King was born on February 8, 1906, in
Middletown, Pennsylvania, to George Ilgenfritz and Emma Kate Campbell King. She was the third of six children: Marion, George, Eleanor, Lucile, Robert and John. She attended
Clare Tree Major School of the Theatre in 1925, and
Theatre Guild School in 1926, studying dance with
Doris Humphrey and
Charles Weidman. Humphrey and Weidman had been involved with the pioneering
Denishawn School in
New York City, and then split off to form their own
Humphrey-Weidman dance company. King began taking classes from them, and was then invited to be a part of the new dance company. She made her 1928 debut in
Color Harmony, considered the first American
abstract ballet. In 1930, she appeared in
Leonide Massine's
Sacre du Printemps at the
Metropolitan Opera House. She stayed with the company until 1935, when she began soloing and choreographing. In 1937 she was a co-founder of the Theater Dance Company, and her first major work,
Icaro, was produced in 1938. She became known for choreography based on works of literature, from
Petrarch to
James Joyce. In 1942, she formed the
Eleanor King Dance Repertory Company in
Seattle, followed by the Eleanor King Dance Studio in 1945. In 1955, she studied
mime with
Étienne Decroux. In the late 1950s, she began studying Japanese
Noh dances. Her first performance of these was in
Tokyo in 1958. She created the Theatre of the Imagination program at the
University of Arkansas, where she taught for much of her career, from 1952 to 1971. She was an assistant professor from 1952 to 1967, associate professor from 1967 to 1971, and was awarded professor emerita status in 1971. In her retirement, she moved to
Santa Fe, New Mexico, and at age 70 began studying classic
Korean dance. In the 1980s revivals of her work were staged by Annabelle Gamson in 1987 and 1988 in New York. The solos were praised in
The New York Times for their "eloquence and for Miss King's careful shaping of ideas and feelings". ==Death==