Dance Techniques 2010

148
Interview with Ann Hutchinson Guest
Sigurd Leeder was an unusually precise and inspiring
movement teacher. He was always searching for new
images and words to elicit particular movements from
students and he used these images with great sensitivity
in his classes. He also had a sense of humor and brilliant
choreographic skills, though it has to be said he was
a better choreographer for the classroom than for the
stage. We had to choreograph our own dance every term,
which was great, and Jooss was very good at giving
feedback to students.
There were also ‘awareness’ classes with Gertrud
Heller–Falke, a German dancer whose awareness work
was based on Elsa Gindler’s methods. I found her classes
very interesting. We lay on the floor and tried to feel
if our alignment was genuinely straight and correct, and
if we were genuinely relaxed. We concentrated our
awareness on all parts of the body: feet, legs, pelvis, etc.
We stood with our eyes closed and felt the body in a
different situation before we gradually started to
walk through the space. Other tasks were then given.
The disadvantage for me was that these classes were in
German; although I had learned German in school,
I didn’t understand everything.
Was any ballet taught at the Jooss–Leeder
School in Dartington? Ballet was a dirty word when
I was at the school—it was frowned upon. Ballet was
taught once a week before I came, but then the class was
scrapped…unfortunately. There was no training of the
body as an instrument, which I would have personally
liked. I had high shoulders, for example, and special
exercises could have been used to do something about
them…or my knees, which were not properly stretched.
I only became aware of this when I studied ballet
with Margret Craske in New York. When I performed
a battement tendu, she said, ‘Stretch your knee.’ I
think someone should have been able to tell me that during
three years’ training in Dartington! On the other
hand, at the Jooss–Leeder School I experienced the most
wonderful exploration of what movement can be. I
remember Jooss being asked what a wrong movement is,
to which he answered, ‘There are no wrong movements,
every movement can be right. It depends on the
context.’ When you learn ballet, there is always a
‘wrong’ and a ‘right’.
But later, in the 1950s, Jooss added ballet
to the class roster at the Folkwang School, and
put it on par with other subjects. It is probably
true that Leeder was the one who didn’t want ballet on
the schedule in Dartington, but ultimately no one at
the school wanted it.
How was the body trained at the Jooss–Leeder
School of Dance? Were there gymnastics classes?
No, we had choreutics and eukinetics, and also
technique classes in which, for example, special foot–
work was taught—like walking with a spring in
your step—or stable and off–center turns were trained.
Or Leeder developed an exercise, a study, when he
saw that something wasn’t working. And the wonderful
thing about these studies was that they became ever
more comprehensive over the course of a term. We
repeated them time and again, as if we were perfecting a
dance. Each year group had to perform the study as
well as their own dance at the end of the term. The
technique itself was based on Laban swings, eight swings
with the whole body, or just with the arms, or the
arms working in opposition to the body—in all these
combinations. This certainly improved one’s technique.
But not enough? Not for me. I was seventeen and
rather immature. I came from a boarding school
where everything was regulated, and I had an English
stepfather who was very strict, so my self–confidence
wasn’t very high. I somehow had to move on from
all that. I discovered Martha Graham in New York and
studied with her I liked her work a lot. It was so
challenging. The Jooss–Leeder work was not in the same
vein. And I had to learn ballet to get a job, so I studied
ballet intensively over many years. When I started
teaching, I only taught ballet and Labanotation, never
modern dance really. But I believe that my understanding
of other dance forms was enriched by the knowledge
of the movement possibilities I acquired at the Jooss–
Leeder School of Dance.
Where and how did all that you learned have an
impact? When I left the Jooss–Leeder School of Dance,
I was best trained in Labanotation. I had added an
extra year to the three-year training course because Jooss
asked me if I would notate his ballets, The Green Table,
The Big City, Ball in Old Vienna, and Pavane. Jooss
paid me absolutely no attention when I wanted to hand
him the finished score for The Green Table. It was
only years later, after the war, that I learned from him
how much he liked the notation because it was
simple and clear, and it served as an aide mémoire for
those who were familiar with the work.
I returned to New York in 1939 and opened the
Dance Notation Bureau—with others, but without any
money—on the recommendation of John Martin, the
American dance critic, who gave us his full support. We
earned money from teaching, and it continued like
this for years. We did everything out of love for what
we were doing.