The Mermaids of Miss Margaret Morris

In the summer of 1922, a photographer named Fred Daniels posed three young women on a rock jutting out of the sea and took a picture that ended up in fashion magazines around the world. The women weren't models. They were dance students, trained by a London-born choreographer named Margaret Morris, who by then was already one of the most unconventional figures in British performance. Newspapers had a catchier name for what Daniels had captured than “dance students on a beach.” They called...