Irmgard Bartenieff – A Personal Note

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When I began to study with Irmgard, she was 75 – well past retirement age.  But she was not retired.  She remained actively engaged with the study of movement in many different ways.

Irmgard’s primary job was teaching in and directing the Effort/Shape Program at the Dance Notation Bureau in New York City.  In addition, she maintained a small connective tissue massage practice and was quietly writing a book, which would finally be published when she turned 80.

During the winter, Irmgard went to Hawaii, where she did research on Asian dance forms with colleagues at the University of Hawaii. … Read More

Irmgard Bartenieff: Renaissance Woman

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Although Rudolf Laban was a polymath, his reputation today remains siloed in the discipline of dance. This is not the case for Irmgard Bartenieff. Her set of unique and wide-ranging interests led her to understand movement analysis as both an art and a science. Her career reflects a similar diversity.

Irmgard worked as a dancer, creating and performing works; as a massage and physical therapist, treating physical problems; as a dance/movement therapist, addressing psychological issues; and as a dance ethnographer, studying cross-cultural patterns of movement.… Read More

Irmgard’s Insight

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When Irmgard Bartenieff was unable to find a place in the American modern dance community, she returned to her original interests in biology, studying physical therapy, then working with polio victims.  These experiences gave her new insight into the theories she had learned from Rudolf Laban.

Her studies with Laban in Germany focused on dance.  Consequently, Laban’s theories appeared to apply to high functioning movers.  When Irmgard began to work with individuals disabled by polio, she was surprised to find that Laban’s ideas were relevant here as well.… Read More

Betraying Dance?

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According to some reports, Kurt Jooss was very disappointed when Laban began studying industrial work movement in English factories. For Jooss, physical labor had nothing to do with dance. Even in later years, Jooss continued to view “Eukinetics” as dance dynamics, while Laban’s expanding notions of “Effort” related only to work.

Irmgard did not agree with Jooss. Instead, she wrote the following to Laban in 1944:

“I cannot share the doubts of those of your friends who think that you are not doing ‘the right thing’ in the world of dance – to me this world has become – shall I say: ‘enlarged’ or ‘deepened’ under the material and artistic struggle of these last years.”… Read More

Irmgard Bartenieff’s Necessity

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Irmgard Bartenieff was 33 when Hitler came to power in Germany. Two years later, she and her Jewish husband were forced to close their dance company. Although they immigrated to the US in 1937, they found the American dance community did not want European ideas. Consequently, Irmgard and her husband had to find another way to earn a living.

Rudolf Laban’s career followed a similar trajectory. After he immigrated to England in 1937, he too had to find other ways to earn a living beyond dance.… Read More

Initiating Laban Movement Analysis Training in the US

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In 1962 Irmgard was invited to discuss her use of Labanotation in physical therapy at a large notation conference in New York City.  Instead she pulled a “bait and switch.”

Rather than extolling structural notation, Irmgard described the value of the Effort/Shape assessment she had learned from Lamb.  This notation “reveals the mental and emotional processes of the human being,” providing her with insight into the psychological ramifications of distorted physical movement.  She used client case studies to demonstate how these insights enhanced her rehabilitative practices.… Read More

Back to Laban

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In the mid-1950s, after a decade in physical therapy practice, Irmgard resumed her movement analysis studies in Europe.  By this time, Laban himself had immigrated to England, where he had also moved into new areas of study – notably movement in education and industry.

Irmgard discovered that the pedagogical approaches Laban pioneered in Germany in the 1920s had been systematically incorporated into an expressive and socially-oriented movement education curriculum for British school children.

To understand the industrial application relating movement and motivation, Irmgard studied with Laban’s protégé, Warren Lamb.… Read More

Beyond Dance

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The 1936 arrival of the dancing Bartenieffs in the US was not fortuitous.  As Irmgard recalled, “I did not find the American community receptive to Laban.” Modern dancers “were intent on creating an American dance idiom.  They did not want European ideas.”

To earn a living, the Bartenieffs trained in massage.  In assessing the needs of her clients, Irmgard drew on Laban’s notions that everyone can dance; that is, move expressively for the intrinsic pleasure of doing so.

Irmgard began to examine the relation between movement function and expression with her massage clients, and this led her to pursue training in physical therapy.… Read More

Professional and Community Dance

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During the late 1920s, Irmgard ended her first marriage to a German history professor and married a Russian ballet dancer, Michail Bartenieff.  Combining their dance experiences, the couple founded the Romantisches Tanztheatre Bartenieff, performing and touring for several years.

In 1933, after the Nazi takeover of the German government, the Bartenieffs were forced to close their dance company due to Michail’s Jewish heritage.  During this period of forced retirement, Irmgard continued her notation studies with Laban’s colleague, Albrecht Knust, and began translating Feuillet (Baroque dance notation) into Kinetography Laban.… Read More

Coming of Age in the Weimar Republic

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Irmgard Bartenieff entered university as a young adult just as Germany entered a new period. As she recalled, “Germany had experienced a disastrous defeat.  The monarchy was abolished. The radical groups of socialism and communism came in, and it was really all these very factors that attracted everybody in the arts”… including Rudolf Laban.

Irmgard did not encounter Laban’s work until 1922, when, quite by accident, she began studying dance with one of his students.  As Irmgard’s interest deepened, the teacher encouraged her to work directly with Laban.… Read More