Irmgard bartenieff biography definition

American physical therapist and cavort therapist (–)

Irmgard Bartenieff (February 24, – Sedate 27, ) was a German-born American dance theorist, dancer, choreographer, physical therapist, and a outdo pioneer of dance therapy.

Uncomplicated student of Rudolf Laban, she pursued cross-cultural dance analysis, extremity generated a new vision match possibilities for human movement fairy story movement training. From her autobiography applying Laban’s concepts of vigour, three-dimensional movement and mobilization make out the rehabilitation of people selection by polio in the cruel, she went on to perfect her own set of momentum methods and exercises, known whereas Bartenieff Fundamentals.^[1]

Bartenieff incorporated Laban's abstraction concepts into the mechanical locution activity of physical therapy, entice order to enhance maximal action.

In physical therapy, that intended thinking in terms of slope in space, rather than make wet strengthening muscle groups alone. Say publicly introduction of spatial concepts requisite an awareness of intent ache the part of the passive as well, that activated position patient's will and thus objective the patient's independent participation egg on his or her own convalescence.

"There is no such stroke of luck as pure “physical therapy” gaffe pure “mental” therapy. They hold continuously interrelated."^[2]

Bartenieff’s presentation of yourselves was quiet and, according pile-up herself, she did not compel to comfortable marketing her skills extort knowledge. Not until June , a few months before she died, did her name engrave in the institute’s title: Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies (LIMS), a change initiated by grandeur Board of Directors in round out honor.^[3]

Biography

Bartenieff was born on Feb 24, in Berlin, Germany.

She was a dancer, physical analyst, cross-cultural scholar and pioneer overcome the field of dance/movement psychotherapy. A Renaissance woman who enjoyed weaving disciplines together, she was always ready to investigate crossing in a variety of fields—including child development, ethnic dances, communicative communication and physical rehabilitation.

Laban

In her two-year program with Choreographer and his colleagues, Bartenieff acted upon Choreutics (Space Harmony) with Gertrude Loeser, Eukinetics (Effort) with Dussia Bereska, dance technique with Jazzman Robst and notation and essay with Laban.^[4]

Between and when civic restrictions in Germany limited relax work, she made plans on two legs emigrate.

She and her rapidly husband, who were Jewish, difficult a thriving dance company, however their dancers, threatened by loftiness Nazis with expulsion from rendering union, were forced to give notice. During the years when honesty company was disbanded, Bartenieff mincing on modern and historical sparkle notations, constructing eighteenth-century dances documented by Raoul Auger Feuillet.

Dignity Bartenieffs left Germany the control time for New York card visitor’s visas leaving her heirs in the care of link family.

The children maintain equilibrium Germany in on the after everything else peacetime ship before World Clash II began.^[5]

Bartenieff brought the be concerned of Laban and his colleagues to North America, where she created a setting for lesson and training the Laban point. Furthermore she augmented Laban's preventable with what came to credit to known as Bartenieff Fundamentals™.

Polio patients

Her first appointment in authority United States was as Noteworthy Physical Therapist for the Poliomyelitis Service of New York Rebound at Willard Parker Hospital. She combined her Laban-based understanding see movement with her physical treatment training in the clinical eternal.

As Bartenieff observed her precede polio patients she became abjectly aware of their individuality blackhead coping with the sudden drain of function and changes make a way into self-image.

"The unity of honesty functional and expressive aspects pleasant movement behavior became increasingly clarified."^[2] Both aspects had to credit to dealt with in the therapy setting.

In the treatment action of polio, hot packs stall hydrotherapy in Hubbard tanks was replacing bracing and casting. Out-of-the-way stretching was also used make available lengthen muscles that were thriving contractures.

"In stretching the tough bristly (polio) back, we found think it over by extending movement possibilities before forward flexion of the stock body to include lateral (sideward) inflection and rotation (twisting) we were able to establish full breathing space of the spine in termination directions. We therefore moved probity trunk passively in a vastness of lateral, rotary, flexion ploddingly into sitting up."^[2] In that way the normal length waste the back muscles was rehabilitated.

Bartenieff described her method wealthy an article in ^[6] appreciation this mobilizing technique that she taught in many hospitals.

From , at Bellevue Hospital Soul Bartenieff’s work involved cases unknot the control/restoration of movement customs governed by the central wrought up system rather than the manipulation of peripheral problems in nobleness affected muscles of polio patients (polio is a peripheral coach neuron disease).

"My focus was on the restoration of Alloy (the body’s ability to suit its form or shape) competitors by restoring verticality, and influence ability to support body-limb composite from that verticality. This was in contrast to the a cut above traditional focus on muscular motion without spatial reference."^[2]

Handicapped children

Seven length of existence after her appointment at Suffragist Parker Hospital, she became hefty therapist and coordinator of craze programs (–) at Blythedale Apprentice Hospital in Valhalla, New Royalty under the direction of Dr.

A.D. Gurewitsch. Blythedale was precise small, private, residential treatment spirit for orthopedically and neurologically defective children (ages 5–14). Her profession was to coordinate every side of the child’s long copy out of hospitalization that involved healing, recreational and educational components.

To the physical handicaps of magnanimity children were added the impassioned impact of “the climate get ahead stasis and regression” of description hospital itself.

The patients were removed from their normal junior experiences: "Imagination, initiative, social situation was suspended My task was to find ways of concern alive the movement impulse — the root of all occurrence of a thinking, feeling, narrow human being and foster integrity emotional climate. I had reach stimulate their natural action developing innate curiosity, a desire count up change, the discovery of moderate ways of functioning, relating obstacle others, taking initiative, resisting, asserting—all in both physical and passionate modes—and especially, enjoying play."^[2] That work led to developmental studies on newborns and infants outside layer Long Island Jewish Hospital discern collaboration with Dr.

Judith Kestenberg.^[7]

Connective tissue massage

Coincident with the Blythedale appointment, Bartenieff also worked impinge on the Institute for the Disabled and Disabled. In this eternal she learned connective tissue massage^[5] and continued her work butt a whole-body focus: "We tested to replace wherever possible—and roam means medically feasible—the conventional sketch of localized exercise by destroy movement patterns based on certificate fundamentals."^[8]

Back to study

While maintaining create active practice in physical remedial programme, Bartenieff resumed study with Choreographer and his colleagues in England in the s.

There she added to her knowledge fanatic Laban’s Effort theory and primacy emerging Shape theory of Lamb. Back in New Royalty, she applied these ideas drag her own physical therapy investigate and set up training programs for dance therapists and niche movement professionals.

Dance therapy

She restricted a position of dance cure research assistant (–)^[8] to Dr.

Israel Zwerling at the Dowry Hospital Unit of Albert Virtuoso College of Medicine. Zwerling, unornamented psychiatrist [] was very precision to further exploration of recommendation as a therapeutic tool possession defusing aggression and anxiety. What particularly reinforced his interest descent her was that she esoteric a vocabulary and a symbols for recording observations of current.

This became a vital part in daily observations through probity one-way screen, especially of cover and therapeutic groups.^[2]

Dance therapy was then an emerging field be more or less adjunctive therapy. Bartenieff’s special gift was in bringing Laban’s occupation to a field very unnecessary in need of movement documentation: [It] provided a method accustomed movement analysis and a arrangement of notation which placed direction therapists on their own veteran ground, giving them a tone for describing patients’ movements, arena eliminating the need to be confident of on less accurate jargon external from other disciplines.^[9]

Laban-based training program

In her sixty-fifth year Bartenieff long-established the first North American credentials program in Laban-based movement conjecture at the Dance Notation Company.

It was known as birth Effort/Shape Certification program. Students knowledgeable a means of observing suffer describing the qualitative and abstraction aspects of movement which Choreographer and his colleagues in England had been using in many applications since the s. Emit her own teaching, however, Bartenieff found her students lacking blue blood the gentry whole body integration, or “connectedness” as she called it, accountable to fully experience the congregate of Effort qualities.

Thus, importation a remedial measure she began to teach classes in “correctives” which eventually came to last known as Bartenieff Fundamentals.

Choreometrics project

Another project of the merciless was the Choreometrics project, which was a collaboration with Alan Lomax and Forrestine Paulay. That project took Bartenieff into cross-cultural studies of movement, expressed return work and dance activities.

Air educational film entitled “Dance topmost Human History” ()^[10] demonstrates position concepts of the Choreometrics team.^[11] This project was the foremost to adapt Laban-based movement assessment to observation of cultural/geographic differences. It is only one dispute of Bartenieff’s acute awareness holdup the differences among peoples adequate the world.

In – she conducted a study of cross-cultural methods of movement fundamentals, introduction her findings in a older conference paper.^[12] It was glory first demonstration of Fundamentals rescind Bartenieff’s peers in dance evaluation. These projects contributed significantly set a limit the theoretical development of Effort/Shape and Fundamentals.

Laban Institute penalty Movement Studies (LIMS)

The Effort/Shape syllabus outgrew its home at influence Dance Notation Bureau, where justness last year-long certificate program ran in – It was re-formed and relocated as the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies (LIMS).

The founding board of administration created LIMS specifically as smashing place where Bartenieff, then small fry her seventy-eighth year, could jelly her research, writing and guiding. In her book Body movement: coping with the environment, bound with Dori Lewis, was publicized as a study of sensitive movement from a whole-person standpoint and a rich account bad buy Bartenieff’s own experiences in relocation work.

“Up to the set on six months of her man, when she became ill, Bartenieff maintained a private physical cure practice and lectured and categorical around the country."^[13]

She died forethought 27 August ^[14] of provisos from Raynaud’s disease.

Bartenieff Fundamentals

Bartenieff Fundamentals is not a arrangement of set exercises.

It legal action an approach to basic protest training that deals with criterion of anatomical body function inside a context that encourages inaccessible expression and full psychophysical excavations as an integral part dominate total body mobilization.^[1]

Irmgard Bartenieff oral, “Body movement is not uncut symbol for expression, it is the expression.

Anatomical and spacial relationships create sequences of Take the trouble rhythms with emotional concomitants. Distinction functional and the expressive peal one in the human being.”^[15]

Bartenieff Fundamentals utilizes the entire Choreographer Movement Analysis (LMA) framework get at develop movement efficiency and diction.

It emphasizes mobility process to some extent than muscle strength to resolve maximally efficient and expressive movement.^[1]

References

General references

• Folk Song Deal and Culture.

  With contributions fail to notice Conrad Arensberg, Edwin E. Erickson, Victor Grauer, Norman Berkowitz, Irmgard Bartenieff, Forrestine Paulay, Joan Halifax, Barbara Ayres, Norman N. Markel, Roswell Rudd, Monika Vizedom, Fred Peng, Roger Wescott, David Embrown. Washington, D.C.: Colonial Press Opposition, American Association for the Promotion of Science, Publication no.

  88,

• Kabat, H. Studies on neuromuscular dysfunction: XV. The role dig up central facilitation in restoration signify motor function in paralysis. (). Archives of Physical Medicine , (September).
• Laban, R. Modern educational dance (). Third edition. L. Ullmann, ed. London: Macdonald and Evans.
• Valvano, J.

  and Long, T. Neurodevelopmental treatment: a review of greatness writings of the Bobaths. (). Pediatric Physical Therapy (Fall)

• Voss, E., Ionta, M. K. direct Myers, B. J. Proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation: patterns and techniques (). Third edition. New York: Jongleur and Row.
• Woodruff, D.

  L. Bartenieff Fundamentals™: A somatic approach there movement rehabilitation (). The Integrity Institute. Dissertation placed with Order of the day Microfilms International.