Beverly Schmidt Blossom was born Beverly Carol Schmidt in Chicago in 1926. Her father, Theodore Schmidt, was a dentist practicing at Belmont and Crawford, and she lived with him and her mother, Florence Pfeiffer, at Springfield and Fullerton. She attended Mozart Grammar School, and during those childhood years studied dance, piano, and elocution at the Arnwahl Studios on West Fullerton Avenue. When she was about five years old she danced at Soldier Field in a huge spectacle with many many other children, as she recalls, "it was probably one of the government-sponsored W.P.A. art projects of its time, since it was during the Great Depression of the early 1930's." Beverly loved seeing movies at the Embassy Theater, especially Fred Astaire movies. While still in grade school, she was given a special scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago to attend life-drawing art classes on Saturdays. Later in the 1940's her family moved to the North Shore and she graduated from Highland Park High School. She then attended Carleton College, where she met and studied dance with Nancy Hauser. After receiving a Bachelors Degree from Roosevelt College in 1950, she went to New York City to continue professional dance training with the modern dance celebrities of the day, and eventually joined the AIwin Nikolais Dance Company, where she performed from 1953 to 1963. In 1953 Beverly received a Masters Degree in Dance at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. In 1957 she took a leave of absence from the Nikolais Company when she was granted a Fulbright Fellowship for a year in Europe to study with Mary Wigman in West Berlin. During that residency she was strongly influenced by the work of Bertold Brecht's Berliner Ensemble Theater, which she saw in East Berlin. Her home base residence was in New York City, from 1950-1967 and from 1990 to 2001. In the 1960's, after leaving the Nikolais company, she was one of the participants in the development multi-media theater in the East Village, as dance curator of the Bridge Theater, and a collaborator with actor-poet-writer Roberts Blossom, who invented "filmstage theater". Roberts and Beverly's son, Michael, lives in Chicago now and is owner of the Florodora women's boutiques.

Beverly was a full Professor, tenured, at the University of Illinois Dance
Department, Champaign-Urbana, from 1967 to 1990, when she returned to New York to resume her career as a solo performer, receiving many positive reviews. She was awarded a New York Dance and Performance Award (a "Bessie") for sustained achievement in 1993, and a Martha Hill Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009.

In 2001, Beverly returned to the Chicago area, first living in Lake Forest, near her beloved sister Gloria and her family, then spending her final years in Chicago living near, and then with, her son, Michael. She continued performing into her 80s, including a full evening with Hedwig Dances in Chicago in 2006, and a Nikolais tribute piece in New York in 2010.

"It is hard to imagine a better guide than Ms. Blossom through the bemusing exaltations and comical abysses of an artist's long life." - Jennifer Dunning, New York Times 2005

New York Times: Beverly Blossom, Solo Dancer With a 'Voice,' Dies at 88

In lieu of flowers, donations in Beverly's honor may be made as follows:

Please make gift checks payable to UIF/Beverly Blossom and Carey Erickson Dance Award. Memorial gifts can be mailed to the following address:

University of Illinois Foundation
P. O. Box 3429
Champaign, IL 61826-3429

Visitation Friday, November 7, 2014 from 8:30 a.m. until the time of the funeral service at 10:30 a.m. at Michalik Funeral Home, 1056 W. Chicago Ave. Chicago, Illinois 60642. For further information please call 312-421-0936.