One of the opening events of the Laban Institute’s 40th Anniversary Conference included a couple of films of Irmgard Bartenieff leading a movement session with a young dancer. The rough footage probably dates from the 1960s. Several movement analysts who worked with Irmgard in the early days were asked to comment on the films. An excerpt of my comments are posted below.
“Irmgard had very expressive hands. For such a slender and fragile looking woman, Irmgard’s hands always gave an impression of being larger than one would have expected. And of course, if Irmgard ever grabbed you, her hands were also surprisingly strong.
I remember indulging efforts as Irmgard’s baseline. In these films, she uses this base as a quiet place to start, to center, and to regroup after exciting transitions into fighting efforts and graceful excursions up, down, and around through space. Suddenly and sensitively her hands flit into action, catching up and mirroring the movement of the young woman she is working with. Or Irmgard’s hands come to stop, signaling a pause. Then her hands give shape to whatever direction they will next explore.
By the time I met Irmgard in 1975, she was an elderly woman. In our certification classes, she wasn’t running through the full gamut of effort expression posturally, lithely jumping, and suddenly descending to the floor in the same way she does in these films.
Nevertheless, I never felt that Irmgard was old. Her lively curiosity and sense of future possibilities always made younger students feel as if we too were standing on the threshold of new discoveries. As Marcia Siegel’s observed:
“Irmgard never behaved like a star. She lived modestly, forgot to dress up. She survived through the tremendous range of her interests and enthusiasms, her enormous power of adaptability and recuperation…. She was quite unaware of the fact that she had more energy, imagination, and youthfulness than anyone else in the room.”
Perhaps you can see some of that energy, imagination, and youthfulness in these films.”