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A Recollection of Margaret H'Doubler's Class Procedure: An Environment for the Learning of Dance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2014

Ellen A. Moore
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Extract

In 1917 Margaret H'Doubler, on a year's leave from the University of Wisconsin, had been given a difficult assignment. Blanche Trilling, her chairman, had asked if she would search the dance studios in New York City for a kind of dance activity “worth a college woman's time.” Studying philosophy that year at Columbia University, Margaret H'Doubler had complied with pronounced lack of enthusiasm, her predominant interest being in teaching basketball. Her time nearly expired, she found herself, however, suddenly excited when, at the music school of Alys Bentley, she saw children on the floor moving in their own ways to a stimulus provided by the teacher.

“Of course,” she recounted later, “Get on the floor where you are relieved from the pull of gravity … and see what the natural, structural movements are.” She continued to visit Miss Bentley's studio during the short time that remained and began to organize a course in “new dancing” to be offered almost immediately in summer school in Madison.

Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Fall/Winter 1976 , pp. 12 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 1976

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References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H'Doubler, Margaret N.Dance: A Creative Art Experience. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1940, 200 pp. One of the classics of literature on modern dance, this is a very complete collection of the author's theory and philosophy of dance generated by her many years of teaching and research in dance at the university level. H'Doubler has annotated each chapter. Some chapter titles are: “Education Through Dance,” “Technique and Expression,” “Form as Organic Unity,” “Form and Content,” and “Form and Structure.” An extensive Annotated Reading List is appended. H'Doubler relates each aspect of dance to the body-intellect-psyche of man, from which it springs.Google Scholar
H'Doubler, Margaret N.Dance and Its Place in Education. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1925, 195 pp. Published early in M. H'Doubler's long career as dance educator, this book presents clearly defined beginnings of her renowned humanistic approach to the teaching of dance, her philosophy and theories of the nature of dance, and dance as an ideal educative activity. It is unique in that it contains the only published description of many exercises she used in class with indications of their purpose (Ch. IV). Meant to be a manual for teachers, it also offers chapters on music for dance and dance composition.Google Scholar
H'Doubler, Margaret N.Guide for the Analysis of Movement. Madison, Wis.: Kramer Business Service, 1950. This is a four-page (8 1/2″ × 14″) chart showing H'Doubler's structure for analyzing movement. It devotes separate pages to “Structural,” “Quality,” “Dynamic Consideration,” and “Rhythmic Analysis.” The charts can be used very effectively as a teaching tool.Google Scholar
H'Doubler, Margaret N.Movement and Its Rhythmic Structure. Madison, Wis.: Kramer Business Service, 1950, 68 pp. This manual presents a detailed and extensive study of its subject. Chapters include “An Educational Theory of Motor Learning,” “The Rhythmic Nature of the Human Organism,” “Rythm—A Controlling Force,” “Some Analytical Observations in Rhythmic Perception,” “Analysis and Locomotion,” and “From Analysis to Synthesis.”Google Scholar
Remley, Mary Lou. “The Wisconsin Idea of Dance: A Decade of Progress, 1917–1926.” Wisconsin Magazine of History. Vol. 58, No. 3, Spring, 1975, pp. 179–195. A detailed account of the development of the first dance major program in an American university, a program of particular significance because of the extraordinarily humanistic methods of its founder and sustainer for fifty years, Margaret H'Doubler. Told with interest and appreciation.Google Scholar