As the founder of the prestigious dance department at the University of Connecticut and the longtime dean of the American Dance Festival school, Martha Myers, who influenced generations of dancers, died at his home in Manhattan on May 24. I did. She was 97 years old.
Her son, Kurt Myers, confirmed her death.
Myers entered the University of New London in 1967 and founded the Dance Department in 1971. In 1969, she performed and became the dean of the festival, which offers educational programs. It was then in Connecticut and is now based in Durham, North Carolina.
In a statement, the festival’s honorary director, Charles L. Reinhardt, said that Myers, who had been with the organization for over 30 years, “brought new dance ideas and techniques to the festival while respecting tradition.” Stated.
She was particularly interested in dance medicine and somatic cells. She explained to News & Observers in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1998. She will produce a wider range of movement qualities for dancers. “
The companion field, which focuses on physical cognition and stress reduction, is known as body therapy, and Myers preached that the idea would be useful to non-dancers as well.
“Not everyone enjoys jogging, tennis and golf,” she told Herald Sun in Durham in 1981 when she was leading one of the festival’s body therapy workshops at Duke University. Most body therapies can be done at your own speed by sitting on the floor. “
Myers was petite — according to a 1998 newspaper article, she described herself as “shrinking at 5 feet 2 inches”, but it was influential. Gerri HoulihanDancers, choreographers, and dance teachers who regarded Mr. Myers as a mentor briefly summarized in 2006 when Mr. Myers earned an undergraduate degree from Virginia Commonwealth University, the successor to Richmond College.
“She has taught so many young dancers, teachers and choreographers,” Houlihan said at the time. “She has a small, very quiet voice, she is very poetic, but she convinces you to do what you didn’t think you could.”
Martha Coleman was born on May 23, 1925 in Napa, California. Her father, Herbert Rockwood Coleman, died at an early age, and her mother, Audi Marie Coleman, moved her family to Virginia and was close to her relatives.
When Martha was a teenager, neighbors were impressed to hear her singing in the garden and connected her to a voice teacher.
“Don’t Sit for the rest of your teens and beyond: Thoughts on Life and Work,” a memoir of 2020, “I practiced, studied, and dreamed of singing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Is written.
However, when she was a sophomore at Richmond College, she auditioned for the Peabody Institute of Conservatory in Baltimore. Her professor, who evaluates her there, gave her a disappointing evaluation of her killing her particular her dream. When she became a teacher, she decided that it was an experience she had and that she had her empathy for the aspirations of the youth.
“I gave counseling and encouragement,” she wrote in her memoirs.
“The challenge is to find ways to open the minds of our students to other possibilities and encourage them to find and shape their tenacity, passion and limits of ability,” she continued.
She herself found another possibility after auditioning for that disappointing song. It’s dance. She also started spending time in New York City as much as possible.
In 1948, she majored in dance at Smith College in Massachusetts and enrolled in a two-year graduate program in physical education. So she first became interested in somatic cells. She also taught about 18 hours a week, which she thought was overkill, but she wrote in her book, “The government insisted that PE and dance were not ready.”
After earning her master’s degree, she stayed and taught in Smith.But in 1959, she took a leave of absence and created “Dancing time” A TV show produced by WGBH in Boston featuring live performances. The nine episodes aired in 1960 and are now considered a sort of predecessor to the long-running PBS series “Dance in America.”
Soon she added another TV credit to her resume. She married Gerald E. Myers. When he got a job at Kenyon College in Ohio, he suggested writing to several Ohio television stations to market health and exercise shows. To her surprise, WBNS in Columbus invited her to audition.
“I showed some of the stretching and strengthening exercises that might be suitable for watching at 8am, which are supposed to be mostly housewives,” she recalled in her memoirs. “I put together descriptive, attentive, and encouraging comments into a set of stretches and quadriceps, packed into a small, non-discomforting putty using nutrition, weight management, and health news icing. “
She was hired. And soon she was offered the opportunity to become a newscaster. This is unusual for women in the early 1960s.
She participated in several memorable functional segments, such as participating in a 20-story window cleaner and dunking basketball on the shoulders of Harlem Globetrott’s Meadourak Lemon.
A few years later, her husband got a job at CW Post College in Long Island, and eventually Myers worked at Connecticut College, where she taught for the next 25 years. Later in her memoirs, she talked about her approach.
“Movements are built into the body, resist change, and have been learned from early childhood in the context of family and society,” she writes. “When I encourage freshness, newness, and research, I realize I’m looking for one of the more difficult feats of human behavior. In my career as a teacher, I’m new to dance students. We’ve put together a strategy to help you find the potential. “
Her husband, who eventually held the unusual title of a philosopher in a dance festival residence, died in 2009. In addition to her son, Myers survives with three grandchildren.
She often brought her expertise to other countries as part of the festival’s international outreach. This trip was rewarding, but it also brought humorous moments due to the language barrier.
“The direction of physical education classes, such as’Imagine bones sinking to the floor’, showed embarrassing facial expressions on some students’ faces and laughed at people who knew English. When I was surprised, “Myers wrote. She contributed to “East Meets Westin Dance: Voices in the Cross-Cultural Dialogue” published in 1995. “Later, the translation was said,’Imagine a bone collapsing or collapsing on the floor.’ “