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3 Doris Humphrey made dances for America. Her opus is a repertoire of dances that span abstract, thematic, and narrative works. Many of them have breathtaking choreographic design and sociocultural significance or are just simply beautiful to watch and to dance. This legacy is a vital part of American cultural heritage and demands attention not only from the perspective of preservation but also from a contemporary desire to creatively engage the past. Humphrey’s dances are more than a body of work; they are theatrical representations of a movement style and philosophy that remain relevant today . Although rooted in the American experience, her work has international appeal. European audiences respond as fervently to the choreography as their American counterparts. Unfortunately, many of Humphrey’s masterpieces are not seen enough today. Humphrey’s prominence is not where it should be, given her place in the history of American modern dance. Herein lies the task I share with fellow Humphrey exponents—to bring the past back to the present. My life as a Humphrey dancer began the day I saw Lucy Venable’s exceptional film of Passacaglia. I clearly recall sitting in the university library watching it over and over, awestruck at the power and magnificence of the choreography . By the end of that afternoon in 1981, I was determined to stage the work myself. An earlier fascination with Labanotation led me to Ann Hutchinson Guest’s front door in Holland Park, London. I would sit for hours in her living room, which doubled as a notation library, poring over scores and trying to see the movement patterns in my mind. On hearing I planned to stage Passacaglia as my dissertation project, she gently suggested that Partita in G Minor might be a less demanding first work. Happily, she did not take offense when I ignored her suggestion, and she gave generous support throughout the staging process. Negotiating a Living Past Prologue 4 Prologue When I look back at the video recording of that first production, I see that the dancing is proficient enough, given the novitiate status of the director and her band of eager if equally inexperienced student colleagues. In retrospect, this can be attributed to our training in Limón technique with Jeanne Yasko, supplemented toward the end of the process by Humphrey classes with Gail Corbin, who was fortuitously visiting London from the United States. Many years on, a number of those dancers still remember substantial sections of the work. The rehearsal period spanned a period of months, but, arguably, it is the quality of the choreography that enables such clear memories. There is a profound clarity in Humphrey’s use of choreographic structure, with every movement having a purpose and a connection to what comes before and after. The combination of these aspects, I believe, is what allows it to remain within memory’s grasp. My association with Ernestine Stodelle was a natural progression from that first encounter with Passacaglia. The years of Limón training aside, I was drawn to Stodelle’s Connecticut studio in 1985 rather than the Limón School in New York City. Stodelle was already regarded as a leading authority on Humphrey’s movement philosophy and choreographic repertoire. Born in Oakland, California , in 1912, Stodelle and her family moved to New York when she was a child. She attended an early Humphrey-Weidman concert as a teenager and was deeply inspired by what she saw—much as I was when I first saw Passacaglia . She went on to become a member of and soloist in the Doris Humphrey Concert Group and the Humphrey-Weidman Company between 1929 and 1935. Subsequently, Stodelle re-created a number of Humphrey’s dances from that period, including Water Study (1928), Air for the G String (1928), Quasi Waltz (1929), The Call/Breath of Fire (1929/30), Two Ecstatic Themes (1931), and The Shakers (1931). She staged these works for dance companies and colleges across the United States, Canada, and Europe, including the José Limón Dance Company , Silo Concert Dancers, Momenta Dance Company, Danskern in Amsterdam , London Contemporary Dance School, and Marianne Forester in Basle, Switzerland. In 1956 Stodelle established the Silo Studios of Dance in Cheshire, Connecticut , so named because the buildings were born out of a converted silo surrounded by trees. In this remarkable place, she taught dancers from her company, Silo Concert Dancers, alongside classes for children of every age and adults who just loved to dance. One of the...

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