Margaret H’Doubler: The Legacy of America's Dance Education Pion ...

But the world has moved on and what was once an imperative of separation no longer carries with it a fear of slipping backwards. The scope of dance history is expanding to include an interest in that which once happened behind ivied walls. Miss H’Doubler’s memory is removed from conflicted associations between dance and physical education and the deeper story of this remarkable woman seems important to know because in it we find much to validate the importance of our discipline and our history. In knowing more about Miss H’Doubler contemporary dance educators may find clarifications about themselves, their past and even their future. Another reason for this turn toward learning more about H’Doubler is the simple fact that her colleagues and students daily grow older and leave us. Capturing her essence before its glow completely leaves the world now seems important.

To find out more about H’Doubler, I have gone back to the storytellers, and I have gone back to Miss H’Doubler’s own writings. In this section of our book, a more personal history of Margaret H’Doubler is told by the people who had real and direct contact with her, and through H’Doubler’s own statements on her subject, its nature and its importance in education. H’Doubler’s life manifestations as teacher, visionary, woman, friend, and person are remembered here. Documents previously seen only by her students or those of us lucky enough to have ‘lived in Lathrop’ and curious enough to dig a bit are fit between personal recollections to bring the reader back to H’Doubler. Juxtaposed with first hand accounts of life and work with her, these previously unpublished mirrors on her thought and thinking help craft what I hope is a more human and perhaps more holistic portrait of this interesting, plain, driven, modest, unyielding, flexible, committed, some might say, eccentric, woman. Embedded in remembrances are the stories of the storytellers themselves—full of insight, juxtaposition, comparisons, allusion, lost and found opportunity and great love and respect for the woman whose memory has taken them back down the road once traveled. Within the strengths, weaknesses, and complexities of these human recollections lies the dramatic yet