Contemporary Techniques 1

Week 8 Doris Humphrey Aims

 You will be able to state what themes are found in Humphrey's choreography and her theories about dance and choreography. Doris Humphrey

“The Dancer believes that his art has something to say which cannot be expressed in words or in any other way than by dancing … there are times when the simple dignity of movement can fulfill the function of a volume of words. There are movements which impinge upon the nerves with a strength that is incomparable, for movement has power to stir the senses and emotions, unique in itself. This is the dancer’s justification for being, and his reason for searching further for deeper aspects of his art.” ~Doris Humphrey, 1937 Doris Humphrey  Born 17th October 1895 in Oak Park, Illinois—died of cancer 29th December 1958 in New York aged 63.  Her father, Horace Buckingham Humphrey, was a journalist and worked as a hotel manager/proprietor when Doris was a young child. Her mother, Julia Ellen Wells, was a trained concert pianist but worked in housekeeping at the hotel when Doris was young.  She started dancing at the age of 8 with Mary Wood Hinman, who taught dance at the school she attended from kindergarten through high school, the Francis Parker School in Chicago.  When she graduated from High School, to earn money and help support her family Doris taught classes in ballet, ballroom and gymnastics, and her mother was her business manager and accompanist.  In 1917 Mary Wood Hinman encouraged her to go to Los Angeles for a summer course offered by the renowned Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, where her talents were recognized.  She joined the Denishawn company and was given solo roles in presentations and, to assist her to financial independence, she was assigned classes to teach. Humphrey made life-long artistic and personal relationships with other Denishawn colleagues, most notably Pauline Lawrence and Charles Weidman.  After a two-year tour of the Orient and several seasons of dancing throughout the United States in top vaudeville theaters, Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman (with like-minded rebellious ideas) broke away from Denishawn in 1928. They settled in New York.  She did not profess any political affiliation, but she was married to a socialist, and lived for years in a communal arrangement in New York, sharing domestic life with her husband, Charles Woodford; her son, Charles Humphrey Woodford; and her dance partners Lawrence, Limón and Weidman.  The Humphrey-Weidman Company toured the country in the 1930s, establishing the audience base for their innovative dance. They created works addressed to contemporary concerns. They worked together until the company began to struggle in World War II, and they officially ended all ties in 1944.  In 1945, suffering from arthritis, Doris Humphrey gave up performing and devoted herself to serving as Artistic Director for the José Limón Company and creating works for it.  Active on the faculty of the dance division at the Juilliard School of Music from the time of its establishment in 1951, Humphrey undertook the directorship of Juilliard Dance Theater, a pre- professional company the school started in 1954. She was also a founder and advisor to the Merry-Go-Rounders, a dance company performing for young audiences.  In 1958, she made her last and very lasting contribution, a book, The Art of Making Dances, in which she set forth her choreographic principles. This was published posthumously. She also began writing her autobiography but never finished it. Humphrey’s Choreography  As a choreographer, Doris Humphrey excelled in her designs for groups, mass movements and sculptural shapes.  She didn't intend to proselytize in her dances, but wanted to represent a better world, achieved through collective dance action.  Like Martha Graham, Humphrey was interested in moving away from the sentimentalism and romanticism of the Denishawn company toward a new dance vocabulary and style that was truly "modern." In a newspaper article from this period, she told a reporter that she and her students were "stimulated by our enthusiasm for some discoveries about movement, which had to do with ourselves as Americans - not Europeans or American Indians or East Indians, which most of the Denishawn work consisted of - but as young people of the twentieth century living in the United States." The Fall and Recovery Concept: Like Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey was interested in the fundamental importance of tension and relaxation in the body, and used it as the foundation of her own system of movement principles. She called her version of the contraction and release of muscles and of the breath cycle "fall and recovery." Unlike Graham, who stressed the tension in the cycle, Humphrey located the height or apex of the continuum in the suspension of tension. As a result, her vocabulary was based on the notion that all movement patterns fall into three divisions: opposition; succession; and unison and that all movement characteristics fall into three divisions: sharp accent; sustained flow; and rest. She codified this system in her book The Art of Making Dances (1958). Underlying it, according to Humphrey, was the German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche's idea about the split in the human psyche between each person's Apollonian side (rational, intellectual) and our Dionysian side (chaotic, emotional). The true essence of the modern dance was the movement that happened in between these extremes, which Humphrey labeled "the arc between two deaths." The Fall and Recovery Concept: She came to believe that all movement fell within the “arc between two deaths,” or the range between motionless balance and falling imbalance incapable of recovery. She understood that every movement a dancer makes away from the centre of gravity has to be followed by a compensating readjustment to restore balance and prevent uncontrolled falling; the more extreme and exciting the controlled fall attempted by the dancer, the more vigorous must be the recovery. As Mary Wigman had utilized space as the ever-present antagonist, so Humphrey made dramatic use of gravity, displaying the human desire for security (balance) in conflict with the urge for progress and adventure (imbalance). Another of her innovative theories held that movement is not always the consequence of emotional impulse but can itself create meaning. Humphrey’s choreography began with experiments in dance theory and as an attempt to reduce dance to pure movement. Water Study (1928) incorporated her theory of fall and recovery and used only nonmusical rhythms (waves and natural human breath and pulse rhythms). Humphrey’s Choreography Air for the G String premiered on the first Humphrey-Weidman concert, at the Little Theater in Brooklyn, March 24, 1928, was a walking dance for five women. With costumes and movement design tracing smooth but simple art- deco curves, the dance retained some of the artiness of its Denishawn predecessors, but it gave a fresh interpretation to the familiar Bach music.  On the same concert she applied her gift for design in an abstract work. Color Harmony, a group dance, explored then-current theories identifying the emotional effects that could be produced by specific colours and colour combinations. This dance also suggested the way a leader could mould a group to create a collective resolution. Water Study, shown in the fall of 1928, was a much more radical work than anything she had previously attempted. In silence, 16 women used their breath rhythms to activate body movement and locomotive group patterns replicating the ebb and flow of waves, eddies, and tides. The Shakers (1931) depicted the rigorous gender separation and the dancing rituals that facilitated spiritual release for the members of the utopian Protestant sect, who settled several communities in 19th century America. Humphrey admired the Shakers' discipline, the simple beauty of their architecture and crafts, and their communitarian spirituality. Humphrey’s Choreography Drawing on the analogy between abstract movement and human drives that she had realized so powerfully in her solo Two Ecstatic Themes (1931), Humphrey made a series of dances celebrating the action and expression of everyday life. New Dance Trilogy (1935-36) put together all these concerns: the use of abstraction to express and comment on contemporary life, the crafting of group design and body movement to convey great life themes, and the creation of models for building a less flawed community through group action. The trilogy treated three different aspects of modern life, and the sections were choreographed in different theatrical styles. ‘New Dance’, choreographed first but intended as an affirmative culmination, depicted what Humphrey described as "a brotherhood of man [in which] the individual has his place within that group." (Siegel, 157) ‘Theatre Piece’ satirized the foibles of American commercial and social life. ‘With My Red Fires’ was a harsh depiction of matriarchal prejudice and tribal vengeance, with the large ensemble serving as a sort of Greek chorus, a metaphorical contemporary crowd that celebrated its heroes and then turned against them under the incitement of a crazed leader. The three dances were never performed together on a single program. Water Study & Air for the G String

Watch Water Study and Air for the G String. Make notes on the narrative/theme, costume, sound, set/props and the movement vocabulary and choreographic devices. Humphrey’s Work

 Sound  Costume

 Set + Staging  Movement vocabulary

 Props  Choreographic devices

 How do these enhance the theme? Self Directed Learning

 Research further into José Limón, including his technique and choreographies.