This is a limited free preview of this book. Please buy full access.
By 1983, I had received half a dozen articles to include in the anthology. Over the next four or five years another eight articles, some of which had been published previously, were solicited and included in the plan for the Thought of Margaret N. H’Doubler: a critical anthology. I also enlisted the aid of my former classmate and dance partner, Mary A. Brennan, who was then the chair of the dance program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She communicated with several journals to secure rights to reprint historical articles, and she searched Lathrop Hall’s famous fifth floor storage rooms and the UW Archives for significant memorabilia. Herewith, the purpose for the anthology was further expanded to include historical information as context for the critical commentaries.
Years passed. “Buff” (Mary A.) and I made periodic stabs at pulling the work together as we carried on with our lives as chairpersons of our respective dance programs. At last, in 2001, Tom Hagood, another Ph.D. from the Wisconsin dance program, entered the picture, urging Buff and me to “get on with it” and to include him in the team of editors. Needless to say, Buff and I were delighted to have Tom—so bright, so dedicated, so youthful!—join us. Actually, Tom had conceived of a book about H’Doubler that would be a reminiscence, voiced by the colleagues and students who had actually studied or worked with the master. Tom noted those of us who had that honor are fewer and fewer as the years go by. Tom himself had never met H’Doubler; a fact that frankly surprised Buff and me and forced us to realize that the legacy was indeed attenuating! Hence, a third purpose was added to the list for preparing and publishing the anthology. Tom was to undertake a share of interviewing individuals who could reflect on their time and work with H’Doubler and to add his considerable skill as an editor. So the challenge became: how to organize a comprehensive anthology satisfying three purposes: a historical account, reminiscence, and a critical analysis? The present publication is an answer to that challenge.