Bessie Schönberg as a young dancer, undated. Photographer unknown.

The Bennington School of the Dance was my going to school about learning how to teach, in a very practical, everyday way. I don’t think there is any better way of learning in our field than by doing. Practically everything that one really learns about dance is by being committed to it and involved and doing it. I think the teaching of dance, if one is ever to be any good at it, comes from just doing it, and doing it, and doing it…if one cares about the students.

—Oral history interview conducted by Rose Anne Thom used courtesy of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundation.