Two Ecstatic Themes est la clé de voûte du travail de Doris Humphrey. La première partie est composée de mouvements cycliques, en spirale, doux et coulants, pour transmettre un sentiment d'acquiescement. La deuxième partie, contrairement à la première, se compose de mouvements pointés, stridents, suggérant une certaine agressivité. L'ensemble est un contrepoint de mouvement circulaire et angulaire, représentant les deux éléments indissociables de la vie ainsi que du design. 

Source : programme de salle, 14-15 mars 1935  

Doris Humphrey was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1895 and grew up in Chicago. Her father operated a residence home for vaudeville performers called the Palace Hotel, and her mother offered piano lessons. As a girl, Humphrey studied piano, ballet, ballroom dance, Americanized Delsarte and Dalcroze's system of Eurythmics. A talented dancer, she began teaching ballet and interpretive dance to children when she was 15. During the next few years, Humphrey traveled the Santa Fe railroad line with a variety troupe, giving performances to railroad employees of her home-made aesthetic dances and Spanish numbers. When she returned home to Oak Park she began her own studio with her mother as accompaniest and business manager.

By 1931, the Humphrey and Weidman companies and their joint studio/school were firmly established in New York City. With Graham, Humphrey was considered by most critics to be a primary innovator of the new modern dance. Her theory of "fall and recovery"-- and the technique that sprang from it--was the foundation of her teaching method and her choreography. 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."

Source: University of Pittsburg

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Amy Reusch est une réalisatrice américaine. Elle capte l'entièreté des spectacles qui composeront la série de DVDs "The Doris Humphrey Legacy". 

Spécialistes de l'édition et de la distribution de livres de danse et de vidéos de danse depuis plus de 35 ans, avec une liste de plus de 500 titres liés à la danse. Nous publions sous la marque Dance Horizons et distribuons pour The Dance Notation Bureau et Dance Books Ltd. En mars 2000, nous avons lancé une nouvelle marque pour publier des livres d'intérêt général, Elysian Editions, avec The Magic Of Provence: Pleasures of Southern France by Yvone Lenard. Visitez nos pages Elysian Editions pour voir les livres de Mme Lenard ainsi que d'autres titres sous cette empreinte.

Source : Princeton Book Co. Publishers

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