her earliest teachers was Hamilton Douglas, who appeared on the Pantages Circuit and often presented his troupe of Douglas Teenie Weenies at local movie theaters. Flowers attended the Cornish School of Allied Arts during the period in which Welland Lathrop was the head of the dance department and studied under Mary Wigman acolyte, Lore Deja. She performed in a number of styles as a member of the Cornish Dancers and she would teach tap dancing at Cornish for a period following her graduation. Among her first forays into professional teaching was at a music school started by her former Ballard High School music teacher, Vern D. Delaney, in 1931. Flowers was running her own dance studio, Verla Flowers School of the Dance, out of her family home by 1935. She would have two additional schools (in the Columbia City neighborhood and Lake Forest Park) by the early 1940s. Around this same time, Flowers married Ted Halladay, with whom she would raise a daughter, Wendy. By the early 1950s, she had opened Verla Flowers Dance Arts in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle. The school offered a wide variety of dance forms, including ballet, ballroom, jazz, Hawaiian and Spanish. This extensive program attracted a number of pupils, many of whom went on to professional careers. The prodigious Morris began studying Spanish dance with Flowers at the age of nine and continued as her student until he was seventeen. Verla Flowers Dance Arts operated through 1990, when Flowers retired from teaching.
The Verla Flowers scrapbook is one sixty-page scrapbook, including clippings, greeting cards, programs, certificates and ephemera; circa 1921-1940. Presented to her by her mother shortly before her graduation from high school, the scrapbook documents the early life and career of the respected Seattle-area dance teacher, choreographer and dancer. The album primarily contains press clippings and programs, but also includes a smaller selection of certificates, congratulatory cards, letters, photographs and travel ephemera, as well as some school work by Flowers. Much of the material relates to Flowers's earliest performances (particularly those she gave while still a student at Ballard High School and the Cornish School of Allied Arts). Also included are clippings about other Seattle dancers and dance teachers (most of whom were likely her friends and associates), Seattle dance performances and social events. A few of the items in the scrapbook apparently were annotated at a later date, probably by Flowers. Aside from a set of clippings and other items pertaining to a 1927 appearance by the Halloween Sisters at the Humboldt County Fair in Ferndale, California, the scrapbook does not include much information about Verla's sister, Lorna Flowers, or their dance act. Other items of note are: choreographer Welland Lathrop's autograph, an autographed photograph of Cornish School director, Nellie Cornish, a registration card for the San Francisco Opera Ballet School (signed by ballet master, Adolph Bolm) and a photograph that seems to show a children's Halloween party (this image probably includes Verla and Lorna Flowers, both of whom were born on the holiday). A small number of additional clippings and other items have been inserted between some of the leaves of the scrapbook.
Presume open to all users
Creator's literary rights transferred to the University of Washington Libraries
Purchased from Fairlook Antiques, 2007-01-17