| Chapter 2: | Legacy for Dance as a Discipline: 1917–1967 |
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Martha Hill
In the 1930s, the road for dance in the American university turned toward melding professional standards with educational goals. Martha Hill, a young academic with a gift for organization and an unerring commitment to the dance artist, led the way. Were it not for Martha Hill and her innovative program for dance at Vermont’s Bennington College (1934–1942), H’Doubler’s work and views might still dominate our values and practices as dance educators today. As it was, in the summers of the 1930s and 1940s, students of dance did travel to Vermont (and in 1939 to California) to have their professional lives forever changed. The “Bennington Experience” shook the foundations for dance in American higher education. Its legacy is still very much with us today as professional values have all but superseded the legacy of one Margaret H’Doubler.
A native of Ohio, Martha Hill attended the Kellogg School for Physical Education in Battle Creek, Michigan. In the fall of 1923, Hill accepted a position in physical education at Fort Hays State Teachers College, Kansas, where she taught classes in ballet and gymnastics. In 1924 and 1925, Hill spent her summers at the Perry–Mansfield dance camp in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Hill made efforts to explore and see what was developing in dance wherever its study was offered (O’Donnell 1936, 37 and 44).
In the spring of 1926, Hill moved to New York City to pursue her undergraduate degree in physical education at Teachers College–Columbia University. On November 28, 1926, she saw Martha Graham’s second independent concert at the Klaw Theatre in New York City and was transformed: “When I first saw Graham I was bowled over. It was an instant conversion. I immediately went to study with her at the John Murray Anderson–Robert Milton School of the Theater” (Soares 1992, 61). Hill studied with Graham through the fall and winter of 1926–1927, while working on her degree requirements at Teachers College. In the summer of 1927, she traveled to Wisconsin to enroll in Margaret H’Doubler’s summer teaching course. “That summer confirmed my belief in Martha Graham.