[2] Her mother, who later became a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, remarried in 1914, and Marian Tubbs used her adoptive father Frank Foster van Tuyl's surname thereafter.

[5] While she was an undergraduate at Michigan, she was "chairman of dances" for the Junior Girls' Play Committee, "dancing manager" of the Women's Athletic Association Board, and an active member the Women's Physical Education Club;[6] she was also the model for a mural, "Young American Womanhood", in a women-only lounge area on campus.

[8] She taught at Mills College in California from 1938,[5][11] when previous dance program head Tina Flade left to marry.

[7][8] Like Flade, she often collaborated with composers in the Mills College community, including Darius Milhaud, Henry Cowell,[13] Lou Harrison, and John Cage.

[5] She made two "experimentalist dance films", Horror Dream (1947) and Clinic of Stumble (1948); the former involved a score by John Cage.