| Chapter 2: | Legacy for Dance as a Discipline: 1917–1967 |
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Among the many pioneers who led the way for dance in American higher education, three women stand out for the transformational nature of their efforts: Margaret H’Doubler, Martha Hill, and Alma Hawkins. These three women carried dance into the academic setting, challenging the notion that aesthetic movement was simply not of enough “stuff” to represent a subject—let alone a discipline.
H’Doubler, Hill, and Hawkins led dance into the realms of the academy, and their legacies support and frame much of the contemporary field of dance in higher education. Understanding their individual stories, and the paths by which one’s work led to the actions of the other provides important historical ground for considering the larger issues surrounding contemporary issues for dance in education: What is dance as a discipline? Why do we study dance, and not movement? How does the study of dance fit in with and reflect the mission of the university? How does the study of dance push back the boundaries of knowledge, forward the cultural legacy, and contribute to the fully realized potential of our citizenry?
H’Doubler pioneered the idea that the study of dance was the study of movement. For its time, this was an extraordinary leap forward for considering dance as a body of knowledge. The conceptual referent movement provided the intellectual and behavioral grounds for establishing the first major in dancing—the science of movement, the rhythmic structures of movement, the expressive nature of movement. But it was not dance as we know it today. H’Doubler was not interested in––and strongly rejected—the artistic trends of the day. As H’Doubler was developing the major in dancing at Wisconsin in the spring of 1926, Martha Graham was setting out on her independent path in New York and “modern dance” was about to be born. The two women could not have been more different in their values and practices, and in their temperaments.
Martha Hill was a student of Graham’s, and Hill brought the values of the practicing dance artist into the academy. Hill had had an experience with H’Doubler and left Wisconsin most unsatisfied. When she discovered Graham, her tastes for something more than just movement were fulfilled. Hill became the champion of the artist in education.