Stella Bloch

Stella Bloch (December 18, 1897 – January 20, 1999) was an American artist, dancer and journalist. She headlined as a dancer in Rochester, New York. She also worked as an artist and her work is in several collections.

Life Bloch was born in Tarnau, Galicia & Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary (now Tarnów, Poland) because her mother, Charlotte, had returned from New York City to give birth Stella was brought up on East 54th Street in Manhattan with her mother; her aunt and uncle (Pauline and Bernard Offner), and her cousins, Richard and Mortimer Offner (both of whom died in 1965).

Bloch was said to have been the first student in America of Isadora Duncan's six dancers who were known as the Isadorables. She met Ananda Coomaraswamy who took her to India at the age of 17. She spent some time in India. She spent a year learning Javanese dancing at the palace of the Prince of Solo in Surakarta in Java.

Bloch demonstrated her dancing in America. She was at the top of the bill at the Eastman Theatre in Rochester, New York. Bloch became Coomaraswamy's third wife in 1922.

The book was able to compare the different dance heritages of eastern as well as western cultures because she had studied them whilst touring not only Java but also India, Bali, Cambodia, China and Japan. During the 1920s she sketched and painted scenes as part of the Harlem Renaissance which also included portraits of Bessie Smith, Josephine Baker and Thelonious Monk.

In 1930, she and her first husband, Ananda Coomaraswamy, divorced. She had been based in New York and he was working at the Boston Museum of Art so they had not been living in the same city. Bloch moved to Hollywood after she married the lyricist Edward Eliscu in 1931. He was a successful writer of songs for films. Her cousin, Mortimer Offner, was also named. Mortimer had written Little Tough Guys in Society. Katharine Hepburn and George Cukor were collectors of Bloch's work.

After her husband was blacklisted, he, Mortimer, and others returned to New York.

She had two sons, David and Peter. Whilst she was living in Connecticut she wrote a play about Isadora Duncan but it is not known if and where it was performed. Stella Bloch died in Bethel, Connecticut, on January 20, 1999, aged 101. The New York Public Library and the Harvard Theatre Collection have extensive collections of her papers.