Van Tuyl taught dance and directed musical productions at the
University of Chicago from 1928 to 1938. While in Chicago, she was one of the founders of the Chicago Dance Council. when previous dance program head
Tina Flade left to marry. Under van Tuyl's leadership, the dance program became an independent academic department, instead of being housed in the Physical Education department. "The only thing we share with physical education is the space and the showers, and dancers are too busy to take many showers," she once explained.
Lou Harrison, and
John Cage. From 1935 to 1947, she performed and toured with her group, the Marian van Tuyl Dance Company. She was the longtime editor and publisher of
Impulse: An Annual of Contemporary Dance, from 1951 to 1970, and from that published
An Anthology of Impulse (1969). She also edited
Modern Dance Forms in Relation to the Other Modern Arts by Louis Horst, and was an editor of the
Dance Research Journal. She served on the
California Arts Commission, and was a founding member of the
Congress on Research in Dance. == Personal life ==