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4. Margaret H'Doubler: Pioneer of Dance
by Barbara B. Pillinger
'Tis to create, and in creating live
A being more intense, that we endow with form
Our fancy, gaining as we give
The life we image.
Lord Byron
Byron's words epitomize the life work of Margaret H'Doubler, pioneer of
dance. Indeed, H'Doubler has often used this quotation in her writings' to
de-
scribe the living, creative process that is dance.
The Teacher. Born in Kansas in 1889, the daughter of a Swiss artist-
photographer-inventor, Margaret H'Doubler spent her early years in Warren,
Illinois. She moved with her family to Madison and enrolled at the University
of Wisconsin in 1906, graduating with a degree in biology. Due to her
enthusiasm and talent for sports, and despite the fact that she lacked formal
pedagogical training, H'Doubler was invited to stay on at the university
as an
assistant in the Department of Physical Education for Women. Her special
love was teaching and coaching basketball.
H'Doubler's experience with dance, however, was limited to department
offerings of aesthetic dance forms. Thus it was with some trepidation that
she
left Madison in 1916 to study philosophy for a year at Columbia University
- with a special mission. Blanche Trilling, director of the department, re-
quested that she make a study of dance during her sojourn in New York in
an
attempt to find an appropriate methodology to provide "something worth
a
college woman's time."2 "Miss Trilling called me in and said, 'Marge,
while
you are in New York, I wish you would look into dancing and maybe you
could come back and teach dance.' I was horrified. I said, 'Miss Trilling,
I
teach dance and give up my basketball?' and she said tears came into my
eyes, and I said, 'I just couldn't think of that. I don't know anything about
dance.... Miss Trilling, I just can't think now of ever giving up basketball.'
She said, 'All right, you can keep your basketball.' "3
Discouraged and frustrated at the mimetic, stilted dance forms she found
in New York, "Miss H'Doubler wrote a decisive note to Miss Trilling,
'I shall
never teach dancing.' "4 H'Doubler finally happened upon the studio
and
work of Alys E. Bentley, a teacher of music for children. Bentley's more
crea-
tive approach utilized children's natural expression and movement in the
learning process. Lessons often began on the floor! "Miss H'Doubler
recalled
that this aspect of teaching hit her like a flash. 'Of course, get on the
floor
where you are relieved from the pull of gravity... and see what the natural,
structural movements are.' "5 Although Mary Lou Remley observed that
H'Doubler's idea of dance was a direct result of her contact and brief study
with Alys Bentley, H'Doubler refutes this interpretation: "This is a
mistaken
idea. It was while lying on the floor in Miss Bentley's studio that the concept
occured to me. When I tried to tell Miss Bentley about it, she didn't even
understand it. "6
And so began Margaret H'Doubler's "floor work" and an embryonic
no-
tion of an exciting, new organic form of dance - one in which students
would explore, discover, experience their own structural possibilities and
self-
realization in the process, rather than merely copy someone else's move-
ments. Trilling provided strong support for H'Doubler's experimentation with-
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