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Issues in Labananalysis Research: Using the Humphrey Scores

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2014

Stephanie Jordan
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Extract

The accessibility of notation scores and film provides a unique opportunity for examination of the relationship between existing music and dance in the work of Doris Humphrey. Nine of her pieces to existing musical scores have been notated in Labanotation and at least fourteen have been filmed in their entirety or in part. Nine are recorded in notation and on film. The Humphrey films and scores span her choreographic career and illustrate a wide range of musical scores from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. In this paper, I will suggest various ways in which the Labanotation scores have been useful for analysis and have contributed to my understanding of Humphrey's work.

So far I have studied three pieces, each of which has been filmed and notated, Passacaglia in C minor (1938), Partita in G major (1942) the four movements that remain, and the first movement of Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G major (1959), created with Ruth Currier. All three employ scores and titles by Bach and all make oblique reference to the music visualization tradition from which Humphrey emerged.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 14 , Issue 1-2 , 1981, pp. 51 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 1981

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References

NOTES

1. Not included here are those films of St. Denis and Shawn which form an important basis for comparison.

2. Title variations exist for all these works. For instance, Christena Schlundt lists Passacaglia and Fugue as an alternative in her chronology of Humphrey's works: Doris Humphrey: An Artist First, ed. Cohen, S.J. (Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press, 1972), 281 Google Scholar. For the other two works, I use the titles that appear without alternatives in Schlundt's chronology.

3. Though Shawn admitted that St. Denis conceived the idea of music visualizations at this time, he claims that Doris Humphrey danced his own first music visualizations, the Inventions and Fugues, in 1916 and 1917: Thirty-Three Years of American Dance (1927 to 1959), and The American Ballet, Ted Shawn (Pittsfield, Mass., 1959), 15 Google Scholar. The first concert performance of music visualizations by both Shawn and St. Denis was given in 1919.

4. Denis, Ruth St., “Music Visualization,” The Denishawn Magazine, 1/3 (Spring, 1925), 2–3 Google Scholar; reprinted in part in Dance as a Theatre Art, ed. Cohen, S.J. (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1974), 129–34Google Scholar.

5. Humphrey, Doris, The Art of Making Dances (New York: Grove Press, 1962), 135 Google Scholar.

6. Information is taken from the full description of the piece published with its music: Sonate Pathetique: A Group Dance, The Choreography by Ruth St. Denis, To Music by Ludwig Van Beethoven (New York: G. Schirmer, 1930.Google Scholar) Another source is The Spirit of Denishawn, a film of Denishawn works staged by Klarna Pinska for the Joyce Trisler Danscompany, 1976.

7. Humphrey, 136.

8. Humphrey, Doris, “Doris Humphrey Answers the Critics,” Dance and Dancers (March, 1959), 21 Google Scholar.