Written more than eighty years ago, Margaret H’Doubler’s landmark book set forth a theory and philosophy for dance education that helped secure legitimacy for the field in American academia and beyond. H’Doubler used a progressive anatomical and improvisational lens to conceptualize the discipline within the conservative scientific frameworks of the early twentieth-century university, changing the course and influence of modern dance.
In a new foreword, Margaret Nagle offers a personal reflection on the dance pioneer’s approach to the art and science of movement, and in a new introduction, Andrea Harris puts H’Doubler’s life and work in historical context, inviting readers to return to “a book with a complex intellectual inheritance and a paradoxical legacy.”
Contributors: Mary Alice Brennan, Andrea Harris, Gertrude E. Johnson, Margaret Nagle