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Appendix II: Other Important Figures Mentioned within the Interviews
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Appendix II OtherImportantFiguresMentionedwithintheInterviews The following appendix identifies significant figures referred to within the interviews. Please note not all individuals are identified here. A student of Hanya Holm and Martha Graham, Mary Anthony chose to pursue her own artistic vision, starting the Mary Anthony Dance Theater in 1956. She was a pioneer of dance for television, choreographing for Look Up and Live and Lamp Unto My Feet, as well as a choreographer for the theater. For over fifty years, Anthony has owned her studio in Manhattan. A protégé of Rudolph Laban, Irmgard Bartenieff developed Laban’s methodology in theory and practice in combination with her own approach to body re-education, making significant strides in the fields of movement science and art. Her life’s work was rooted in Laban’s experiments in dance notation, movement analysis, and choreography. She co-authored the first book on Labanotation and founded the Dance Notation Bureau. In the 1960s, she wrote the first curriculum in Effort/Shape training, which was taught at the Laban Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, which she founded and resided over as president. Bonnie Bird entered the dance world through the Cornish School of Fine and Applied Arts in Seattle, followed by a short career as a dancer with the Martha Graham Company. Bird became one of the first accredited teachers of Graham technique, and at twenty-four she returned to the Cornish School to direct the Dance Department. She was best known for her accomplishments as an educator and activist for dance, widening the understanding and applications of dance as an art. At the 92nd Street Y, Bird strove to put the teaching of dance on firmer foundations, establishing a cooperative educational company, the Merry-Go-Rounders. In 1974, she began to work with Irmgard Bartenieff and the Laban Center for Movement and Dance, establishing bachelor’s and master’s degrees in dance and dance therapy, as well as the first master of philosophy and Ph.D. in dance in Great Britain. Bonnie Bird was a founder of the American Dance Guild and a founder and first president of the Congress On Research in Dance. 197 One of the students of the Bennington School of Dance Group in the 1930s, Ruth Bloomer went on to serve as a leader in dance education, teaching at various universities, including the University of Michigan. In 1945, she joined the faculty of Connecticut College. Under her guidance as head of the Dance Department, the Connecticut College School of Dance garnered international fame. Alongside Martha Hill, Bloomer organized the American Dance Festival’s pilot summer program at the school, which flourished under their directorship from 1949 to 1958. Marian Chace is a seminal figure in the development of the profession of dance/movement therapy. She began her study of dance and choreography with Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis and the Denishawn School of Dance. Believing that the body and mind are interrelated, Chace began to write articles, offer workshops, and teach at places such as the Turtle Bay Music School in New York City. In 1942, she was invited to work at Saint Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., a federal psychiatric hospital, where she treated psychological casualties of World War II. It was there that “Dance for Communication” was first offered and was the start of what would be called dance/movement therapy. She was made the first full-time dance therapist in 1947. She accepted interns and trained many people at Saint Elizabeths Hospital. In 1946, she was invited to work with patients at Chestnut Lodge in Rockville, Maryland. In 1966, she founded the American Dance Therapy Association and became its first president. Chace continued to work at Saint Elizabeths Hospital until 1966 and continued her work full time at Chestnut Lodge until her death in 1970 at age 74. Pauline Chellis headed the Dance Department at the Bouvé-Boston School of Physical Education, which provided a varied and open-minded approach to dance education. Her New England environment served as inspiration for her choreography. For further information on Chellis’s teaching theories, consult Frederick Rand Roger’s book, Dance, A Basic Educational Technique: A Functional Approach to the Use of Rhythmics and Dance as Prime Methods of Body Development and Control, and Transformation of Moral and Social Behavior. Jane Dudley was a prominent dancer in Martha Graham’s company in the 1930s and 1940s, and was an influential teacher of early Graham technique . She was a founder of the...