Students Extend Crossroads Dance Legacy

The dance students stood in facing pairs and linked hands for support, helping one another bend in fluid, wave-like patterns. And as they stretched their arms over their shoulders and behind their heads, they also extended a legacy with strong ties to Crossroads School.

 

The students were taking a master class Monday afternoon in a style of dance associated with the late Trudl Dubsky Zipper. After spending much of World War II performing in the Philippines, the renowned Austrian dancer and her husband, Holocaust survivor and conductor Herbert Zipper, moved to the U.S. The couple became lifelong advocates for arts education, and Herbert taught music at Crossroads until the year of his passing, 1997. Crossroads’ Paul Cummins Library is home to the Herbert Zipper Archives.

 

The 2-hour dance session was arranged after School archivist Amie Mack’s research led her to Carol Brown, a dance professor at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Carol has studied the same traditions that Trudl learned from Gertrude Bodenwieser in Vienna in the 1920s and ’30s, and she incorporated concepts of Ausdruckstanz—a German term for the expressionist dance forms that arose in the early 20th century—into the Crossroads students’ recent lesson.

 

‘"I think this is going to be a really great partnership in continuing the research into Trudl, the Bodenwieser method and modern dance,” Amie said.

 

Students started the class by learning about the political and cultural contexts of the dance style that Trudl performed nearly a century ago. The Bodenwieser discipline, influenced in part by jazz music, contrasted sharply with ballet and was seen as a means of empowerment for women.

 

“The body could express the whole realm of human emotion,” Carol explained. “The torso plays the melody.”

 

Guided by their guest instructor, students learned the fundamentals of the style and quickly incorporated them into improvisational solo and partner work.

 

Stella Josefsberg ’19 said the class was eye-opening.

 

“It was strange at first to be moving my body in such a different and specific way, and in the beginning it felt quite silly and uncomfortable,” she said. “However, as we progressed and I got into it more, I started to really get into it. ... As a dancer, doing something so different than usual can feel very refreshing.”

 

Lauren Lau ’20 said it was unlike any other dance class she’d ever taken.

 

“Most classes focus on technical aspects of movement,” she said. “As important as that is, dance is about expressions and creativity and I loved this class for that. It gave a unique approach to dance where it was more about what the core of dance should really be: the different ways one’s body can move in different shapes, and also the connection with one’s partner during the routine. ... It made me a better dancer.”