Her parents and brothers Maurice and Charles Becker immigrated from Nizhny Novgorod, Russia a decade earlier, fleeing pogroms.

[7] As a child, Becker was constantly in motion, and her father enrolled her in dance classes at the Henry Street Settlement at the age of eight.

[9] Upon her return from South America, Becker performed with the Met for another season, while studying with Russian ballet choreographer Michel Fokine.

"[10] With her independence in mind, Becker worked in commercial dance, including at nightclubs and the Music Box Review on Broadway.

A second solo performance in January 1928 included a manifesto in its program, detailing Tamiris' desires to keep her works contemporary, sincere, and uniquely American.

[14][15] In the early 1930s, Tamiris collaborated with Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, and later Agnes de Mille to form the Dance Repertory Theatre.

Trojan Incident played 26 performances at the St. James Theatre, a short run that nonetheless drew intense attention from Broadway producers, who feared that its low ticket prices were undercutting their commercial works.

More consequentially, Trojan Incident was referenced as part of the backlash against the Federal Theatre Project, which eventually led to its shutdown.

[11] The final example of Tamiris' work for the Federal Theatre Project before its closure is Adelante (1939), a critique of the Spanish Civil War.

Tamiris was listed in Red Channels in 1950, and despite an internal FBI review in 1955 denying her affiliation with the Communist Party, her legacy was likely affected greatly by the blacklisting.

Her other musical theatre choreography includes Annie Get Your Gun (1946), Up in Central Park (1947), Flahooley (1951), Carnival in Flanders (1953), Fanny (1954), and Plain and Fancy (1955).

Tamiris' collaborative attitude towards choreography, encouraging her dancers to utilize their "inner action," and her focus on content over form, is argued by contemporary scholars to constitute a distinct style.

[25] Contrastingly, New York Times critic Jack Anderson argued that Tamiris' legacy was marred by personal rivalries among her peers.

[26] In a 1988 essay, dance historian Susan Manning criticized Tamiris for using white dancers to convey Black experience, calling it "metaphorical blackface".