When I began to study with Irmgard Bartenieff in 1975, she was 75 years old. Her age was just a number – what mattered was the depth and breadth of her many experiences. She was an icon of possibility for her younger students, a living example of the many ways Laban-based movement analysis could be used in artistic creation, therapeutic intervention, and behavioral research.
By 1975, the Effort/Shape program at the Dance Notation Bureau had an established curriculum: theory (effort/space/shape); observation; Bartenieff Fundamentals; and seminar (a weekly reading and discussion class). From a miscellaneous collection of workshops taught by Irmgard, this orderly program with a trained faculty had evolved and was accepted by my cohort of students as “given wisdom.”
Only “long, long afterward,” did I recognize how the content of this program embodied Irmgard’s integrative perspective. After studying with Bartenieff, as Marcia Siegel wrote, “you could never again see the universe as a collection of isolated particles.”
Moreover, Irmgard was able to see connections because she was also capable of thinking critically about the given wisdoms of her time. Find out more in the next blog.