| Chapter : | Part I: Introduction |
H’Doubler’s struggle with her own fate; her year long and fairly relentless search for an educational type of dance “worthy of a college woman’s time”—when no one and no approach seemed to inspire her; her epiphany and discovery while lying on the floor of the last studio she visited before “returning to Madison to teach dance”; the fact that no one could “see” her idea at first; her eventual and celebrated vindication, culminating in her subsequent missionary-like life preaching to the faithful, has all the elements of an MGM production.
Because of her near mythic beginnings, attention to H’Doubler’s later history has been lost behind the glare of her initial, professional success. It also seems true that we have come to associate with being ‘H’Doubler’ was not only created by her mythic struggle and discovery, but also by the desires and perceptions of those who shaped H’Doubler’s professional evolution. Again, I am reminded of Hollywood. Like an academic version of that preeminent Tinsel-town creation, Joan Crawford, Margaret H’Doubler was frightfully sensitive to what others might think about her. And, like Crawford, she literally became what she was told—and therefore had—to be. H’Doubler did not spend her childhood dreaming of her future in dance. She did not have a mother or other persistent relative guiding her ‘career.’ As a young academic, she accepted a strange charge, and found that this charge took over her life. By doing what was asked of her, H’Doubler struck out on a career path that she surely would never have chosen for herself, yet she adapted to her new life fully and well. When she returned to Madison in the spring of 1917 she was barely ready to meet her responsibilities, yet very eager to prove herself worthy of the task. By 1921, Margaret H’Doubler had written a groundbreaking tract on the teaching of dance in higher education. One has only to compare H’Doubler’s 1921 A Manual of Dancing to