Dancers: Ellen Tels

Max Pollak

Ellen Tels, born Ellen Rabanek in Moscow in 1885, was an early Modernist dancer and dance teacher in Vienna and Paris in the 1920s and '30s. She trained classically in her early years but was primarily a student of Irma Duncan, sister of Isadora and a celebrated teacher in her own right. In the 1910s she collaborated with dancer Mila Cirul, and together they left Russia for Germany and Austria, searching for an audience that would embrace the kind of freedom of expression that they were developing.

Tels settled in Vienna in 1920 and established a dance school and troupe, garnering a favorable reputation as an adventurous and creative dance teacher. In 1927 she moved to Paris, continuing to teach from her atudio in Jasmin Square. Among her pupils was the celebrated French Modernist dancer and choreographer Janine Solane.

Tels died in Paris in 1944.