More than fifty years have passed since the American premiere of Stravinsky's Les Noces, which opened on April 25, 1929 at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Generally overshadowed by the Bronislava Nijinska version (Paris, 1923) and by the later Jerome Robbins version (New York, 1965), the 1929 production presented a significantly different interpretation of the Stravinsky piece. The choreographer was Elizaveta Anderson-Ivantzova (1890–1973), former prima ballerina at the Bolshoi, whose life span parallels almost exactly that of Nijinska (1891–1972) and whose career intersects with that of Nijinska by virtue of her choreographing the second version. Of concommitant interest is that the first two versions of Les Noces were choreographed by women in an age when women were less than likely to be engaged as choreographers, a fact not unnoticed in 1929. Yet, little is known of this and other aspects of the production today. An examination, therefore, of the background, the production itself, and the choreography in particular is needed to describe, as clearly as the evidence will allow, what the 1929 production was like and how it differed from the better known version of 1923.

The little attention given to the New York premiere seems to have had less to do with its original performance than with a subsequent indifference to it.

Very little is known about the process of teaching dance as it naturally occurs in daily classes at university level (Lunt, 1974). In the actual context of research on teaching, the identification of significant variables necessitates the systematic description of teaching activities as they naturally occur in class. The present study is a systematic observation of two types of dance classes: choreography and technique. It seeks to characterize the behaviors of two experienced teachers observed in their regular classes at the university level. This characterization is made in terms of (a) the proportion of verbal and nonverbal behaviors (b) the directness or indirectness of the instructional approach, and (c) the dominant teaching patterns. The study is regarded as a first attempt to gather valid descriptive data to be used as basis for identifying significant issues in the teaching of dance and eventually in dance teacher education.

Observational studies conducted in movement classes reveal that few systems specifically designed to objectively describe movement classes (Anderson and Barrette, 1978; Costello and Laubach, 1978; Fishman and Tobey, 1978) have satisfied standards of research objectivity and reliability. They show, on the other hand, that numerous valid observational instruments have been developed by adapting systems designed for academic settings to make them compatible with the particularities of the movement setting.

What lever of power do Ubakala women have when their society traditionally requires them to leave their birthplace to live among strangers in a situation which excludes them from formal political and religious decision-making? The answer is dance! And when the messages of the dance go unheeded, the women have been known to resort to less peaceful persuasion. The Nigerian Women's War of 1929, which I describe later, is the most notable case.

The Ubakala people of eastern Nigeria (now Imo State) trace family descent on the father's side. Women leave their natal home upon marriage to live among their husband's kin, many of whom may be strangers. Another indicator of apparent male domination is the exclusion of women from the formal, traditional political and ritual decision-making bodies. Most women's activities center on the domestic scene, agricultural fields, and the market network. However, Ubakala women are not merely subordinate domestic creatures of exchange and family alliances. They also provide men with mates, privileges in a new group (husbands gain special support from a wife's family), and labor. Ubakala recognize that female fertility and energies complement male virility and strength in human and economic production. Furthermore, women have prestige and power apart from that of their husbands: achieving wealth, developing persuasive verbal eloquence, and bearing many offspring are indicators of a woman's success. With these assets women past menopause may even attend men's political meetings if they choose. Women have their own groups and leaders which are considered powerful amongst both themselves and the men. Moreover, women may assert themselves and become especially visible in dance-play performance.

Dancing has been an intrinsic segment of life for almost every nation in the world. Throughout every race, or creed, dance has symbolized the expression of a custom, tribe, religion or personal reflection. Dance has long been considered a part of the arts and looked at very closely from this perspective; however, when turning to the physiological nature of dance, there is very little information to be found.

Dancers are usually not considered highly trained aerobic athletes. One reason for this may be due to the fact that few in the dance world have taken the initiative to study the physiology of dancers. Most dancers themselves are more concerned with other aspects of dance than with the physiological components.

There are many assumptions about dance conditioning which are thought to be “myths” and have no basis in fact. The use of kinesiological analysis is relatively new to dance and many of the “old wive's tales” of dance conditioning are still passed on in some dance studios. Following are listed four assumptions about dance conditioning:

1. The dancer who works with weights will develop excessive muscle bulk.

2. If a dancer increases strength of a given area or muscle group, there will be a reduction of the range of motion of that area.

3. If a dancer increases range of motion at a given joint in one direction (for example: inward rotation of the hip joint), there will be an equal reduction of the range of motion in the opposite direction (in this case, outward rotation).

4. The cardiovascular conditioning received in technique class is sufficient to achieve high physical performance levels.

Descriptions of nineteenth-century American social dances from which to make reconstructions are readily available. They are present in those neat, usually palm-sized, dance manuals and miscellaneous pamphlets which bounce out of a card catalogue or present themselves on library shelves: The names of Thomas Hillgrove, Elias Howe, Thomas Wilson, Henri Cellarius, and John Ferrero are familiar to those of us – folk dancers, teachers, and revivalists – who work with these books in our variety of ways. The questions that concern me are: What is the nature of the material in these “little” books from which we can begin to make reconstructions of nineteenth-century social dances? Can we make reliable reconstructions using them alone? What else do we need to consider when using these sources?

Training in dance is a long and arduous process, and classical ballet is one of the most exacting and demanding of all the arts. The student must master the movement vocabulary, develop a high degree of technical skill, execute movements with utmost clarity and an appropriate sense of style. In the university, it is usually the teacher who evaluates the student's progress in these areas and determines how the individual should proceed in his/her development. Evaluation takes place in the form of daily feedback and as a final grading exercise.

Have you ever wondered what distinguishes dance movement from random motion of the human body? To what degree is ordered or organized motion necessary for communication through dance? The Second Law of Thermodynamics deals with order and disorder, probabilities and tendencies, in physical systems. Can analogies drawn from this physical principle contribute something to our understanding of the nature and meaning of dance?

The Second Law of Thermodynamics, also known as the Law of Entropy or the Law of Increasing Disorder, applies to physical systems in which a number of different configurations are possible. The law states that spontaneous changes in such a system will tend away from an ordered configuration towards the more probable one of greater disorder. An example of this is the distribution of oxygen and nitrogen molecules in the air in a room. Normally these molecules are distributed evenly throughout the room with about 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen molecules in every region of the room. Since there is an enormously large number of ways in which all of the air molecules can be distributed in this uniform way, such a configuration is very probable. It is also possible, though much less probable, that all the oxygen molecules would congregate in one corner of the room, with the nitrogens elsewhere.

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.

As part of on-going research in ethnology and notation I have been documenting Japanese bon dancing in Hawaii. Notating the dances has proved to be a challenge, not so much because of the difficulty of movement patterns, but because of the problem of deciding what to notate. Perhaps because of the emphasis on the event itself and the stress on community participation, uniformity in movement style (of the type found in professional theatrical traditions) is not important. Dancers tend to emulate the style of a favorite dancer or move in a manner that looks good or feels good to themselves. Because of the age and cultural differences of participants – which today range from children of elementary school age to senior citizens, and include Americans of Japanese, non-Japanese, and mixed ancestry – what looks good or feels good is tremendously variable.

“Pathways to Historical Knowledge” was the title of the CORD regional conference where these papers were first presented (California State University, Northridge, December 8, 1979). In this conference, two disciplines – dance ethnology and criticism – and one genre – the personal memoir – were looked at in relation to what they could contribute to the study of dance history. In the session “Historical Process and Ethnic Dance Research,” these papers and the ensuing discussion made it clear that the dance ethnologist may be as concerned with process through time as the dance historian. The ethnologist however, working in the field and in social relationships with informants, almost inevitably influences the development of the dance complex under study – a well known phenomenon in any research involving living human subjects. The nature and amount of this influence seems from these accounts to depend on the extent to which the researcher has or develops such social relationships with members of the community whose dance is being investigated. The community may even go so far as to consider the researcher or the written results of research as its authority when making judgments or decisions about its own dance. Understanding the change and the continuity in seemingly traditional dance cultures thus becomes a difficult task: the researcher is a part of the dynamic process and yet must try to interpret it objectively and keep his own influence to a minimum.

As a South Slav/American and a dance ethnologist, my work focuses on change in dance/dancing as it relates to cultural change. The project herein refered to is best described as a comparative study of change over three generations (approximately 1900 to the present). The subjects are South Slav communities in California and communities in Yugoslavia which are regional sources of first generation immigrants in California. During this study I became aware of being both an insider and outsider, however, at the outset of this long term project (begun in 1974), I was neither aware nor concerned about the difference my cultural status would make to the group, to the research, or to myself.