Contents
- 1. Transcript
- 1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE JULY 18, 1981
- 1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO JULY 18, 1981
- 1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE JULY 18, 1981
- 1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO AUGUST 1, 1981
- 1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE AUGUST 1, 1981
- 1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO AUGUST 1, 1981
- 1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE AUGUST 3, 1981
- 1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO AUGUST 3, 1981
- 1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE AUGUST 10, 1981
- 1.10. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO AUGUST 10, 1981
- 1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE AUGUST 10, 1981
- 1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO AUGUST 10, 1981
1. Transcript
1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
JULY 18, 1981
-
SNYDER
- Here we are, starting the first four sessions. Let's begin with your
background and experiences and your relationship to the Department of
Dance at UCLA and then [go on] to the whole field of dance and
education, which you've been such an important contributor to. I think
we'll just start with the most basic information, such as where you were
born and, if you wish to reveal [it], when you were born—and set the
stage for everything.
-
HAWKINS
- And then would you like me to trace through the steps that followed
that?
-
SNYDER
- Fine, I'll probably intrude if I [have any questions].
-
HAWKINS
- I was born in Rolla, Missouri, 1904, and that was a little town of about
two thousand population. I went to high school in Rolla and graduated
from high school in 1927. And as I was thinking back over that, I did
the broad, regular program in high school, in the little community; it
was a good program, though. One of the very influential factors was that
there was no physical education program, but we did have a girls'
basketball team, and I played on that. Viva Adams had just come from the
University of Missouri and was a coach of this team and also taught home
economics. As I look back on the years, she was a very influential
person, because she really made it possible for me to go to the
University of Missouri.
-
SNYDER
- Let's backtrack just for a little bit. Tell me a little bit about your
mother and your father and some of their attitudes
toward—particularly—education and movement, some of the things that you
said were the keystones of your whole life and career.
-
HAWKINS
- Well, they did not have college education[s]. My father had a dairy, and
my mother was a homemaker. We had a very close, well-knit family, so
that— Oh, for example, I immediately think of holidays, [which] were
very important, like Christmas and Thanksgiving. They were very
home-centered, always. They were very supportive of both of us (me and
my sister), and were anxious for me to do the kind of things I wanted
to. It was not possible financially for them to really help me to go on
to school, but they were very eager that I get as much as I could, and
supported [our] both going on and getting an education and also
[supported my] doing the kind of things I wanted to do.
-
SNYDER
- Why did they feel that education was so important when they [themselves]
hadn't had extensive education?
-
HAWKINS
- It was probably what seems to be prevalent in many of the early families
in America: that they want the children to go beyond and do more than
what they did and have all the possibility they could. I'm sure that's
what it was.
-
SNYDER
- And what was the attitude of the community in general to education?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, the attitude in general was that high school was about the end of
education. Now there happened to be, even in that small town, a school
of mines, which was a part of the University of Missouri; so there was a
college contingent there. But at that time, girls didn't go on to
school—or the ones who did went to the girls' schools. And in a little
community like ours, there weren't very many people who were wealthy
enough to do that kind of thing; so a few of the boys went to the school
of mines, but girls pretty much got married or got jobs.
-
SNYDER
- So did you have a feeling right from the beginning of being somewhat of
a pioneer?
-
HAWKINS
- No, I was pretty naive about a lot of things. I had taken a
teacher-training course when I was in high school. That sounds strange
today, but I took it my senior year. We went out and did observations in
the rural schools, and as was the pattern in those days, if a woman
worked, it usually was being a teacher. I liked the teaching idea very
much. And I liked visiting the schools. And when I had finished, the
teacher got me in one of the very best rural schools, the very best in
the area. I hesitated a little about it at that time, and I don't know
why, but I couldn't see myself going out to that little school and
teaching. She was very upset with me because I wouldn't take it. And
that's where Viva Adams, the coach of the basketball team, came in. I
remember well sitting down beside her desk and talking with her about
this and [saying] that I couldn't go on. She said, "You could go on to
school; " and I said, "I can't because I don't have any money." She had
worked her. way through school, so she made contacts for me at the
University of Missouri for a part-time job and a place to live with a
family she knew. And that immediately did it. I didn't know what I was
getting into, but as [with] so many things all my life, something just
takes me there.
-
SNYDER
- So you went right from high school, then, to—
-
HAWKINS
- The university; I spent four years.
-
SNYDER
- But you had no contact with dance at that period of time. None of the
greats, like Pavlova, were touring the United States.
-
HAWKINS
- No, I didn't know a thing about dance; all I knew was basketball. There
was no physical education program, no anything.
-
SNYDER
- So let's move on, then, to the university.
-
HAWKINS
- Well, at the university I started out in English, because I liked
English in high school. And without any adviser or anything, I got into
an English class that was for juniors and seniors, a huge class with a
little old man who wasn't very clear; and it was terrible. I didn't know
how to approach it.
-
SNYDER
- How large was "huge" in those days?
-
HAWKINS
- Oh, it must have been at least three hundred. And on those elevated
floors. I was pretty unhappy with that, so I just decided I'd go to the
place that I had loved in high school. Something took me down to the
physical education department, and I shifted my major to physical
education. So I did the broad program in physical education, loved it
all, and did the other kind of liberal arts courses that were required.
-
SNYDER
- What would be a broad program in physical education in those days?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, it was a four-year program; it was a good program for that day.
And each year you had different sports; you had different kinds of
gymnastics; we had different kinds of theory; we had kinesiology. As I
look back now, it was a very broad and comprehensive program. Not very
much dance. Did some work in clog dance (that was the early days of
that) with those soft shoes, and then my senior year I did a class in
interpretive dance and theory of interpretive dance, and that's the
first time I'd come in contact with that kind of experience at all.
-
SNYDER
- Who was your teacher of that class, Alma?
-
HAWKINS
- I don't know the name of the person who taught the studio class; Mildred
Adams was the teacher who taught the theory class. I hated the studio
class. We were always interpreting things and music, and "being" things.
We wore these little tie-dyed china silk costumes, that were tied
together at the shoulders, down below your knee, and those little, soft
elk-skin shoes; and I was most uncomfortable. And as [I] look back, at
the same time, I was playing field hockey and basketball and some
volleyball—primarily basketball and field hockey. I was on all the
intramural teams and very active in all of that activity. Apparently
dance was taught where you just sort of listened to music and then
interpreted. I can't remember any technique, any kind of development or
anything. I only remember watching the clock to see when the class was
going to be over. But something happened in the theory class; I liked
the teacher, and something was happening that intrigued me and sparked
an interest in dance. And I'm sure that was the starting point for the
follow-up things that happened in dance.
-
SNYDER
- Would you say that interpretive dance was the kind of dance that was
being offered?
-
HAWKINS
- Yes.
-
SNYDER
- And the clog. Anything else you were aware of that might have been in
the program at that point?
-
HAWKINS
- No, it was pretty much, I think, the interpretive, and— See, the Marge
[Margaret Newell] H'Doubler period I think followed a little after that.
I didn't know anything about it, but [Marge] was starting her program at
that time.
-
SNYDER
- What about the whole gymnastic approach to dance, which had been around
for a while?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, I was right in the transition period. The early period had been
primarily the Swedish gymnastic, and I remember that because it was in
this transition period, and the sports movement, you see, was beginning
to develop so much more fully. In our particular program— Each year we
had a different kind of gymnastics, so that we would have the old, but
we would be introduced to the new. And if I can remember— I think the
first year was Swedish (I guess it was called gymnastics), and then we
had one year of Danish (they were beginning to import the Danish to this
country, which is a much freer kind of movement), and then we had one
year of so-called natural gymnastics, and I can't remember what the
fourth one was; I just remember those three. And in that kind of
gymnastic work, we also had apparatus, which I never liked—I hated it; I
was afraid of it—but we had all of those things, the horses and the
boxes and all the rest of it.
-
SNYDER
- Was there any folk dance at that point?
-
HAWKINS
- A little. It was European folk dances where you taught the recreational
forms of dance. I think I probably had one course in folk dance.
-
SNYDER
- What was the content of this theory class?
-
HAWKINS
- I don't remember, but she must have talked about teaching, and I just
don't remember any [or] whether it had elements of aesthetics in it. (I
have a feeling it did.) And she probably didn't have too much
background, but somehow, the way she approached it interested me.
-
SNYDER
- Were you teaching at that time and dealing with theory of education at
all?
-
HAWKINS
- No, because I was still at the university; this was undergraduate work.
I was doing part-time work in an office, in the extension department, so
I had no contact with teaching. But I was interested in teaching, and
see, I think it would be interesting sometime to go back and pick up all
these threads. I probably took the teacher-training course in high
school, because that's a way to make a living, but probably that caught
my interest and was probably my first interest in teaching. And then the
theory courses that we had at the university interested me, and I think
I was interested in the kinesiology and the movement somehow. I don't
think I knew why, but it all interested me.
-
SNYDER
- So then where did you go from the university?
-
HAWKINS
- I went back to my hometown to teach in high school.
-
SNYDER
- Now, when did you graduate?
-
HAWKINS
- 'Twenty-seven.
-
SNYDER
- 'Twenty-seven.
-
HAWKINS
- I was teaching in high school, 1927 to '31, and I was the only teacher,
of course, in physical education. Taught both junior and senior high
school. And talk about pioneering, I guess they had not had a physical
education program before, so I came in to develop the physical education
program. And, as is usually true of the person going out from
undergraduate work, I tried to do all the things we did in the
university, introduce them. So I had a broad program, with as many
different sports as [I] could have, and did some folk dancing. I didn't
do any actual dance in the classes, as I remember; that was all
extracurricular. I was very interested in health; I pioneered a whole
health program. I got the dentists in the city interested and the
doctors in the city interested, and they came in and examined high
school students. I developed all kinds of things in health, as we had
been taught we should do, you see. I coached the basketball team; this
was a competitive team; we played in the whole district or area
(whatever it was called) competitively. They'd come to our place; we'd
go to their place. Played in regional tournaments competitively, and so
that was a very vital piece of my experience.
-
SNYDER
- Had other physical education programs been developed earlier on? Was
your school a leader?
-
HAWKINS
- Not in that place.
-
SNYDER
- I meant around, [among] the other schools that you were playing, Alma—or
was this a movement that was, again, happening?
-
HAWKINS
- I was the only one in those small towns. They were all small communities
all around there. I'm thinking about where we played basketball and
visited— No, all they had was the basketball team, as I had grown up
with. I had never thought about that, but I guess that's true. I guess
that that was the first broad program in physical education in that
section of the state. And probably the reason that was possible was that
even though it was a small town, it was a college town, and probably the
people were more open to that kind of thing. It seems to me as I look
back that I loved the basketball and all those things I was teaching and
coaching. But I was very busy doing all kinds of creative things in
dance after school and developing programs and sometimes bringing the
children in from the elementary schools and teaching them dances.
Besides the regular programs that I'd put on in the school, I'd do a May
Day program every year, have some kind of theme and develop and create
all the dances. It was a great mixture, I'm sure, of folk dance and
dances I created; [I] costumed all of this, took them up to the school
of mines, and performed them outside on the campus— and they were
community events. And I did dances for the operettas. I really didn't
have much background for all of this; I didn't have any background!
-
SNYDER
- I'm fascinated, Alma, because you said you really have had basically
none, not one year of interpretive [dance], and yet here is a whole area
welling up. Have you any sense of where that came from, where you got
your sense of confidence about it?
-
HAWKINS
- No, I don't. I have no idea. I guess the basic thing is, I always loved
movement and activity, and what got me into— Well, something in those
two courses caught on, you know.
-
SNYDER
- At the point when you left the University of Missouri, how many
performances had you seen, pieces of what we might call choreography,
anything at all?
-
HAWKINS
- We didn't do programs at the university; we just had the class. The only
thing I can remember at all was seeing a concert performance. That was
during the period that [the Denishawn company] was presenting a concert
on the Lyceum series. There was a program down in the city, and I
attended that— I wish I'd had better eyes to see it, because [Martha]
Graham was dancing in it, and Doris Humphrey was dancing in it, I
remember Doris well, but it was the great mixture that the Denishawns
did. I found that interesting, but it was one of those passing events,
you know.
-
SNYDER
- Where did the idea of a May Day event come from?
-
HAWKINS
- I guess we studied about it at the university. We didn't do any May
Days. Maybe I'd seen some out around Columbia [Missouri] in the high
schools. But [I had] probably studied about it. And one of the
interesting things, talking about transition periods, [was that] when I
was teaching in high school, there was a little dance studio in the
Episcopalian church, [with] a person teaching dance. I guess she had had
some ballet background somewhere, because it was kind of a mixture of
ballet. I probably saw some of their work. Anyway, in one of my
programs, I remember, I costumed the dancers in a kind of short tarleton
skirt, with bare legs (which came out of my interpretive dance), and
their little shoes. I had them in all these beautiful colors and had a
spotlight up in the balcony. That's all the light there was. We were
doing a big special program to make money for something. Well, the
principal, who had been there for years and years, saw the program in
the afternoon and saw all these bare legs and simply said, "That could
not be." And so between the afternoon and the evening performance, I
had to figure out something to do; so I guess these girls I had, had
access to [tights] did they have tights back in those days?—or long
hose, flesh-colored hose. Anyway, we put something on that still looked
like the legs, and we went on in the evening. I'm [making this]
comparison to show the great differences in attitudes— For the
basketball team, I bought costumes with sleeves, [then] took the sleeves
out or put them up, so [the players] could use their arms. And this same
principal couldn't stand that. I remember I did tucks or something and
got away with it. This reveals an attitude about the body that was so
terribly different from what developed later on. So I was in the midst
of creating and putting on programs and working in the community. In the
summer I developed private classes in dance using space in the
Episcopalian church that they used for recreation, I gave a concert at
the high school at the end of that period; I had everything from
six-year-olds to high school students and they did everything from folk
dances to dances that I created. And [I taught] one little child, five
years old I think, that I'd pick up and take. I know that five-year-olds
don't have a very long span of interest; I used to give her pennies to
get her to work on things. So I didn't know what I was doing, but I was
busy being creative.
-
SNYDER
- It's remarkable how all this just happened, really amazing that you had
this kind of a vision. It must have been a vision in a sense, Alma,
because it certainly didn't seem to be available to you in your own
environment.
-
HAWKINS
- Oh, not at all, not at all. And [I had] no training or preparation. I
guess I learned a lot of it by experimenting and made lots of mistakes.
Like one time I thought it would be nice to have this grasshopper dance.
See, I don't know where I got my ideas for all these dances, but
grasshopper dance— I brought about fifteen or sixteen little boys from
the elementary school nearby (at that time you could call anybody and
get anything). And I well remember them down in the gymnasium: I was
rehearsing this little grasshopper dance, and of course you can imagine
what happened, because I had hopping all over the gymnasium. I couldn't
control them, and I didn't like to be defeated, either. I did my best to
get that grasshopper dance under way, and it just didn't work. So I sent
them back, and that was the end of the grasshopper dance. But all these
ideas were coming out for creative things, just out of my own
experience, you know: grasshoppers probably was the logical thing in a
small town.
-
SNYDER
- So why did you pick up and— Did you leave in 1939, or what happened to
[effect] this transition?
-
HAWKINS
- I went to Columbia [University]. Another thing that's interesting in
that high school (someday I hope I have time to go back and put all
these threads together), [was that] I was always organizing things; so I
organized a girls' reserve organization. I wrote to them—I don't know
how I learned about this—the national YWCA, and got a big, thick book
that told you how to organize and how to plan the program. And so I did
this girls' organization. There are some interesting threads, I think,
that run through, of the organizational and [of] leading and working
with students. But then I went to Columbia. . But another piece that
probably is important: Before that I went to the University of Wisconsin
at Madison for two summer sessions while I was teaching in high school.
There, you see, I did take several classes in dance, and I'm sure I
carried the new material right back and used it in my high school work.
-
SNYDER
- Let's talk a little bit about Margaret H'Doubler, because of course that
was a very important period.
-
HAWKINS
- Right. Well, Margaret wasn't there [the University of Wisconsin] the
summers I was there, but the people that taught with her were there, so
I got to experience her approach, which was called interpretive dance.
And I found that interesting. I learned the H'Doubler rolls, and it was
interesting. They started you— They had these great flannel curtains all
around the studio, and they started you on the floor first, lying. And
you'd learn the hip lead and then you'd learn the shoulder. And when you
developed those leads so that you could do them with full rotation in
the body, then they would have you stand facing in the gray flannel
curtains all around the wall. And [there] you did the hip lead roll and
the shoulder lead roll. And then finally they took you out on the floor,
and you did these rolls or rotations. We used a lot of Cur own creative
responses. It was to music— She was at the period of still using
composed music, and [it was] really interpretive in a sense, and yet she
was exploring a whole creative approach to movement.
-
SNYDER
- Do you remember how you heard about the Wisconsin program?
-
HAWKINS
- I have no idea how I heard about it. I might have known it existed when
I was at the university, or I may have read something— I don't know, and
I don't know what took me. I just know that I had to go, and I had a
little Ford roadster (not an enclosed car, one of those with a top that
folded up), and I took my little Ford car and drove to Madison. The
first summer was so good, I went back the second summer. And that's
interesting, what I did there. At seven o'clock in the morning I'd go
out and play field hockey. I loved that, and I had a marvelous teacher.
Then I'd come back, and I'd do courses in folk dance and interpretive
dance. And then I also did courses with a Dr. Denniston, in what was
called therapeutic gymnastics. She was a great teacher, and I did two
summers with her. It was going beyond kinesiology; I learned about the
body including alignment, proper use of body parts, problems and
corrective approaches. As I think back, that course was probably a very
important factor in stimulating later interests in movement and
body-—and, really understanding it.
-
SNYDER
- At this point in time, [was] Wisconsin the only university program that
had interpretive dance?
-
HAWKINS
- I believe so. I don't remember the exact date, but I believe that she
[H'Doubler] started somewhere in the twenties.
-
SNYDER
- No, I think she returned in— In fact, one thing that I read said the
first Orchesis program was 1918.
-
HAWKINS
- See, the interesting thing is that Marge started in physical education
and was teaching basketball and loved basketball. And Blanche [Mathilde]
Trilling was head of the department and one of the great pioneer women
in physical education, with that great breadth of insight. [Blanche] was
aware of new developments in dance and called [Marge] in one day (Marge
told me this) and said she thought it would be good if she would go to
Teachers College, Columbia [University], and study dance and then come
back and maybe develop a dance program at the university. Marge says,
"And leave my basketball And Blanche said that, well, she thought she'd
like it, and she thought it would, be good if they could develop the
program. And so Marge went to New York and did her master's.
-
SNYDER
- Did you have any contact with Trilling at all?
-
HAWKINS
- Oh, yes. The summers I taught there she was there. She was a marvelous
woman, very much in control of the situation but with great vision and
breadth and depth, and very supportive. At that point, all the people on
the faculty were excellent teachers; she'd built an outstanding faculty,
no matter what it was, plus [she had made] excellent beginnings in the
theoretical work. Now, they had good courses in kinesiology—[Ruth]
Glasow followed later with that kinesiology—and a person like Dr.
Denniston, and then [they] later brought in Maya Shada to do relaxation—
That was when I was teaching summer sessions there later on. But it was
an outstanding program.
-
SNYDER
- Do you remember any of the other faculty that you worked with?
-
HAWKINS
- Kate [Katherine] Cronin; I did the folk dance courses with her. I don't
remember the others.
-
SNYDER
- When was it you first met Marge H'Doubler?
-
HAWKINS
- I think I met her the summer I was there, but not really, didn't get to
know her, didn't get to talk with her. I probably had contacts with her
at national conventions through the years, but when I really got to know
her was when I went to teach summer sessions.
-
SNYDER
- When was that, Alma? (I know that's jumping ahead.)
-
HAWKINS
- I taught the summers of 1943, '44, '45, '47, and '51.
-
SNYDER
- Did both of you feel that your approaches were somewhat related? Did you
feel interest in her work— And I'm assuming, because of the fact [that]
you came back, that a good dialogue was initiated at a point.
-
HAWKINS
- Very, much [so]. I guess we both— We were different. We were both very
much interested in a basic movement approach and a creative approach to
dance and [were] both interested, I think, in trying to understand the
theoretical foundations of dance. Of course, Marge had developed a very
complete theoretical foundation. There were some differences in that I
had had all that influence (we're ahead, in a sense) of all the contact
of New York City, with Graham and Doris Humphrey and Hanya Holm, which
Marge H'Doubler did not have, directly. And so I was coming with that
approach. And even though she believed very much in her way of working,
she was very open. I think back— [The fact] that they asked me to come
and do dance composition (and I didn't know too much about it then,
either) meant that she was open. And of course at that time, when I was
teaching there, Louise Kloepper, who had been one of the most
experienced dancers with Hanya Holm, had come to Wisconsin and had
finished her educational program and was teaching, and she was teaching
mostly technique.
-
SNYDER
- Alma, to go back to the actual summer experiences, were there any
students in the program during the summers when you were there that you
kept in contact with?
-
HAWKINS
- Not a one. I just went back to my— You're talking about the summers I
went to school there. I just went back to my high school and, I guess,
tried to implement everything I learned, and then I went from there to
Columbia.
-
SNYDER
- Was it because of hearing about Columbia at Wisconsin that you thought
about going to Columbia?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, that's a big question. I've often wondered about that. I must
have. I have no idea how I learned about Columbia and that their
physical education program was the best. And again, very few people were
going on and doing master's work—certainly no one in my high school area
was—but something told me that was the thing to do. And so again, I set
out in my car and went cross-country. Scared to death.
-
SNYDER
- Now, this was just before the Depression. What was the sense of the
country at this point in time, and did that add to your fear of making
this big step?
-
HAWKINS
- No, I had no fear at all, and I probably wasn't too aware of what was
going on in the country. I just knew I wanted to go study. And that
whole year while I was studying there, I was just deeply engrossed in
what I was doing in the university and in New York City. The bank
closure jolt hit after we got our degrees. Well, I was interested in— I
did the broad physical education program for the master's but I had a
course with Mary O'Donnell, a year course with her in what was called
"natural dancing." And I loved that. This was the time of real
transitions. Now, Mary O'Donnell had studied with Gertrude Colby, who
had been at Teachers College before, and had also been at—What was the
name of that elementary school, the experimental school; it wasn't
Lincoln, was it? Or was it Lincoln?
-
SNYDER
- No, Speyer [School—a laboratory center for Teachers College—Ed.].
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, Speyer. And they had experimented with dance for children. And
[Jesse F.] Williams, who was the chairman of the physical education
department, wanted Colby to try it with the adults. So she taught summer
schools, and they introduced there, Mary O'Donnell had worked with her.
-
SNYDER
- Did you have any direct contact with Colby?
-
HAWKINS
- No. And so this time, instead of tie-dyed costumes, we wore little rayon
costumes—mine was rose—and you cut them in two straight pieces and
picoted them around the edge and cut them so you had a little edge, tied
them, at the shoulder and again— But we worked barefoot, this time. And
the class really was built around natural movements. You learned skips
and swings and hops and runs and jumps and leaps, and the music was the
[Frederic] Chopin and the kinds of music that lended itself to that
work. The interesting thing was that while O'Donnell was teaching this
kind of movement, she was also in very close touch with—she was a very
good friend of Martha Hill, who was down at NYU [New York University]
and was also in a period of transition. And they were very much in touch
with Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman and Martha Graham and Hanya
Holm. So obviously she was being influenced indirectly. But she was
sending us to see the concerts downtown, so we were in contact with what
was happening, coming out of those lofts in New York City in those early
concerts.
-
SNYDER
- And of course this was just the period when all of those people were
really starting their first—
-
HAWKINS
- Just finding their way, just creating their first dances, in the period
of straight costumes and often dark-color costumes. Doris Humphrey
sometimes worked without any music, really revolting completely from
what had been. They were finding their own way, as I've heard Doris say:
that she had to go and find her own way, to make her own statement; she
could no longer be satisfied with what she had been doing with the
Denishawn company. So I was flooded with both kinds of dance.
-
SNYDER
- How much, aside from going to the concerts, Alma, did you have a chance
to talk with Doris Humphrey or Martha Graham?
-
HAWKINS
- No. It was only indirectly through Mary O'Donnell. And there was a kind
of excitement that was in the air with all of this, and a lot of people
were excited about it. But I think that probably some of us, who had
been very active in physical education and had enjoyed moving and the
freer kind of movement, which had always appealed to me— Suddenly this
just hit a bell; it was right. It was the free movement, but it had a
different kind of focus.
-
SNYDER
- What was that different kind of focus?
-
HAWKINS
- The movements seemed to be organic; maybe it was a little more creative;
you weren't being things and interpreting things and interpreting music.
It was a movement that felt right in the body; I don't know how to say
it other than that.
-
SNYDER
- You have spoken to me [about], and I assume we'll talk a lot about your
interest in human beings? did you see the human being [as] being more in
that dance, rather than interpreting?
-
HAWKINS
- Probably. They were making a statement about something that was
important to them, and they weren't copying or representing something
else, and that probably intrigued me to see it. It probably felt right
to me, just as in interpretive dance. I couldn't stand being flowers and
bees and things. I was embarrassed! Also, they started developing a
technique; the new dance started developing the potential of the body in
various ways of moving, and there was some kind of guided direction, and
that probably appealed to me. There was a freedom to it, but there was a
foundation, and it was going someplace. I did more study with Doris
Humphrey than [with] anyone else, because her movement felt better to
me. I was intrigued with the way she would explain what she.was doing
and the theoretical base for her movement, like her falls and recoveries
and so on.
-
SNYDER
- So, who all would you have seen at that period? We've mentioned Martha
[Graham] and Doris [Humphrey] and Charles [Weidman]. Who else?
-
HAWKINS
- And Hanya [Holm]. And I saw one concert of Mary Wigman.
-
SNYDER
- Tell me about that; I remember you gave me the copies of that program at
one point.
-
HAWKINS
- Well, it was very exciting, because she had such great vitality; you
just felt this great energy. And she seemed to fill the stage with
circular movements and spatial movements, which later we know is one of
the characteristics of her work. [They were] very powerful statements;
that's about what I remember of it. But I found it very exciting.
-
SNYDER
- Was Hanya Holm's work—did you see the direct tie to her, to Wigman, in
[Holm's] work at that time?
-
HAWKINS
- I didn't see it then; later I saw it, when I studied with her a little
bit more, at Bennington [College]. At that time in New York City, there
were also sometimes concerts that brought together a lot of dance people
to make money, benefit kind of things, (I can't remember who they were).
Then you had a chance to see many people in single events. And I don't
remember a lot of those performers, but you were flooded with all of
these events.
-
SNYDER
- Alma, do you know more about Mary O'Donnell's background, aside from her
work with Gertrude Colby— And maybe we should talk a little bit about
Gertrude Colby, since she certainly was one of the early great figures
in the field.
-
HAWKINS
- Well, I don't know much about the background of either one of them. I
just know her work with the children, and [that] Jessie Williams brought
her and that Mary O'Donnell studied with her. And I don't know much
about Mary O'Donnell; I just know that she was a marvelous person.
-
SNYDER
- Did you have any contact with Bird Lawson?
-
HAWKINS
- No, [I] only knew the name. But it was in that period that she was
exploring and working with her new ideas.
-
SNYDER
- What about the Marshes? [Agnes L. Marsh and Lucile Marsh] I think the
book by the sisters—is it Ann and Lucy Marsh?—was one of the first books
on dance; I think I have that actual title down. It was just Dance and Education, I think. Had you read that
book?
-
HAWKINS
- No, I had no contact with them at all.
-
SNYDER
- I think maybe it would be easier now, before we go into the. next, Alma—
The whole sense of the broader picture of education (you were very much
in physical education at this point)— The sense of theories of education
and [John] Dewey and so forth. Were you sensing any of that in your,
work there?
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, and when I did my master's work, I did, I guess, a year's work with
Dr. William [Heard] Kilpatrick, who was the Dewey carry-on. And I was
intrigued with his work. This class was held in a huge auditorium, but I
was very interested. And that probably was the place where I started
getting some ideas about functional learning, experiential work; and it
probably got me interested in the theoretical aspects of education,
what's behind the teaching process.
-
SNYDER
- Was it just one class, or a whole series of classes with Kilpatrick?
-
HAWKINS
- I think I did a year with him, two semesters. I think that was, at the
master's work, the prime influence of that kind. The rest was pretty
much in physical education courses and theory courses and administrative
courses, and I did courses in tap dance. It was kind of the broad
program in physical education. But I did do that year with him. Maybe
some others? I don't remember those.
-
SNYDER
- Were you still involved with sports at this point, Alma, or were you
really shifting over into dance as your focus?
-
HAWKINS
- No, I was still interested in both aspects. Now, I didn't do anything
with the sports aspect during my master's program; all the work was in
the dance. But I was still interested. And the theory courses, you see,
were still talking in terms of sports.
-
SNYDER
- Now much interest was beginning to grow up in recognizing the place of
dance in education at that period. Did you feel yourself, again, a
pioneer in going in this direction?
1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
JULY 18, 1981
-
SNYDER
- Alma, when the other side of the tape was just coming to an end, I was
asking you about your sense of yourself as a pioneer and your sense of
being in a pioneer field.
-
HAWKINS
- Seriously, I guess when you're in the midst of it, you don't think of
yourself as a pioneer, but I think maybe there was a feeling through all
those years of having a cause. I guess that is a pioneer, but that's the
way you thought of it: that there's something that is very important,
and you must do it, and you must develop it as much as you can. I guess
I had that kind of feeling all the way along, and then as new
experiences [kept] coming in I'd try to develop those. And that was very
much true, then, after the contact with all the new developments in
dance. Although I was still interested in the other areas of physical
education, this obviously was becoming my special area of interest. I
was trying to develop programs and to spread the word, so to speak, in
many different areas. Many times when I went into places, it was new; I
was developing a new program.
-
SNYDER
- Now at that point, when you were working on your M. A., were you doing
anything else in New York?—I mean [anything] that was a substantial
amount. No teaching at that point at all?
-
HAWKINS
- No, I was giving all my time there. But then the following year, I
stayed in New York City, 1932 to '33. Right when we finished our degrees
that year, the banks closed and everything collapsed, and there were no
jobs. I had planned to go into college teaching at that point; so [I]
stayed in New York City, because we all thought that we'd have a better
chance of getting some part-time jobs, which really was a good decision
to make. Fortunately, I ended up with more than a full-time job (with
all the part-time jobs), but two important areas were— I did part-time
teaching at the Dalton School, working with the children, teaching
dance, and I worked with the YWCA downtown teaching dance. And then [i]
developed other single classes, like a single class in dance at an
Episcopalian church way down in the Bowery, and was introducing natural
dancing, modern dance, in all of these places. And during that time that
I was teaching in New York, I took a class with Tina Flada, who had just
come from Germany and had been one of the outstanding dancers with Mary
Wigman, and she was teaching at the YWCA. That I loved too, and that
gave me a little experience in that approach to movement. And of course
this gave me an opportunity to continue to see concerts and the way
dance was developing. As I think back, it was an interesting time of a
great mixture in dance, I guess you'd say a transition in dance. You had
all this going on with the so-called new modern dance in New York City,
and then at Barnard College, which was the women's college, right across
from Teachers College, part of Columbia, they were still doing the Greek
games, the annual program in Greek games, where it was [performed] in
these little short-tunic costumes, and the dances were built on the
whole game idea. But also at the same time, you were beginning to have
what was called the dance symposium, or symposia where colleges would
come together and bring their students and perform, and then they would
talk about the performance and about the dance. So this was a new
development. It was the first time that college teachers got together to
share ideas about the dance. And of course Agnes Wayman, one of the
great early women in physical education at Barnard, was, as I remember,
an instrumental person in getting these events started. So here was all
this new—the Greek games arid natural dance and the colleges were
beginning to come together to share whatever level they were working on.
-
SNYDER
- This was, I understand, one of the first national meetings in dance, if
you could call it national. [It] was in that period from 1930, '31. Did
you attend that, Alma?
-
HAWKINS
- I probably did; I don't know. I can't remember just which was the first,
but you're referring to what became the National Dance Section, which
was a part of the American Physical Education Association [now known as
the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and
Dance]. Yes, I was very active in that, both attending and in leadership
roles. I served as chairman of the National Dance Section for a couple
of years; I was on the board for several years, and then they broke that
down into areas. I was active in the Midwest Dance Section. But one of
the important things that developed in the National Dance Section
because of all this new impact of dance was a preconvention conference.
This was held two days before the National Physical Education Conference
[hosted by the American Physical Education Association—Ed.], and we
brought in the artists, to teach master classes. This shows how the
professional world was beginning to influence the college teaching. We
had a chance to study with those people—Hanya Holm and Doris Humphrey
and the different ones—and that was very exciting. It was also in
[those] preconvention days that I had a chance to work with Lloyd Shaw
and learn the square dance, which was being revived; well, a number of
outstanding people taught during these conferences. That played a very
important role in making the transition into the college world; that's
where you learned.
-
SNYDER
- Let me go back again to the Dalton [School] and YWCA; since my own
background [is] in the Dalton School, I'm interested in that. I know
that you didn't have a very good reaction to it, Alma, but it certainly
was one of the hubs of the progressive education, which you had begun to
learn about through [William Heard] Kilpatrick and so forth; I wonder if
you could just talk about that a little bit.
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, definitely. It was a very important school and approach to
education. I learned— I didn't have very close contact; I came in on a
part-time job. I had great freedom to work any way I wanted to in dance.
I was aware that Doris Humphrey was teaching a class for, I guess, more
gifted students; I learned a little bit about the approach to education,
that it wasn't the traditional way. Instead, the individual had blocks
of work, contracts they made, and that interested me; but I didn't have
experience with that way of working. I didn't have an opportunity to
meet with faculty—faculty meetings. But I was interested
-
SNYDER
- Anything else about this year in New York before we move on?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, another piece that was kind of interesting was that I went to— As
a result of my work at the YW, I was invited to go to a YWCA camp up in
New York state and develop the dance program. I was program director and
was spreading the word of dance to the high-school-age students there. I
was there for three summers, '32, '33, and '34. That obviously was
another place where I was pioneering and experimenting and trying to
develop. Not only teach them but to develop my own understanding of
dance.
-
SNYDER
- Did you begin to feel that you really had your own theory of dance at
this point?
-
HAWKINS
- Probably not. I was experimenting with the things I had learned, using
them in different ways and creating material and having students at the
camp create dances, and we did programs. So it was more, I think, an
exploration of the material and using it creatively, but I don't think—
Other than what I had learned about movement and the body (that was
always very much with me), other than that, I don't think so. I don't
think that developed for quite some time.
-
SNYDER
- Was the word creativity in your vocabulary at that point?
-
HAWKINS
- No. Not at all.
-
SNYDER
- Was it in others'?
-
HAWKINS
- I don't think so. And I don't even know what we said when we made those
dances, whatever kind of dances they were. I'm sure we didn't say we
created dances. Probably just made dances; I don't know.
-
SNYDER
- Just one more little piece before we move on. How much was the influence
of Isadora Duncan in this whole— For instance, when you speak about some
of the things that Mary O'Donnell was doing, did she sense any tie to
Isadora, or was that really very much outside of the— Was Isadora's
impact outside of the active role of dance?
-
HAWKINS
- Not outside, but not consciously within, I don't think. My hunch would
be that Isadora's work had a tremendous influence but was a piece of a
larger development that was happening in that day: of more awareness of
the body, a greater freedom with the body, a greater freedom of the
individual. And making your own statement, which— I don't think you can
separate all these things. We don't want to talk about this here, but
probably, I think, one of the most important periods in the history of
this country that relates to the creative work was the 1890 period, when
not only Isadora but Walt Whitman and other people, Louis Sullivan and
all of them, were beginning to explore the individual in this country,
the individual's ability to make his own statement. And that was what
Isadora was doing in her way, and [she] was breaking away from the
ballet. Now, that obviously had an impact on [Gertrude] Colby, but
there's another thread, I think, that— Somebody ought to work all these
threads together someday. There was a period of natural gymnastics. We
had moved completely away from the Swedish gymnastics, which was built
for military organizations in Europe, to a natural, to Danish
[gymnastics] first, with its flexibility and using the body. The sports
were becoming prevalent in this country, and we developed what was
called natural gymnastics. And so I think this freedom that came from
Isadora and the influencing force in physical education of the natural
gymnastics came into what we call natural dancing, which was based on
the hop and the turn and the natural body movements. And who knows,
maybe that had an indirect influence on Doris [Humphrey] and Martha
[Graham] who came out of this other kind of background.
-
SNYDER
- You said that you don't want to talk about it, but perhaps before we
leave it: You have a very strong feeling about these 1890s. When were
you aware— I mean, do you think your whole development is a result of
some of that freeing up?
-
HAWKINS
- [affirmative] This is going ahead, but the year I worked with Harold
Rugg opened a whole new world to me, and he called his course—
-
SNYDER
- Well, we can get back to that.
-
HAWKINS
- —"Education in the Creative America: The 1860s to 1940s." He had done
tremendous study around the 1890 period [about] all the different kind
of personalities, important figures that just emerged at the time, when
the whole country was beginning to realize that there is a creative
potential here, and we can make our own statement, and we don't have to
copy Europe. He went into all of these developments in the different
arts, and that's where I learned about Walt Whitman and Louis Sullivan
and Isadora and the whole scene, [including] painters. And I guess [he]
made me aware of not only that basic development within our own country
but that the human being had this potential, and [of] the need for the
human being to make his statement, Rugg was so interested in all of
that. And that obviously planted the base that everything else came
from.
-
SNYDER
- But what I'm meaning, Alma, is— I think you and I have talked about
these sharing, in-the-wind kinds of feelings, historically, even when
one isn't consciously aware of it [external influences]. I'm really
coming back to your early impulse to do some of this work, which, we
talked about already, seemed to come out of nowhere. Now I wonder
whether, in fact, in some way, somewhere, you had felt early on this
sense of what had been happening, even though you felt as though you
were in a fairly insulated environment in your early experience.
-
HAWKINS
- I'm sure I felt something, but what it was or what pushed me, I really
don't know. I had always [had] a very real interest in nature; I loved—
Growing up in a small town, I had been aware of all of the nature and
the flowers and the trees and everything, and some of my strongest
memories of childhood are associated with nature. But other than that, I
really don't know. It seems as though I explored what I'd learned and
tried to develop it, and then something just sort of moved me to the
next phase. That seems to have happened all my life, and it didn't seem
to have a lot of thought beforehand. It wasn't a long-planned thing,
that was true, going to the University of Wisconsin, going across the
country—girls just didn't do that then. And even the doctorate: Nobody
was getting doctorates when I did that, but something said, "Go do it."
I don't know how to explain it other than that.
-
SNYDER
- Let's be a little disciplined and come back to— What would you define as
the next step?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, after that year in New York and those part-time jobs, I thought
[that] professionally I just had to get into a full-time job. I couldn't
allow this to happen, and so I took a position at Emporia Kansas State
College I didn't want to go out there at all; I didn't want to leave the
East. I loved New York City, but I thought I better do it, and I did.
And I hated every step of the way as I traveled out there. While I was
there, I taught courses in dance and theory of dance and some other
theory courses, developed the dance program there, again, in light of
what I had learned, because they had been teaching interpretive dance.
But I stayed only one year; I couldn't stand it. I'm afraid I didn't
give it much of an opportunity, either. So to get out of that situation,
I went to a position in Minneapolis, the YWCA, and I was there 1934 to
'38. That came about because the person I had worked with in New York
City moved out there as director of the program, so I went there as
associate director, and to develop the dance program in the YWCA.
Minneapolis was an active. and progressive city, and we developed a
program for children (I think from ages six, probably to fifteen) and
then adult classes. And again, I built programs, concerts; I'd do an
annual program with the children, and sometimes with adults. During that
period, in Minneapolis [there] was a little dance group—I don't know
whether we called it the Minneapolis Dance Council, but something
related to that kind of title—and we were concerned with developing
dance in the community and in the high schools and in the university. We
worked closely with Gertrude Lippincott and Ruth Hatfield. [tape
recorder turned off] Now where were we?
-
SNYDER
- You had just mentioned Minneapolis and Gertrude Lippincott and Ruth
Hatfield.
-
HAWKINS
- We were busy doing little concerts in the city, trying to spread the
word there, and Gertrude and Ruth were both interested in choreography
and were giving little concerts we'd do them in Gertrude's home and we'd
do them at the YW, but again, we were very busy trying to develop the
modern dance concept in Minneapolis.
-
SNYDER
- Do you know a little bit about Gertrude's background, because she's
another—
-
HAWKINS
- Well, Gertrude is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and went to
Bennington and got intrigued [by] the new developments in dance and was
interested in choreography and then started working independently very
young and just kept on doing that. She was a very important figure in
Minneapolis in the development of dance, and I think has had a lot of
influence in other parts of the country; [she] traveled, did concerts,
and did a lot of teaching.
-
SNYDER
- But you had just met in Minneapolis.
-
HAWKINS
- Kind of joined forces.
-
SNYDER
- Had Gertrude already been to Bennington at that point?
-
HAWKINS
- [affirmative] I'm sure she had been.
-
SNYDER
- What was the general attitude towards dance at this point, Alma? It
sounds as though since you were being so active, that everybody was
being responsive to dance, but who really was interested in dance in the
community?
-
HAWKINS
- There weren't many concerts of professionals, the nationally known
professionals. It was more a community kind of development. The people
that surrounded me in the YW were business girls and mothers and the
people taking the classes—children and adults. One person who was active
with our group in Minneapolis was teaching out at North High [School]—I
can't remember her name—and she had been to Bennington. She developed a
fine program at the high school, and so she had contact with that
community group. And then this little group of Gertrude and Ruth and
several of us—we were really doing spadework in the community. So it was
a growing kind of thing without much preliminary base for it.
-
SNYDER
- But what segment of the community, would you say: Was it the middle
class, was it the wealthy?
-
HAWKINS
- Oh no, I would think it would be the middle class. Now you see, at the
university before Gertrude Baker had been teaching. I never had close
contact with her work, but I think it was the interpretive, natural kind
of dance. What we were all doing was trying to introduce the newer
dance, the modern dance.
-
SNYDER
- Now, Alma, this was also still the period of coming out of or just
beginning to emerge from the Depression. Yet the arts seem to have, in
some areas at least, gained support during the Depression period, with
the federal aid to the arts. How was your own work affected by all of
this?
-
HAWKINS
- Probably not at all. I really wasn't too much aware of it. I was aware
later of the role that WPA played in development of dance. What seems to
me to be true is that in the circles I was in, there seemed to be a
readiness and excitement—not too great excitement, but excitement—for
something new and a kind of openness to it. It didn't happen fast; it
was a slow process. You had to really work to develop this, but the
people involved were so committed to it that they worked very hard. And
you were satisfied with small groups, where today we have to have
thousands to think we're successful. It really was a going from nothing
to something, communitywise.
-
SNYDER
- How unique do you think the Minneapolis situation was? Would you say
that this kind of trend was occurring in many, not small towns but major
cities in the Midwest, and how much did this affect the whole of the
United States?
-
HAWKINS
- Probably in several [cities] but not in a lot. I think probably the
Minneapolis community effort was one of the leading ones. I don't really
know this, but probably Detroit, with Ruth Murray and Delia Hussey and
the fine programs they developed in the school, was another place where
they were really developing something. There were some important
centers, but Minneapolis probably was one of the first early ones.
-
SNYDER
- When did you have contact with Ruth Murray and Delia Hussey?
-
HAWKINS
- Oh, for years.
-
SNYDER
- Did it start at this period?
-
HAWKINS
- No, it started in physical education. They were very active in national
organizations in physical education, and I was, and so we crossed paths.
And then we all were very interested in dance, as this period started
developing. And so I worked with Ruth many times in national
organizations on dance programs. In the preconvention dance days, Ruth
was very active in that, and so was Delia.
-
SNYDER
- When you were in Minneapolis, was there any kind of nourishment [by]
what was going on in Detroit at that time?
-
HAWKINS
- No. That probably all came after Bennington, just as preconvention days
came after Bennington. Probably before that every [one] was out in their
own areas doing whatever they could do.
-
SNYDER
- Bennington is a word that we've been using a lot. What specific dates
are you thinking of when you say pre- and after Bennington?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, I went to Bennington the one summer, 1936, and people teaching in
the colleges were going during those summers and going home? I don't
know when those preconvention [days] started. (I've got all that
somewhere.) They followed the Bennington days, because we had to have
contact with those people, and that was the way to do it, and that's
when the National Dance Section as a unit in the [American] Physical
Education Association started growing and developing.
-
SNYDER
- I think the first summer session was— Was it in '32 I know Bennington
started in '32. I think it was almost immediately after that.
-
HAWKINS
- That sounds right, but I really don't remember. I went only the one
summer. The following summer I followed Doris Humphrey out to Perry
Mansfield Camp [Perry Mansfield School of Theater] at Steamboat Springs,
[Colorado], and then I followed those people around; they'd go to
certain places and do a week session at camps and [other] places, and I
followed them that way. But I had only one summer at Bennington.
-
SNYDER
- Do you want to talk about that summer at Bennington now?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, it was exciting in that you had an opportunity to work with so
many different people: classes with Martha Graham and with Doris
Humphrey and with Charles Weidman and with Martha Hill. Martha Hill at
that time was experimenting with this so-called new modern dance in the
educational world; and so my work with her in both technique and
particularly in composition probably was my first real theoretical
orientation to do composition. Of course, with the other artists, you
were getting [many] different approaches, and you had an opportunity to
see them at work and [to see] their concerts. It was a very exciting and
full experience. It's the time I had the first opportunity to meet John
[Joseph] Martin (he was up for some lectures), took a class with Curt
Sachs-—so it brought you in touch with a lot of important people.
-
SNYDER
- Had you been reading Martin before Bennington, just going back to— He
first started his [dance criticism]—
-
HAWKINS
- For the New York Times. [Martin was dance editor
of the New York Times from 1927 to 1962—Ed.]
-
SNYDER
- When did he start, in 1930?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, I don't know, but he was writing on those early days, when the
concerts were beginning in New York; so at the time—I was in New York in
'32—he must have been very actively involved in writing.
-
SNYDER
- You had some misgivings about Bennington, too, or you were already
seeing your own directions or beginning a first—
-
HAWKINS
- Maybe not misgivings; I was excited about what was happening, but I
guess that teaching focus in me and the interest in students and my
movement background caused me to do some thinking, I remember one day we
were sitting in one of the dormitory rooms, a group of us, talking about
what we'd been learning in all the different classes. I think maybe Ruth
Murray was in that group. I remember saying, "Do you think that we can
take all this back and teach it in our college We were all filling our
notebooks with everything we learned in every class, and there was a big
discussion about that; but at that point I was beginning to think some
of this may not be appropriate. I didn't understand, then, that an
artist develops a technique that relates to what they need to do in
their concert, and just handed it on down to us. But I was sensing that
some of it wasn't appropriate—at least we shouldn't just imitate that.
Yet I did do a lot of it, but I don't think I ever violated anybody's—
But that probably started me thinking about the different approaches to
movement. And then, some of the techniques didn't feel good on my body.
For example, I was much more comfortable with Doris Humphrey; I was not
as comfortable in Martha Graham's [approach] as I was in the other
approaches; it just didn't seem to fit my body right. And I also was
very aware of the different teaching techniques used in class that made
people feel very uncomfortable or embarrassed, and I didn't really like
that. So I guess I started thinking.
-
SNYDER
- What were you wearing in dance classes at this period?
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, somebody should do a history on dance costumes from A to Z, Well,
we had little beige, kind of rayon material, and the tops were fitted
bodices that came about midriff, and just a little cap sleeve. And then
beige skirts that came just below the knee and little beige trunks that
went underneath that, and barefoot.
-
SNYDER
- Still no leotard.
-
HAWKINS
- No leotard. It was skirts and bodice tops.
-
SNYDER
- So what is the next stage along the way, Alma?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, that was— In '37 I went to Perry Mansfield Camp. It was Bennington
in '36, Perry Mansfield Camp in '37, and in 138—
-
SNYDER
- Talk just a little bit about Perry Mansfield, because that's certainly
another—
-
HAWKINS
- Very important place in dance education. They were so far ahead of the
times, and they were bringing outstanding people in the arts.
-
SNYDER
- Who were the "they"?
-
HAWKINS
- Oh, Portia Mansfield and Charlotte Perry, Portia was particularly
interested in the dance, and Charlotte was particularly interested in
theater. You had these two wings going with very high quality work, I
went because Doris Humphrey was going to be there, and it was marvelous
to be able to live in that beautiful area of Steamboat Springs and the
studio that was— Were you ever there?
-
SNYDER
- Yes, I taught there once.
-
HAWKINS
- With the other half open to the beautiful trees around there, and a big
studio with a beautiful floor, and a chance to work with Doris there. We
had sessions in the evening with Doris, several evenings where we saw
[on] the floor around her. She would talk, and we would ask questions.
That was a very interesting opportunity that I'd never had at any other—
Well, maybe another [one or two] camp situation[s], short periods where
you had the direct contact.
-
SNYDER
- Now, was Louis Horst there?
-
HAWKINS
- Not that summer.
-
SNYDER
- Had you had contact with Louis at Bennington? Did you take his classes
at Bennington?
-
HAWKINS
- [affirmative], But it didn't feel right. I learned a lot, but I didn't
do like a lot of other people who were there and then taught Louis
Horst's method when they went home. I didn't because it didn't feel
right to me.
-
SNYDER
- Why didn't it feel right?
-
HAWKINS
- I guess it was too structured and too right and wrong and kind of forced
and too much negative response to student work. Now, I know it has a lot
of good things, "but it wasn't right for me, I suppose whatever I
learned in there filtered in indirectly. The person that I responded to
much more positively was Lloyd—what's his first name, the musician?
-
SNYDER
- Norman.
-
HAWKINS
- Norman Lloyd. I loved his classes in rhythmic analysis, and he did a lot
with form in his work, and that— I learned a lot, and [he] was very
influential in my teaching from then on. It may have been personality,
and maybe again, I guess from way back, I didn't like to be made to feel
uncomfortable, and I didn't like to see other people made to feel
uncomfortable (the whole kind of human orientation), and there was so
much of that [discomfort] in Louis Horst's work. But that was my own
personal response. He was a very important figure and made a very
important contribution, and did start people thinking in terms of form.
-
SNYDER
- And you've always felt form was very important.
-
HAWKINS
- Absolutely. Didn't understand it in the first days, but— And I guess the
real beginnings of that, real understandings, [were] the year I studied
with [Harold] Rugg, and all those things I did around that course then,
[began to understand] about symbolization and about form.
-
SNYDER
- Now, you say Doris was at Perry Mansfield: Was there anybody else with
Perry Mansfield? What was your direct contact with Portia, for instance?
-
HAWKINS
- I did work with Portia—she did a class in movement—and with Doris, I
can't remember working with other people. There were a lot of
recreational activities. (I didn't do very many of those.)
-
SNYDER
- Now what was the next step that you mentioned?
-
HAWKINS
- I guess next I went to Chicago, in 1938 to 1953, at George Williams
College, which was a small college. I don't know how they happened to
ask me, but I was interested in it because of the focus; it was a small
college, and the focus was on the individual, and group process
penetrated the whole college and the whole philosophic approach to
education seemed so right. It seemed to be a place to pull together the
kinds of things that I'd had in my education and also the kind of
experience that I'd had in the YWCA that I liked. I taught the broad
program in physical education for girls and, again, I think for the
first time, developed the program in dance. And I did a program in
modern dance at different levels—beginning, intermediate, and
advanced—and classes in folk dance, in social dance, in tap dance: I had
dance all over the place. And because there were more men there than
women, I had lots of men in all of my classes, which was unheard of in
those days. In the modern classes I had them, and in the dance club, or
whatever we called it, I had as many men as I had women. And the
concerts we did—or programs, you know had men in them.
-
SNYDER
- Why was there such an overabundance of men?
-
HAWKINS
- I suppose because that college historically had its roots in the YMCA;
it was not YMCA-oriented when I was there, but the roots were there, and
so a lot of those men went into YMCA. But they were fine young people;
it was a great teaching experience. Now, while I was there, an
interesting period in dance was developing. This was a time that the
artists were realizing that they had to get across the country—so that
people would understand their dance—if it was going to catch on
countrywide. And the people who were interested in sponsoring them were
all these college teachers who'd gone to Bennington to study with them,
and so it was the college teachers who were bringing them across the
country. That period was known as the "gymnasium circuit," because
that's where they performed. And while I was there, I brought Doris
Humphrey and her group and I brought Hanya Holm and their group. We set
up the gym and put up flats on the side for the stage area, and
bleachers. They also did master classes. That was the period you brought
people in for master classes, and [it was] a very different day than
today. You sent out not too heavily advertised material, and you would
get people, busloads of students, coming from all around; so you'd have
master classes of over a hundred. And great excitement about it.
-
SNYDER
- Who were on this gymnasium circuit. [Which] were the important campuses
or the programs?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, the people who participated mostly were Doris and Charles
[Weidman] and Hanya, I don't believe Martha [Graham] ever did very much
with it at all; she just didn't like that idea and did most of her work
in New York, I don't really remember, but I guess the major universities
that had dance programs were responsible. By that time there were dance
individuals spread all over the country, in physical education programs—
-
SNYDER
- I was anxious for you to name some names at this point, because you knew
many of them well. Who were the key people in the whole dance section at
this point?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, of course Ruth Murray at Detroit; Helen Alkire was at Ohio State
developing a dance program; Jane Fox was at Indiana University; somebody
was out at the University of Oklahoma (I can't remember that person)
[who] was developing a program. I don't know just when, but Charlotte
Irey at the University of Colorado, Boulder, developed an early program
and was influenced in this same way. Lois Ellfeldt at University of
Southern California, Betty Pease at the University of Michigan—Margaret
Erlanger at the University of Illinois— It's been so long, I forget all
these, but as you begin to think back, almost all the major universities
had a person in physical education who was beginning to develop this
dance program.
-
SNYDER
- Now, what was the relationship of Wisconsin to all of this?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, that's interesting, because Marge H'Doubler was not an
organization person; she was a free spirit. She did come to some of the
preconventional dance conferences, but she never was in the leadership
role, [or did any of] the organizational kind of things, and seldom went
to conventions. Now, she did take her group and do demonstrations from
time to time when she was invited but she usually came in and went out.
So that kept Wisconsin with its own roots.
-
SNYDER
- Did the artists come in to perform at Wisconsin as much as in some of
the other areas?
-
HAWKINS
- I wouldn't be sure about that, but I don't think so.
-
SNYDER
- So you were developing this whole program until 1953. When did you go to
your doctorate at Columbia?
-
HAWKINS
- I started in summer sessions but didn't do the full study until the
fifties. There's something back in that period: [We] ought to maybe talk
about the concerts coming through. You know, as I said, the colleges
were the ones that sponsored it, but I was very active in Chicago with
the Chicago Dance Council, helped to organize it. And that was a place
where we came together— There were a lot of people exploring dance in
all the different situations, high schools and colleges. And Katherine
Manning, who had been a member of the Humphrey-Weidman group, was then
teaching at the University of Chicago. We decided that we ought to bring
the Humphrey-Weidman company out to Chicago. No one in the city would
sponsor them; so the council wanted to sponsor them, but we didn't have
any money, and kind of budget to make any security. We decided we had to
do it, so we made the contract and got the whole thing set up. We
divided up the tickets, and all of us in the council had handfuls of
tickets and went out and sold those tickets and filled the auditorium.
It's so interesting to think about how we got a concert to Chicago in
those years, in relation to what we do at UCLA, with the concert series
with a whole staff—and no individual carries tickets and sells them. But
I think that reveals the kind of excitement and commitment that we had:
that it was so important that we were willing to sell the tickets. And
we succeeded.
-
SNYDER
- How many concerts a year might you have on that kind of basis?
-
HAWKINS
- Sponsored by us? Probably one. We did well to do that. But we did lots
of demonstrations for the community or meetings; we always had some kind
of demonstration and sharing of ideas, as well as social gathering. Now,
while I was at George Williams (I guess maybe we mentioned that before)
I taught about five summers at the University of Wisconsin, and that was
an interesting experience, teaching dance and all those classes.
-
SNYDER
- And it was then that you got to know Marge well.
-
HAWKINS
- Right. Talked with her, spent time with her, visited her in her summer
place up on Green Bay.
1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
JULY 18, 1981
-
SNYDER
- I have a feeling there was an important little part that was coming, and
we got interrupted, Alma. I think you were just beginning to talk about
other things that were going on during that period when you were
teaching.
-
HAWKINS
- I don't really know what I was going to say, but I [am] think[ing of]
some other areas of experience that were important for things that
happened later, leadership experiences. I was very active, not only in
the [National] Dance Section but in the broad physical education program
[of the American Physical Education Association] and in the National
Association for Physical Education of College Women, and I was
vice-president of that organization [the National Dance Section] and
worked with the program. I think I had an opportunity to do a lot of
thinking and have experience in teacher education and curriculum and
that aspect of education. Which translated later, I think, into the
dance world. I taught [in] 1949 a summer session at Columbia; I had been
doing several summers' work there on doctorate work, and I taught modern
dance one summer.
-
SNYDER
- Officially, when did you start your doctoral program at Columbia?
-
HAWKINS
- About '44, I think, '45, somewhere in the mid-forties. And X did the
summer sessions. Then I spent the summer session of 151 and then all
year of '51-'52 there. Maybe the following summer— No, not the following
summer, I finished my degree in '52, but I did a whole series of
summers' work.
-
SNYDER
- Want to talk a little bit about all of the people you worked with at
Columbia, perhaps begin to talk about the inspiration that work was to
you?
-
HAWKINS
- Fortunately, they gave me great flexibility in planning my program, and
I didn't do— Although I had to go in through physical education, I
didn't do any work in physical education (or maybe a [single] course).
So I was able to move out into some of the' arts courses, and I was
interested in curriculum and in courses that relate to teacher education
and courses that relate to counseling and guidance. Teaching at George
Williams, [I] had become very interested in the group process, and it
worked very actively and [I] learned a great deal about it there. And I
was interested in counseling because I did a lot of advising.
-
SNYDER
- Was that the first period you [came] into that kind of focus, where you
talked about counseling and guidance?
-
HAWKINS
- I suppose my work with the YWCA furthered my understanding about working
with people and being concerned with people, and [understanding that]
whatever you're doing [should] serve people. Definitely the experience
at George Williams was that many years of education—because Headley
Dimock, [who] was dean, was one of the outstanding people in group
process and democratic process. The college functioned that way; Karl
Zerfoss, who was head of counseling, was an excellent person, and I
worked— [The college] being small, I worked very closely with all the
faculty. So I simply had an in-service education in group process, in a
way of applying it to students and in working with students within that
context. So I guess it was natural that when I went on and had a chance
to work with these other people, I sought out people like Esther
Lloyd-Jones, who was teaching a dean of women's course, I think it was
called "Student Personnel Administration." I did two semesters, work with
her, and then I did courses like interpersonal relations, social
psychology, techniques of guidance, mental hygiene-—which obviously all
followed out of that interest. And then, of course I had worked with
Goodwin Watson, who was one of the important people at TC [Teachers
College]; but along with Esther Lloyd-Jones, the figure that influenced
me more, probably—not probably, definitely—was Harold Rugg, I worked
with him a year, and that just opened up a whole new realm of
experiences. Understanding something about this thing we call a creative
process—and he was talking about creativity: the human being making its
own statement, its own authentic statement. Sometimes as I talk about
authentic movement today, I think back about where that really came
from; [from] his strong conviction that creativity and the creative
process and the arts and that whole side of experience was such an
important aspect of education. And though he was interested in all of
the arts, he was especially interested and intrigued with dance, and he
was very interested in the new development, the modern dance
development. I remember one time— Well he'd had experience with all
kinds of experimental schools like the school [where] Dewey had been
influential at the University of Chicago, and— What is that current
school, Lincoln is all I can think of; that isn't right. But anyway, the
experimental school at TC, following that one, was the one that was
going when I was there. He felt that dance was so important and that—I
remember so well him saying one time that if he could build a school
like he wanted, he would put dance in the center and build everything
around it. Now at the same time, he was into all the arts and all these
people and the development in this country, I think he sort of got
pushed along, you know, like I was talking [saying about myself], never
really knowing: You know, he started as an engineer. He was intrigued
with movement. And though he didn't use words we use now like felt
thought and another kind of thought process, he knew that movement was
related to thought. He knew it was related to bringing experience
together. He was in the middle of that search that he felt intuitively,
because he was so concerned always in bringing everything into some kind
of a theoretical [framework] and putting it in a book. I used to follow
him around where he'd make speeches; I'd always go. And I'd get so
excited [when] he was talking about movement. I'd get so excited about
it, I'd go home and try to repeat it; but I couldn't possibly repeat it.
But he knew that movement was central to experiencing and expressing.
The unfortunate thing is that he didn't live long enough to get that
clarified. But that opened up the whole gamut of movement and creativity
and a kind of common base in all of the arts, which then started me
thinking. I guess all my work since then has been— That's one thing
that's been fundamental in it.
-
SNYDER
- Tell me a little bit more about Rugg. You say he'd started as an
engineer? when did he come to Columbia?
-
HAWKINS
- I don't know that. But he was [from way] back; he came in that early day
of those real pioneers. He used to tell about how those early faculty
people would meet in the evening and talk about new ideas and
theoretical, philosophical kind of things and then would attempt to see
how you would implement those in TC. I guess Teachers College during all
those early days was one of the most experimental.
-
SNYDER
- Was he working directly with [John] Dewey?
-
HAWKINS
- He was at University of Chicago, and he must have been in social science
at the University of Chicago, because he was in that area. And yes, he
knew Dewey; he didn't always agree with Dewey, but he knew Dewey, often
referred to him. Then he developed the whole series of books on, was it
called social science? Is that the name it was given in those [days],
when they started bringing all that into education? I think it was. Then
he was considered so radical that at the time, the [Joseph] McCarthy
period and all, they banned his books in many schools. I guess he had
quite a hard time being criticized and barred and banned from so many
things, but that didn't stop him: He just kept on going.
-
SNYDER
- Was he an artist, too, Alma?
-
HAWKINS
- No, I don't think so. If he was, it was in his own little way. No, I
think he was always an intellectual and a person working philosophically
and theoretically, and [he] just moved from one field to the other. When
he went to TC, obviously he got in the philosophic aspect of education.
That probably was prompted, you see, by Dewey and the experimental
school there, [where] he saw what children could do. That was so timely,
with all these faculty coming together there, and the enrichment that
happened with them; and then, he wrote many books on curriculum. I think
his Foundations for American Education still has
material in it that is not dated at all; for example, his chapter on
aesthetic foundation, all the different foundations— The aesthetic
foundation was way, way ahead of its time. He loved the arts, though; he
not only studied them but he went to the museums, and he sent us to the
museums, and he went to the concerts, and he saw the dance concerts. And
I guess for years had kept a very active writing schedule. I know, I
went to dinner with him one time, and he was very interested in dance,
and I think he was interested in my interest in education and in dance,
in trying to find some new approaches to it. I know he was saying that
he did some writing every day and he had a secretary come in at six
o'clock in the morning; he wrote for a period of time then. So I guess
that was a very important piece of his life, all those last years. He
was a fascinating person in that he was so involved in his work that
(while he was giving you lots of material), he was able to convey it to
you and get you involved. [He] gave you reading lists—that's where I
learned how to make thick reading lists—gave you reading lists like
this; but the interesting thing is [that] you went and read, because
they were so related to what he was talking about. It was a great
experience.
-
SNYDER
- Tell me a little bit more about Jones.
-
HAWKINS
- Esther Lloyd-Jones, She was a very special person, who was very warm;
set up a marvelous relationship with people that she came in contact
with; was definitely interested in the human being—wasn't just teaching
classes about them. She was a marvelous teacher in presenting
philosophical material and practical material, which is probably what
intrigued me. She was my adviser much of the time; I would always go to
her. She served on my doctoral committee.
-
SNYDER
- Who was your doctoral committee, Alma? Who chaired your—
-
HAWKINS
- Dr. [Clifford L.] Brownell, in the physical education department. And it
was Esther Lloyd-Jones who thought that the material I had worked on in
my doctoral dissertation should be put into book form; [she] was
instrumental in that. So she was very interested in ideas, in the broad
educational program, and in helping to implement— I learned so much from
her that was related to counseling and advising and working with people.
She also was one of these people with big thick bibliographies. She
introduced me to the whole world of humanistic psychology, which has
come right down the line with me, too. So those two lines of thought are
still basic to what I'm doing; it's interesting when you think back
about it.
-
SNYDER
- Would you be studying dance during the summer while you were working?
-
HAWKINS
- No. I was in the library reading all those books.
-
SNYDER
- So this was five summers that you came?
-
HAWKINS
- About five summers and a year; I think that's right.
-
SNYDER
- We'll probably get into this next week, but there were a number of your
future colleagues at UCLA who also were at Columbia at that point. Did
you have much contact with them then? For instance, Norm [Norman]
Miller, and...
-
HAWKINS
- Norm Miller was there at the time I was, and I think we did a research
class together, Raymond Snyder was there, and we did a research class
together. Camille Brown was there at a different time; I did not know
her till I came to UCLA and Valerie Hunt was there at a different time.
And of course, Rosalind Cassidy came from [Teachers College]. I think
those were the ones that came from Columbia. It was interesting to come
to UCLA with those other people, because there was a kind of commonality
and philosophic base that came out of Columbia.
-
SNYDER
- What was the feeling— The Teachers College, Columbia, seems to have been
a very extraordinary pivotal point for, certainly, much in education in
general—and, I think, influence way beyond that.
-
HAWKINS
- Well apparently, from way back, they were on the frontier of knowledge,
and they brought together faculty, outstanding faculty, who were on the
frontiers. It would seem that there was much support among them, which
also furthered this pioneering in education. It just kept unfolding
there for many years, in many fields: The curriculum, the teacher
education, and the physical education program were very much influenced
by it at that point. It was on the forefront of knowledge, I think, and
willing to reach out and risk and explore and change. Apparently there
was a great awareness of the world and forces in the world and the
relationship of that to the curriculum and to the teaching. Then
somewhere along the line the individual was an important piece of that.
You saw [that] in the experimental schools there from way, way back. And
in a sense (I'm not too sure about this), it seems like the Teachers
College, sitting right across the street from Columbia University
proper, was the experimental group. Columbia, the great school it is,
had these marvelous departments in all the disciplines; but over here
was this experimental, pioneering group, and in those days with
outstanding faculty in any field you'd go in.
-
SNYDER
- Were there any other faculty or even lectures and so forth that you
remember, just names and thoughts—
-
HAWKINS
- Well, in the doctoral work, Dr. [Florence] Stratemeyer. I think I did
"Supervision of Student Teaching" with her; she was an outstanding
teacher on how you work to implement. Did some work with Dr. Chalman. In
curriculum— I can't think of his name. They were all good courses, but
the ones I mentioned were the ones that had the greatest impact for me.
-
SNYDER
- We're almost winding to the end of our session this morning, Alma, and
bringing you into the period here at UCLA. Now, there was a year, I
gather, or two years after you'd completed your doctorate at Columbia,
before you came out to UCLA. What happened in that period of time?
-
HAWKINS
- I was still at George Williams. Got the doctorate in '52 and left there
in '53.
-
SNYDER
- Was it the call to come out to UCLA that prompted you to leave?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, that's interesting too. You see, I had known a lot of these people
at UCLA through all the national organizations in physical education. I
knew Rosalind Cassidy, I knew Martha Deane, I knew Ben [W.] Miller—I
guess those were the particular ones. But Martha Deane and Rosalind were
the instrumental figures, and they were very much into the group
process. The national training laboratories had been very active through
this period, and Martha Deane had been very active in that program. And
this physical education program had always been very outstanding in
whatever period, and so Martha Deane had developed this group process
method, and the whole physical education program was using that method.
Well, they knew that I was at George Williams, and they knew me in the
national organization and knew my interest in this. So they tried for
about five years, I think, to get me to come out and work with the dance
program. I was very happy where I was, and I didn't particularly want to
come; but every year at the convention they'd approach me again. Finally
the time was ripe, and I decided to make the change.
-
SNYDER
- I think when we were talking the other day, you said there was another
offer that was also persuading you at that time.
-
HAWKINS
- Yes. When I was finishing my work at Columbia, they suggested that I
come that following year and work with the dance program and develop a
dance program at TC. I was interested in it not only because there was
so much going on in New York City, I was also aware that it was a
crossroads of the world, at that point, because so many students were
coming there from all over the world. I saw it was an opportunity to
develop an outstanding program. But I said I had to go back: I was on
sabbatical; I had to go back to my college. They tried to talk me out of
that, but my value system wouldn't let that be. So I returned and they
selected another person but I've always been so happy that it turned out
that way, because even though I think the opportunity was great and I
often wonder what I would have done with it, I think the opportunity at
UCLA probably was a much richer one in many ways.
-
SNYDER
- When you completed your doctorate, at that time your theories were, I
would say, beginning to be very much your own. Were you at that point
the only one who was really seeing the critical potential role of dance
in general education?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, that's really hard to say, you know. There probably were other
people. But the person that comes to mind readily is Ruth Murray. Ruth
saw very early that dance had a place with children and with all ages;
and of course [she] was instrumental in developing what at that point—I
don't know about it now—was one of the outstanding dance programs in the
United States.
-
SNYDER
- That was at Wayne State [University]?
-
HAWKINS
- At Wayne and the city schools in Detroit. Probably [Ruth Murray's]
biggest contribution was in developing sound dance programs, and they
were sound, I think. Delia [Hussey], of course, worked with her. And
getting it to all the children and doing creative work with it. So in
that way I think— You see, it's these crazy little threads that I've had
since day one, of movement and of the person being central, and of; the
whole guiding, advising, growth thing. Then this creative growth coming
in with later understandings from Rugg. Then from that point on, they
always stayed central. But they were there all the way along.
-
SNYDER
- So as of '53, you were very comfortable using the word creativity.
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, thanks to Rugg. And had begun to have some understanding of dance
as one of the arts, not just an activity; I had that in George Williams,
but it was coming to another level. And of course, out here I had a
chance to develop my ideas. And that the creative process meant
something more than just putting a bunch of things together, arranging
things.
-
SNYDER
- We'll come back to this again next week, Alma, but as you departed for
UCLA and the potential of that, what were some of your dreams?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, before I had my dreams, I was scared, because I didn't really want
to leave Chicago, I had never been to California, and this sounds
terribly silly, but that's one of the things that made me decide.
Because I got the maps out and I discovered UCLA was out near the ocean,
and I thought— I'd always wanted to have a summer place in Chicago, out
from Chicago, which I couldn't afford, and I thought, "Well, maybe I've
got both worlds out there." And (I think I told you this before) I was so
committed to education serving the individual and the individual being
center of the' experience, and everybody kept telling me everywhere I
went and [at] all the national organizations, "Alma, it won't work;
you're in a little school; it just won't work" when I tried to get them
to get a group process-oriented kind of experience. I thought, well, if
it's any good, it's going to have to be tried in a large university. And
so I would like to try it: That was a very important factor. I guess one
of the things that really intrigued me and made me willing to come was
knowing Martha Deane and Rosalind Cassidy and knowing their commitment
to the group process, and I thought I could work with them and develop
it. Beyond that, I didn't know. I didn't have any big dreams about
dance; I just knew that I was supposed to come in and help develop.
-
SNYDER
- Thinking back over this period that we've talked about this morning, are
there any other things that you feel we should enter into this tape now?
-
HAWKINS
- I don't think so. We've covered a lot.
-
SNYDER
- Just one— My sense is that the art world of Chicago in the period that
you were in Chicago was, again, a very active one. What kind of an
interaction did you have with other people in the arts in Chicago?
-
HAWKINS
- Not a lot; a little. But you're right, it was an active period. Music
was an important element, concerts in music, the Art Institute [of
Chicago] was an important element, the Goodman Theatre at the Art
Institute, and then the things we were doing in dance. Though I went to
those and had experience with them, really most of my effort and time
was either in dance or in all these national organizations I was so busy
professionally working with.
-
SNYDER
- One thing I sensed also happening during this period— You spoke about
the early thirties, when those of you who were more from physical
education— That interest in dance there were very much involved with
Bennington and so forth. There seemed to be then a beginning of a
splintering off; the professional world of dance began to, or you in
physical education began to feel a separateness. When I became involved
in dance some fifteen years later, there really was a sense of quite
separate fields. If you feel that separation occurred, why do you think
it began to occur? Because you were obviously supporting much of
professional modern dance by the very gymnasium circuit that you spoke
about early on.
-
HAWKINS
- Well, I think most of us didn't feel too much separation for a long
time. And following my own [involvement] even at the period during
George Williams, I loved all my basic classes in physical education,
while I was developing all these others in dance. So it seemed like a
logical, natural development that just evolved and was a part of this
total program. I think that's the way it was for many of us all across
the country. But then, as dance kept maturing and developing in a fuller
sense and people in dance started being a little more specialized and
really having much more knowledge in that area, I think it was a natural
growing up. Within that natural growing up became a fuller awareness
that dance is not just an activity like volleyball and basketball. It is
an activity, but it also has something else. And that something else
seems to put it in another kind of grouping rather than the physical
education grouping. With that kind of development, I think if you really
made a study historically in the country, you'd see a natural kind of
organic development and separation that happened. That certainly was
what happened at UCLA.
-
SNYDER
- In 1953, how many dance departments separated from physical education
were there in the United States?
-
HAWKINS
- There weren't any separate departments. When I came here, I came to the
physical education departments. I was working at that time in what was
called the core program. This was the outgrowth of the group process
that Martha Deane had developed, and she brought Rosalind down from
Mills College to help with it. So all the freshmen were together in one
class, all the sophomores, juniors, and seniors. I came to work with the
junior group; I was working with Camille Brown, and we had fifty-five
students, juniors (the program was very large at that point). It was the
outstanding physical education program in the country. So we split the
other experiences. I did all the dance experiences. But that didn't seem
strange to me at all, and it didn't seem strange, either, to sit in the
faculty meeting with the total physical education [faculty], men and
women. Ben Miller was chairman of that. That was all very natural,
because I'd grown up with it all my life. When we set out to develop the
program in dance, and a major program in dance, we didn't do any talking
about making a separate department, we just wanted a solid program in
dance. And we got that. Then we started out developing other aspects of
the program. It was the university that suggested a dance department; we
didn't do it.
-
SNYDER
- We're going to leave that till next week, because that's our next
chapter. You've covered this for the day, but don't hesitate if thoughts
related to this period come; we can also enter those into the next
tapes, and I very much urge that, while it's probably helpful to move
chronologically, we certainly don't have to be limited to that at all.
1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO
AUGUST 1, 1981
-
HAWKINS
- Today we're going to talk about the 1950 period, after I came to UCLA.
-
SNYDER
- Alma, this is the official start of our second session, done on August
first. Why don't you begin making your speech about what we're going to
talk about today.
-
HAWKINS
- I guess we'll start with the time when I came to UCLA and go up to about
the 1960's, when we moved into the graduate program; this is the
undergraduate period.
-
SNYDER
- We talked just a little bit at the end of the last tape about— How did
you first hear about UCLA, and how did UCLA first hear about you?
-
HAWKINS
- I guess I first came in contact with UCLA through national conventions,
I knew Ben Miller, who was chairman, and I met Martha Deane, who was
then coordinator of the women's program, and I met Rosalind Cassidy. I
did not have a lot of conversation, but the conversation was primarily
from them seeking me out and getting acquainted with me, and in that way
I learned something about the nature of the program out here.
-
SNYDER
- What date would this be?
-
HAWKINS
- I came in '53, so it must have been— I think it was about three or four
years that we kept talking to each other, and they were trying to
interest me in coming out and working with the program. I wasn't
particularly interested in leaving the Chicago area, but I remember on
more than one occasion at the conferences, we'd get together for dinner,
and I guess that was the background. I didn't know much about the
program, and I didn't know much about California—in fact, nothing about
California.
-
SNYDER
- Why do you think they were interested in having you come to UCLA?
-
HAWKINS
- Probably because they were very committed to the group process and that
approach to learning, and it was really a very experimental kind of
program. They knew that I was deeply involved in the group process kind
of work at George Williams College, and there really weren't very many
people. Maybe they knew I'd been active in the national organization in
the dance development; I don't really know that, but I'm sure that my
awareness in working in group process was a factor.
-
SNYDER
- So it was possibly more your approach to teaching in the group than the
actual emphasis on dance at that point.
-
HAWKINS
- I would suspect so, very much so. And those people, they had developed a
faculty and a way of working over a period of time, and to find people
outside who would fit into that was rather difficult.
-
SNYDER
- Why was their emphasis in this direction?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, I guess, as I understand it, Martha Deane had gone back to the
National Training Laboratory (that may not be the exact name), but
anyway, the beginnings of the sensitivity training, in Maine, I think.
She was one of the early people working in that group, and she came back
to the West Coast and I guess was interested in giving leadership to
that, I don't know all this in detail, but as I understand it, [she]
worked with a few other people in this area in developing this point of
view and this way of working. Then they started developing it in the
women's physical education major. I guess they completely reorganized
the major program so that it developed into a core program, with staff
working at freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior year. Instead of
teaching a series of activities, as physical education majors had been
previously [taught], where you have a class in this and that and the
other, certain experiences were identified for each of the year levels;
usually there were two teachers to each level. And those experiences
were integrated within that program. For example, I was teaching at the
junior level and I was teaching all the dance for the junior level. That
was the way it was through the whole four years. The emphasis was on—
Well, it was an approach to teaching learning process, but as was true
in the whole group process movement, the priority was on the
individual's growth and development.
-
SNYDER
- I think we jumped ahead a little bit. So they asked you to come, and
then you came in '55.
-
HAWKINS
- Fifty-three.
-
SNYDER
- Fifty-three, And what was the final thing that persuaded you to come out
here?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, they were telling me all the advantages of being here, which was
nice; but a really funny thing that has nothing to do with education
that was a very important factor late in the game was— In Chicago, I
loved the Midwest, and I loved that, but I also loved [being] up at the
lakes and the summer programs. I always wished that I could have a
summer place as well as the apartment in Chicago, and I couldn't afford
that kind of thing. I got to thinking now, maybe out here— I had never
been out here, but maybe I could have nature and all of that along with
a great university. I sent to the visitors' bureau out here and got all
their literature and got the maps out and saw where the university was
and where the downtown was and where the ocean was, and I thought,
"Well, it looks as though there's a proximity there that would be
interesting." That sounds silly, but that was a very important point.
And it proved to be true.
-
SNYDER
- You certainly have a beautiful house here, Alma. When did you move into
this house?
-
HAWKINS
- The second year I was here, I first was in a little apartment, and all
my friends in the department had little houses, and I thought I would
like a little house, too, but I was scared to death; I didn't think I
could possibly afford one. But I thought, well, if they can, maybe I
can, too. So I was just fortunate.
-
SNYDER
- This house is right near the beach; it's a lovely house. You arrived at
the beginning of the school year?
-
HAWKINS
- About the fall semester.
-
SNYDER
- Tell us a little bit about who was in the department and how many of you
[there were] and [your] initial [impressions].
-
HAWKINS
- Well, the physical education department was a large department and a
very progressive department and [had] a very large faculty. I don't know
the exact number, [but] I think there were over thirty-five faculty. Ben
Miller at that time was chairman of the department. The men and women
were combined, and that was rather unusual at that particular date.
Rosalind Cassidy was coordinator of the women's building (because we
were still in the two separate buildings). The men and women worked
rather closely together in everything, except our two major programs
were separate programs still, although there was a lot of coordination
between [them]. The whole department was interested in working in a very
democratic way and as a result of that had set up a so-called unit
structure in the department, where people related to the different areas
the department included—worked together around planning and scheduling
and implementing and everything related to that area. Those units
included physical education, recreation, elementary education, health
education, and dance. The men and women worked together in the units,
even though the major programs were separate. And as I said a while ago,
the women's major program was separate, and they did have a very
carefully planned four-year sequence, which they called the core
program, with usually two faculty and oftentimes resource people, but
two faculty working with each group. Group process was a very integral
part of it. They were interested in skills, but because of the method
working, and students making decisions and the whole process, the skill
level wasn't always as high as it might be in some other situations.
Should I say anything about that aspect of it?
-
SNYDER
- What would the dance unit have consisted of at that point, and who was
involved with the dance unit?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, I believe there were nine in the dance unit when I came. They
included everyone who was teaching any aspect of dance. The people in
that—a few of us are still around—Pia Gilbert and Carol Scothorn, and
Bill [William F.] Pillich, Ruth Jacobs, Mary Elian Todd, Jeanne
Grezenback, and myself. Now some of those people taught dance for
elementary schools and some taught folk dance and some taught social
dance, and some of us worked with the major program. Would it be
interesting to talk about what I found in dance when I came here?
-
SNYDER
- Yes.
-
HAWKINS
- We might do that and then go on to some of our own developments in the
unit, I was interested that dance was a very integral part of this large
program of physical education and that there was a great deal of
interest among students, not only among the physical education students
but the university students in general. There was a wide range of class
offerings at that time (besides what happened in the core program, the
major program). There were classes in social dance and folk dance, which
were very popular, and modern dance, about sixteen studio classes, and
two theory courses, which ranged from beginning class to advanced to
composition. Pia Gilbert was teaching music analysis, and Carol Scothorn
was teaching history of dance. Then, in addition to the physical
education major program, there was a dance curriculum (called curriculum
rather than major), which was available to students who had a special
interest. This curriculum consisted of dance courses and courses in the
arts and courses in the liberal arts. That was a small group and not
very well— Well, it wasn't thriving very well, but there were a few
people interested in it. There were opportunities for student
performance, particularly at noon concerts and workshops. After I was
here a while, I became very aware that there had been a long interest in
dance at UCLA, and that, of course, the primary figure here was Martha
Deane. The best I understand it was in the thirties, there was an active
dance program with dance clubs, and I think that dance was an outgrowth
of the natural dance, in a sense like I moved into at Columbia. And then
[it] gradually began to change in light of influences from the modern
dance that was being developed. The photographs that I've looked at show
that dance did change over that period of time. And then in the forties,
it seems that there was a very important shift in the dance program. At
that time I believe the theater department was taking shape on campus,
and Martha Deane worked very closely with the theater in a collaborative
way. I understand there were very elaborate theatrical productions. And
it was at that time that she worked very closely with Robert Lee, who
went on and, I guess, has done significant work in television and film.
Then, in the early fifties, the focus moved away from that elaborate
theatrical production. That's kind of interesting in a sense, since the
theater department kept on developing, but maybe there were changes In
personnel that brought that about. And [this] also probably reflected
Martha Deane's interest in group process, which then began to shape the
nature of the dance experience. Another thing that I learned in going
through the old records was the interesting background in folk dance:
that at a very early period—I'm not even sure of the date—[there were] a
lot of folk dance classes and folk festivals, and Effie Shambaugh
apparently was very active at UCLA. I find that interesting in light of
what we have later developed in ethnic dance and dance ethnology. So
that, too, has a long, long history with a very important person in folk
dance. Then shall we talk about the dance unit and how we started
working?
-
SNYDER
- Should we talk a little bit more about Martha Deane now?
-
HAWKINS
- Other than just her work at UCLA?
-
SNYDER
- I know that she did some major concerts at the [Hollywood] Bowl at one
point.
-
HAWKINS
- That was a part of that whole big production period. That's really about
all I know: that this theatrical production was very important; I heard
people say they were equal to New York productions. It apparently made a
big contribution to the community.
-
SNYDER
- Did you sense real community interest in supporting dance because of all
of this?
-
HAWKINS
- No. When I came, there was very little awareness of dance. We had to
build from the very bottom up. Now, those early productions, I know, had
audiences. I think it's important to note that Martha Deane, I believe,
has done an oral history ["Dance Education at UCLA"], and so probably
some of the detail of that period is available in that.
-
SNYDER
- What was your sense of the attitude of the university to the physical
education department and all of these things, the pioneering things that
were going on in the department?
-
HAWKINS
- I'm not really sure how to be accurate about that. I think we lived
pretty much in a world of our own. I'm not even sure that there was
awareness that it was probably one of the most, if not the most,
important physical education programs in the country. Now, there might
have been, but my feeling when I started working, and particularly when
I started working with the development of the dance major program, [was
that] the view on campus pretty much was physical education was a
physical activity and a recreational sort of thing and not really as
important as the other kinds of courses on campus. And that attitude, I
guess, was one of the factors that we had to keep in mind as we built a
dance major with a different point of view.
-
SNYDER
- Now, physical education wasn't really directly connected with
competitive sports, was it?
-
HAWKINS
- No, it was not, I don't know when that separated, but it was not
connected when I was here. They really were trying to develop, trying to
offer, an excellent program in physical education, and the primary focus
was on developing teachers. That was one of the interesting things we
faced as we started shifting toward a dance major. The students went
from that department all over the country into outstanding positions,
and our physical education majors were going out into all the schools
all around here and teaching dance, very active programs in dance—very
different from what it is today.
-
SNYDER
- Why don't you go into a little bit more detail now about the unit
itself.
-
HAWKINS
- Well, that was a fascinating period for me, working with that group. One
of my responsibilities when I came here was to give leadership to the
dance unit and to give leadership to the development of the dance
program. And of course, I was teaching dance at the junior level. As I
think I said before, there were nine faculty working together in the
unit, and these nine had extremely varied backgrounds. We ranged—I think
this is important in terms of the working relationship over the next two
or three years—we ranged all the way from no academic degrees to a
doctorate. For example, Pia Gilbert came with an excellent professional
background in music, but without the kind of academic background, for
instance, that I had had. They ranged from no teaching experience [to]
first year of teaching, and I had had twenty years of teaching. Among
the group, there was very little experience in curriculum development or
teacher education or any of the kinds of things that I had had a lot of
work in at Columbia, So we were an extremely varied group, not only in
backgrounds but in personalities. Some were very outgoing and very
verbal. During that first year, we spent our time working on an
evaluation of the existing dance program. We spent a long time exploring
our beliefs and our ideas about dance. For instance, we asked the
question, "What is dance?" "What is the role of dance in education?" As
you look back, it's not surprising that that caused a lot of
conversation, because we were in a very transitional stage. Out of that
year's discussions came a statement of what we called our beliefs, which
was really a summary statement of what we had arrived at during that
year's discussion. That whole year was very important in order to lay a
foundation for the kind of program that we went on to develop. But we
did agree that it was time that we begin to work on a dance major and
that there was a readiness for it among the students, and we set that as
our goal. So the next two years, we worked intensively, many, many
hours, working on the major—
-
SNYDER
- Let me interrupt you for a second. You've mentioned the names before,
but I would actually be interested in a little bit more of the
background. You say that it was a very broad— For instance, what was
Bill Pillich's background?
-
HAWKINS
- He had been in the army not too long before he came to UCLA, He had been
in professional theatrical entertainment; he had a background in tap
dancing and in other forms of dance, and I believe he'd been a
professional ice skater. He was very interested in recreational forms of
dance, social dance; he was working primarily with social dance as well
as some basic kinds of movements for both men and women. But his primary
role was social dance at that particular point. An excellent teacher.
-
SNYDER
- Carol [Scothorn] had come from a theater background originally at Mills
[College]. Is that correct?
-
HAWKINS
- She came from Mills and [had] a graduate, a master's degree from
Stanford [University] in theater, And so she'd had a dance background
but [with] large emphasis in the theater and in production in theater.
So she immediately thought in terms of both dance and theater. Of
course, that was the background that gave her the skills and competence
that she had then and has developed constantly since—in production and a
real sense of theater. Jeanne Grenzback was teaching dance for
elementary education, so she was interested in children and
developmental psychology and had some dance background, but that was her
focus.
-
SNYDER
- What was her dance background, do you know?
-
HAWKINS
- I'm not sure. I know she danced with— I don't even know where her
degrees were [from]. I know that before I came, some of this faculty had
worked creatively together and had done, I think, noon concerts; I know
Jeanne was in that group. Very bright person who went on to do a
doctorate in education at UCLA, but [she] continued her interest in
children. The other people— I'm not sure they even had master's degrees.
They had kind of a basic education with some background—teaching and
folk dance and different aspects of the elective program.
-
SNYDER
- So you were really the only person who brought the whole New York
experience of dance into the community.
-
HAWKINS
- [affirmative]
-
SNYDER
- Carol had a fellowship at Bennington.
-
HAWKINS
- Later.
-
SNYDER
- That was later.
-
HAWKINS
- Quite a bit later. I guess I hadn't thought about that, but that's true.
So I was the only one that had been there and had lived directly through
the whole modern dance development. Of course, another thing that made a
very important difference was all my background at Columbia and Teachers
College and all the advanced graduate education, which was an entirely
different way of thinking and background.
-
SNYDER
- Since everybody came from such diverse backgrounds, I would have thought
it would be difficult to find a kind of consensus of thinking.
-
HAWKINS
- It was, and if you knew us as personalities as well as [knew] our
background, it's not hard to imagine how we thought about things in such
extremely different ways. It took—even though everybody was committed—it
took long, long discussions for us to arrive at some kind of unity and
feeling. It became very clear that we had to have time to talk and to
learn to understand each other and to build something together. One of
the basic tasks was to develop a philosophic base that we understood and
[that] each of us could accept. For example, were we going to develop a
major that was concerned with teaching of dance? I'd grown up with it in
physical education; they were very involved in the group process in the
major here. Or were we going to develop a dance major that did not have
[as] its only focus just teaching but was really concerned with dance as
art and the foundation? That took almost a year, I think, of meetings;
and I remember many of them: exactly where we were and rooms we were in.
After many sharp differences and long hours of discussion, we finally
came to a conclusion that our dance major should be built on a
foundation approach, and not limited to teaching. That grew out of
finally coming to some agreement about what we wanted as a focus in
dance—dance as art, in the larger sense rather than just in the
teaching. Probably one of the most significant moments for us as a group
was when we arrived at that decision, and we compared it to a tree (I
remember this was my second year here), Virginia Weil (Virginia Freeman
she was then) was here as a teaching assistant. I remember her getting
up and going to the blackboard and drawing the tree. We said that the
trunk of the tree was the foundation, and the branches, then, would be
specializations. And that would take care of the teaching; this would be
the foundation for teaching. We all felt good about it, but we wouldn't
have had it had we not spent hours and hours clarifying our beliefs.
That probably was the most significant step that paved the way for all
the rest of the work. It's also interesting how Virginia Weil, who was a
teaching assistant (she had been teaching at the University of Illinois
and [was] from the University of Wisconsin, so she had a good
background), played a very important role in picking up things and
leading to next steps. There were moments that were very discouraging.
We never really got angry, but there were sharp, sharp differences,
because we all knew what we believed. I remember times of being very
discouraged and thinking, you know, "It's hopeless." I remember one
time particularly, in Room 10 3, getting up from the table and walking
over to the window and looking out the window with tears in my eyes and
thinking to myself, "Why did I ever leave Chicago?" Because it seemed as
though we just never would arrive. But those were few; there were very
few of those moments. On the whole it was just a very hardworking
process, and with a good deal of involvement in it.
-
SNYDER
- When you were there with tears in your eyes, what kind of direction did
you feel people were taking that you were very concerned about?
-
HAWKINS
- I'm not sure, I can't remember all of the details, but I would suspect
it was that I was trying to get a larger view of dance and curriculum,
undoubtedly influenced by all my work at Columbia, The other people just
simply hadn't had that experience, so we weren't talking the same
language. That's really the best I can— I was trying to see dance and
education in a very large way, and some of the people would see it in a
very specific way: for example, the social dance aspect or the tap dance
aspect or the folk dance aspect or as an activity. I was trying to work
with a much larger framework. And you just had to take time to work it
through.
-
SNYDER
- Since you came with such a broad background, Alma, such an already
strong insight and commitment to dance, one would suspect that you— As a
matter of fact it was, but that you certainly did take the lead in that
it was largely your thinking that shaped things. But I'm wondering
whether there are also things that you became aware of and found your
own thinking changing about in the process.
-
HAWKINS
- That's one of the most exciting things about that whole process, I
think, as you look back and reflect upon it. As a result of the
give-and-take and sharing over a long period of time, we all learned
from each other. I know we developed something that was far more
significant than any one of us could have sat down and developed along.
Sure, I did learn from other people; for example, Pia's background in
music and all was constantly being fed in, and Carol's background in
theater was bring fed in, and my background, from where I came from. So
we built something together that I couldn't possibly have built, nor any
one of us could possibly have built, I'm sure that's true. It was a real
example of what the group process can build. So we're going on with this
development. We decided that we'd move through several steps in order to
arrive at the major. Because there was some interest in the physical
education department [in] talking about the foundations and because the
university was talking about disciplines and the foundation for your
discipline, and with my background at Columbia, we decided that we'd
better take some time and establish a foundation for dance if we were
going to call it a discipline and put it on a comparable base with the
other disciplines in the university. So we spent a great deal of time
talking about the foundations and the body of knowledge for dance. And
as far as I know, that's the first time that's ever been done in the
country. It paid us big dividends when we went on to get the major
approved. Then, after we had that, we decided that we would develop the
competencies that we wanted for our dance majors, outcomes at the end of
the four years: What should they know? What kind of skills, what
understandings? I think we spent a year just developing that. That took
lots of discussion, because our values were different and our goals were
different, but we developed a very comprehensive statement, which I
think was excellent for that particular period. Then one of the
interesting things in the process was that we decided that we would not
allow ourselves to talk about courses until we finished the whole
process. [But] every once in a while we'd suddenly— Someone would start
putting something into a course, and somebody else would remind us that
we said we wouldn't, and that was a very important aspect of our work.
From the competencies, we went back and established experiences that
were needed to meet the competencies without any reference to courses;
that's where we had to watch ourselves. And then we went— How do you
place experiences in relation to year development? And finally [we] went
into course structure. So it developed in a very basic way and in a very
organic way, and went through all the steps before we put experiences
into courses. An interesting thing I just thought of [happened] several
years later. We had spent two years, really three years, developing the
major, and one time when I was at a convention somewhere, somebody came
up to me, and she said, "Oh, Alma, I just wanted to tell you that the
dean had told us to have a major program ready to present within a short
period of time, and I knew you had a good one, so I just went to the
catalog and took your courses out." I didn't say anything, but I
thought of the whole process that went into making those courses. So it
was an unusual experience, I think. We referred a while ago to what
happened in this working process. I think the very fact that we gave
ourselves time to share our differences and allowed ourselves to work
through to a consensus— And we did, we worked to consensus on every
single issue. Sometimes we'd have to sidetrack things and come back to
them at a later time. But [it was a] very important factor in the
development of a major and also in our working relationship in those
earlier years. As a result of all of that way of working, each of us
grew very much, I think. We learned to understand each other and to
respect each other and to see the role that each of us played within the
total enterprise. Developed an amazing sense of loyalty and support
within the group, and probably one of the most important outgrowths was
a kind of involvement in the dance major and a commitment to it that was
reflected in all of the teaching throughout the curriculum, because
everybody knew what was going on in every part of the curriculum. And
also the relationship with students. Those were very important rewards
that came out of the process.
-
SNYDER
- Let me break that thought just a little bit. This [is] so interesting to
hear you discuss this now, because of the fact that with the potential
of a Ph. D. in the program now, we are really again charged with
reexamination, yet also frustrated by the fact that it doesn't appear
that we have the time to really go through that process that you talk
about. Is that the only way to approach this kind of problem to make
effective change, or is it possible to take another approach?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, not an easy question. I want to jump ahead to the graduate
program, but it does relate to what you're asking. When we started
working on the graduate program, we assumed we'd go through the same
process, and we very quickly saw that that wasn't appropriate, that we
didn't need to go through that step by step by step but instead started
approaching it a different way, working out experiences that were
related to that particular area and building on the foundation. That's
one of the reasons I think it's so important that there is that solid
foundation in the undergraduate work, but then you can begin to build
and differentiate on it. So, yes, in that sense you do use different
approaches. I still believe that—Well, two things. That to make a thing
effective, people have to be involved in building; and that time is not
wasted time. That's really the only way you build something solid.
Related to that is the only way that you have people truly involved, all
people truly involved: they've got to be involved in the process. So
somehow, certain aspects of it, at least, have to have time given to it
for this basic working process. I don't know of any other way that you
build understandings. Maybe that says, like if you're looking to a Ph.
D., maybe that says that you look at what are your goals for the Ph. D.,
and what kind of experiences do you need, and how does that relate to
the undergraduate experience, and you don't need to go back and do all
that. That's one of the problems, I think; one of the interesting things
today is that there always seems to be so little time. For example, when
we were doing that undergraduate program, we were busy; we were teaching
very heavy teaching loads. But we didn't seem to have a lot of the other
pressures on us that now exist in the university framework. And we would
spend two hours every week for those three years, and every holiday we'd
spend maybe two days, and today there seem to be so many things
demanding time.
-
SNYDER
- I guess this is one of the liabilities of the program and of the faculty
being more accepted into that total structure of the university. It's
not that we are only involved with simply the departmental work now;
most of us are also very actively involved in university committee work
and this kind of thing, which has its own significance and importance
and which ultimately assists in aspects of the department and the
program. But it takes away the time.
-
HAWKINS
- And I think another factor I is that] it's a luxury to work with nine
people. And as the department grew, and the faculty grew, which was very
important from many respects— But nevertheless, working with a group of
thirty and the changing population in the faculty and a larger student
body— These conditions pose a very different kind of working
relationship [than] when you had the fifty students and nine faculty.
-
SNYDER
- Was it about this time, then, that you wrote your first book, Modern
Dance in Higher Education? Was that an outgrowth of this experience?
-
HAWKINS
- No, that was an outgrowth of my doctoral work. I had previously done
research on the history of dance and then went from that into the book.
That was published, I guess, a year after I came out here, in '54.
-
SNYDER
- So that didn't actually reflect the process—
-
HAWKINS
- No, that reflected my previous experience. Now, after our long process
of working, the undergraduate major was approved in November of 1957.
-
SNYDER
- What was the distinction between the unit and the major (because you
[hadn't] become a department yet)?
-
HAWKINS
- No. The major, which was approved in 1957, was a major within the
Department of Physical Education. It was the responsibility of the dance
unit. But it had to go through the departmental curriculum committee and
the department as a whole for approval.
-
SNYDER
- I'm still not quite clear about the difference between the unit and the
department.
-
HAWKINS
- The physical education department was divided into five working units.
They were not administrative units; they were working units in
curriculum. We developed the major, but we did the spadework on it; so
it had to be cleared. So it was a major within the physical education
department.
-
SNYDER
- What happened to the administrative structure once the major was
accepted?
-
HAWKINS
- It didn't change at all. We were a major within, and I still remained
chairman of the dance unit. The process [went] right through the
department like all other aspects of the physical education department.
-
SNYDER
- Was there a change for the students participating in the program?
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, it grew very rapidly the minute that we were approved as a major.
-
SNYDER
- A student enrolling in physical education would say they were a dance
major?
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, and it was listed in the catalog as a dance major.
-
SNYDER
- So in some ways it had the appearance of a separate department, as the
major—
-
HAWKINS
- Well, they were a different body of people. Of course, the course
structure— They worked in courses but were dance majors, and [the
courses] were different than the physical education courses. So it was a
separate entity, but it was within the physical education framework. We
implemented that major over a three-year period. The freshman year, and
then the next year we added the sophomores and juniors, and the next
year we added the senior program. I think the first graduating class, we
had ten students.
-
SNYDER
- Do you remember who any of those first graduating students were?
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, Mary Bender and June Tsukida, Penny Leavitt and Agnes Wada; and I
think Sally Weidlin, Patti George. I kind of stop there, but it was a
splendid group.
-
SNYDER
- It's interesting, because Mary, of course, is still very actively
involved, working now with you at Santa Monica City College, and Agnes
Wada is back to complete her master's in the dance therapy program.
-
HAWKINS
- And June Tsukida, who is married (that's not her present name), is
teaching at Mills College. So most all these people went on to do
important things in dance.
-
SNYDER
- Should we talk about the courses that came out in the first major?
-
HAWKINS
- We knew that with the very limited staff that we had and [with the fact
that] we were going to start with a small student body, we had to limit
this to the basic elements of the body of knowledge. In other words, we
were trying to cover the body of knowledge in this limited way— that
isn't the right way to say it. We were trying to cover all aspects of
the body of knowledge, but we knew we had to do it in a skeletal form.
So we did the four years of dance, and we were very much influenced by
the core program that we'd all been associated with in physical
education, which we liked. So we had the freshman, sophomore, junior,
senior core program in dance, modern dance, and that included both the
technique and the choreography, so it could be an integrated kind of
experience. Then we had a course in dance notation and [one in] music
analysis, and then at the upper division, we had the analysis of human
movement, and we used— borrowed—that course from the physical education
department, with Valerie Hunt teaching it. Later she taught a special
course for our dance majors. We had one course in history of dance and
one in organization of public performances, which was the beginning of
theater and production experience, and an upper-division course in
advanced music analysis and a year course in philosophical bases and
trends in dance. So we tried to cover the studio experience, the music
experience, the movement, the kinesiology, the history, the
performance, the music, and the philosophy experiences. Then we felt it
was very important that a dance major have some experience in the other
arts in order to better understand their own art. So we had six units of
electives from the other arts, and we wanted them to have some
experience in the broader range of courses, and so they had one elective
from anthropology, sociology, or philosophy. That made a marvelous kind
of mix? later there were problems on pressures of units, but it was an
ideal mix in that early period. So that was our first course framework.
-
SNYDER
- You were on semesters at that time.
-
HAWKINS
- Semesters, yes. Now, very quickly, as I said a while ago, the major grew
rather rapidly each year. At the time I came, we were offering summer
sessions that reflected the kinds of courses that we were
teaching—technique courses in dance, and I was teaching Methods of
Dance, but one year after we got the major established, we wanted to do
summer sessions that would really implement what we were doing in the
major. So we started bringing in artists from New York, first for our
own student experiences and secondly to contribute to the community.
1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE
AUGUST 1, 1981
-
SNYDER
- I'm not sure where the list of names—you were saying that Jean Erdman
had been here?
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, and Merce Cunningham and Betty Jones. Many of our majors then
stayed for the summer session, so we saw this as a supplement of our
regular program. It also started bringing these people to the West
Coast. Student productions were an important piece of our program, and
they developed, even though there had been concerts in the early period,
particularly noon concerts— The Royce Hall concerts started, and in
1959, which was two years after our major started— The major started in
'57. The Royce student production was called "Tribute to Doris Humphrey.
" Carol Scothorn had been back and studied at Connecticut with Doris
Humphrey. And we did Shakers and Passacaglia [and Fugue in C Minor],
which shows the gradual change that started taking place in those
concerts. We also had noon concerts. A very important feature, I think:
all the way through the dance program at UCLA [there] has been the use
of live music. Of course, that was largely influenced by Pia Gilbert,
and not only live music but original music for dances. I believed in it
very strongly. I remember when I was in Chicago one time, the dean was
concerned about the budget for music (I used live music there all the
time with good musicians) and suggested that I use records because of
budget problems. I remember we had quite an argument about it; I finally
said, "Well, if you want to use records you'll have to get somebody else
to teach dance," and so we had a musician. So I always felt very
strongly about that. In 1958, one year after our major started, we did a
dance tour of California; when Carol organized this— And we had a bus,
with twenty-two dancers and live musicians, and we toured the different
universities. We were attempting to give students a broad experience,
and we were also reach-ing out and making contacts with the community.
-
SNYDER
- What did they call the tour?
-
HAWKINS
- They put a big sign on it that said "Hawkettes." That was very
exciting, seeing them take off and seeing them come back; they had a
great trip.
-
SNYDER
- How long were their trips usually?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, it was several days; must have been a week, because they toured a
number of places.
-
SNYDER
- Where did they go?
-
HAWKINS
- On up to Berkeley; I think they went to Davis; Santa Barbara, I guess. I
don't really remember. I just remember they went— Maybe they went to
Stanford; they toured all through the California area, north. Then we,
along with the summer sessions, where we tried to bring in visiting
artists, we also started developing the university concert series,
thinking that it was important for our majors to see the artists with
their works. I remember well that the first year I was here, I was
influential in getting Harriet-Ann Gray out here for a concert in Royce
Hall. We did it on a Sunday afternoon, because that's what we did in
Chicago—we don't do that in California—and we had a hundred or less in
the auditorium. Then we moved from that to gradually adding artists in
the evening concerts and building an audience until we developed the
elaborate concert series which we've had for the last number of years. I
think this period was very important in that we started bringing the
professional artist to the university and bridging the gap between the
professional and educational worlds. In earlier years, my earlier years,
we thought the professional world was one thing and dance in education
was another thing, and that you didn't really mix them. Our feeling was
that— I remember discussions around [the premise that] there was no such
thing as educational dance (which was a very common term in those days),
that dance is dance and that you teach dance in relation—in a way that
is appropriate to the particular kind of setting. But the basic dance is
not different. So we felt that this contact with the professional
artists and having them teach and having their works be seen was a very
important part of education. During the same time, we were extending
ourselves into the community in ways other than our concerts. I was
doing master classes in the high schools, and at the time, as I was
saying, dance was a very important factor in all the physical education
programs, and many of [the teachers] were our own majors, the physical
education majors. I worked closely with the dance teachers in the
schools, all the way around— Long Beach, Fullerton, way out, in the
surrounding area. I worked with the Los Angeles Board of Education
workshops on dance for teachers. And as I was thinking about this, I
recall during those early days of our student concerts, we'd send
publicity out to all the high schools in all the area, including Long
Beach, and give them group rates. They would bring busloads of students
in to the concerts, and so we were making a contribution to students; it
was also a way of students getting acquainted with our program. It was
during this period that our program was beginning to be recognized
nationally; for example, during that period Dance
magazine had Ernestine Stodelle come out and stay several days, and she
visited our classes and then wrote an article for Dance magazine. Life magazine was on
campus for about three days covering the arts; we had a very elaborate
spread on dance in that magazine, which gave us very important
recognition nationally. Then Walter Terry came out, and he did an
article in the Saturday Review, so what we had
developed was beginning to be known in other parts of the country, and
students started coming from other parts of the country.
-
SNYDER
- What was the beginning— Can you give us some student numbers at this
point?
-
HAWKINS
- Probably around fifty. I'd have to look that up to be sure, but I think
it was around fifty undergraduate.
-
SNYDER
- As far as the qualifications of the students to enter the program, Alma:
At that point in time, could anybody who was eligible to UCLA come into
the department?
-
HAWKINS
- [affirmative] Just the regular university requirements.
-
SNYDER
- Did you find that many students did come in with a background in dance,
or were they pretty much beginners?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, in a sense, beginners, but most of them had had a background in
high school, much more, I think, than we find right now. And some had
had studio experience. In a sense they were beginners, but they did know
something about dance. I think maybe the high school background was
superior then to what it is now.
-
SNYDER
- Is it because of the cutback in the arts programs in high school?
-
HAWKINS
- At that point, we had many of our own graduates teaching dance, and then
the dance that we had been doing in physical education wasn't like what
we did later; it wasn't as intensive, [but] it was still good dance. Now
there are so few people teaching dance at the high school, which is sad.
You know, one of the things we started to say and then didn't, and is
kind of important, I think, is talking about Rosalind Cassidy. She was
then known as the chairman of the department, and Rosalind Cassidy was
the coordinator of the women's building. She was a very special lady.
She came from Mills College where she had been— I've forgotten the
educational title, but she was head coordinator of Mills College. She
had had her doctorate work at Columbia and had had rich experience at
Mills College. And had always been— Well, she'd been a pioneer in
physical education and in movement and in teaching and in learning and
in curriculum development. But she'd always been interested in dance,
too, very much interested in dance. For example, when she was at Mills,
she offered a summer program similar to the Bennington program. She had
José Limón out there one time. So she had this rich background in dance
and [had] a concern for individuals and really understood the curriculum
teaching-learning process. She was very supportive when we. were
developing the dance major and was extremely helpful. I remember so well
(and I've so often thought about it), even though we had decided that
our dance major was not going to be a teaching major and had built it on
this body-of-knowledge foundation— But we thought we should have a
methods of teaching dancing [course], because we'd always had a methods
of dance requirement at the undergraduate level. So we had that in our
program. Well, Rosalind was chairman of the physical education
department's curriculum committee, and I was taking her materials to
look at and advise us on. (She was very helpful in all aspects of the
curriculum development.) I remember so well her meeting with us when we
had the first tentative draft of this document of courses, and she just
thought it was all fine, and she was very pleased with everything, but
she wondered why we were including this course, Methods of Teaching
Dance. We all jumped to justify our decision, and she held her ground:
that we had built this around a body of knowledge and that teaching was
an application of the knowledge. Finally she convinced us, and we
dropped it as a requirement and offered it as an elective. So she was
very helpful in helping us keep our sights clear.
-
SNYDER
- You had known her at Columbia?
-
HAWKINS
- No, I did not. But we'd had very similar backgrounds.
-
SNYDER
- What was happening to your relationship to the rest of the faculty in
physical education after your major was in fact operative? Were you
really separate at that point?
-
HAWKINS
- No, they were very pleased and very proud of what we were doing. Ben
Miller was very supportive, and we had a great working relationship. So
there was no problem. All those problems came later.
-
SNYDER
- Were any of you teaching in other aspects of the physical education
program at that point?
-
HAWKINS
- [affirmative] We did most of the dance and the elective courses for the
physical education major.
-
SNYDER
- Those still drew large numbers?
-
HAWKINS
- Yes.
-
SNYDER
- Were the regular faculty teaching those classes at that time?
-
HAWKINS
- Right. We ran around nine or ten, and later the faculty started growing.
We taught very heavy loads in those days. When we started the major we
were developing new courses; we just taught everything that had to be
taught.
-
SNYDER
- What kind of loads did you teach?
-
HAWKINS
- Oh, I have no idea, but four or five classes— and thought nothing of it.
Plus all the other committee work. I was doing that kind of teaching
plus advising all the major students, and giving leadership to the
group.
-
SNYDER
- Physically, the building facilities for the dance major were much the
same, except that the lab theater had not been really fully finished.
-
HAWKINS
- No, [Room] 208 was just a room with those two levels, as it is now. And
where we now have 216 and 218, that was an outside rec area for
recreational activity. So we were using the same teaching spaces, except
it was now a major program. We had 214 and 208, the two studios, plus
classrooms.
-
SNYDER
- Talk just a little bit about the other assets or nonassets of the
physical education department. Did you have any special administrative
assistants for dance at that point, or did that happen after the
department, after the major became—?
-
HAWKINS
- Oh no, I still had my one little office, no assistants until we became a
department. Nothing really changed, except we had a major program for
students, and we were developing new courses.
-
SNYDER
- Alma, talk a little bit about some of your personal thinking or
directions during that period of time.
-
HAWKINS
- I'm trying to think back about what was happening to my own teaching and
my own thinking and development of beliefs as a result of the new
development that was taking place. As I look at it now, it seems that
this period was a very important time for integration and exploration. I
really haven't thought about this too much before, but it seems there
were many forces: all my graduate study, all my years of past teaching
experience, the very important influence of group process at George
Williams, and also the current work in the physical education program
here, plus the results of this long period of developing the major,
where we were working on clarifying ideas. After we got the major and I
was teaching, there seemed to be a time when I was beginning to
integrate and beginning to explore the meaning of all that I had
experienced. I had an ideal teaching assignment, which wasn't planned;
it was just the way I fit in it. I was teaching the freshman dance
majors, so that I was working with the movement study and the creative
development aspects, so I was in the lab, in the studio working. I
taught the philosophy of dance class, so I was dealing with theory and
ideas and reading madly, because we had to develop a lot of these
courses: There had been no past history for this kind of course. In that
area, the things that seemed to be carrying over into the studio were
readings and understandings more about creativity as a part of human
nature: what was actually the nature of the creative act and the meaning
of symbolization and form and the basic need, the human basic need for
form? So those ideas were back into the studio. Then I was teaching a
methods class, where I was concerned with helping future teachers have a
preparation for teaching, which forced me to clarify the conceptual
framework and try to make it functional for them. So it was an ideal
studio-theoretical application network. Then I was trying to think
about some of the ideas that I was working on and evolved over the— I
taught the freshman majors for a number of years. I jotted down a few of
those, and as I looked at them, they're probably threads of where I am
today. I was trying to look at the essential aspects of the movement
study and of the creative work. I was trying to get something other than
just teaching things, which I had grown up with, and [which] was the
pattern pretty much: that you teach a swing, you teach a leg swing, you.
teach this technique and that technique and use creative problem solving
in this composition. I was trying to clarify my ideas and approach. That
undoubtedly was stimulated by the work that we'd done [designing] the
major, of identifying the various elements that we wanted to work on. I
remember in those early freshman class days students coming and talking
about their high school experience, and I'd ask them what they'd had in
high school. Invariably they would show that they had the pendulum
swing. And so they would show me the pendulum swing. But they had not
the faintest idea of how that movement related to quality or space or
why it really was learned. So I was trying to get underneath those
techniques. I was trying to develop a sequential flow of experiences,
particularly as it related to the developmental patterns; I was trying
to get a feel of what comes first and how do you follow it and what
makes a natural flow. I was concerned with the difference between
experiencing and imitation, and I find that interesting now to look back
on in light of what I'm so deeply involved [in] at the present time. I
was trying to find ways to help students experience movement in ways
other than through demonstration. Then the pattern pretty much was, the
teacher shows it, they do it, you correct it right or wrong, and go from
there. I was trying to find ways to get them to explore the movement and
to develop a kinesthetic awareness and then be able to use the movement
in a more functional way. For example, I remember doing a lot of work on
getting a sense of center, and that related to balance on the leg swing,
which everybody taught at that time—of going from the experiencing of
centering and balance and then to the effort to get the leg extended and
the release of effort. And I let that gradually go in to leg swings,
which was a very different approach than I had grown up with and what
most people were using. I remember learning from Doris Humphrey that. in
that leg swing, you grip the floor with your toes and you pull up
through the body, and I remember all the things that were to help you
keep the balance—without any awareness of a sense of center and what it
is that maintains the balance. Well, anyway, I was exploring all of that
kind of thing. Because we had done so much work in the major on
understandings that we wanted the students to have—not just doing things
but to understand—I was trying to work on helping them understand
concepts, and I was trying to see the relationship of that concept to
transfer of learning. For example, one of the things I discovered: that
if they understood the sense of center and the sense of balance, then
when you moved into turning techniques, they could apply the sense of
center. You didn't have to learn about balance with each new technique!
I was exploring the value of self-observation versus teacher correction,
feeling that if one can observe— Well, one really has to observe
themselves and become aware to get real understanding, but there's place
for teacher correction. It was during that period that I started
experimenting with the use of the TV camera. They had just brought this
on campus in some office for educational television. And we'd set up the
camera, and I would have the students stand and look in the monitor at
themselves doing a certain tech-nique. One of the things that was very
interesting there in learning was I would say, "Do you see—" something
about shoulder or hip or whatever, and no, they didn't see it at all. So
I learned very quickly that I had to use another approach to "What do
you see?" and they knew what they were looking for. I was doing a lot of
experimenting in learning to observe, where I'd have them work in twos
after we'd learned and worked on something: like if they were going to
cross the floor in twos, I'd have one of the partners stop and observe
the other, and they knew what they were looking for. So they would
observe, they would see, and then they'd talk. And I was doing that to
try to get them to have a clear understanding themselves in this
experience. Then I was very interested in the role of self-direction and
spontaneity and how you related this to the movement study as well as
the creative study. I guess part of that was probably motivated by our
work on the major, because all of us were working that way throughout
the curriculum. So, for example, if I'd be working on something
technically, I would never leave it at that; I would begin to have some
kind of improvisation using the movement, so it became functional. So
[in this way I introduced] this approach to self-direction and
spontaneity, which again is very interesting in light of where I am now.
Trying to use many varied sensory stimuli as motivation rather than just
giving a problem that you solve intellectually. That you respond to
sensory stimuli—texture, sounds, visual imagery, and so on. I didn't
understand much about imagery, but in a sense, I was using it.
-
SNYDER
- How did you implement the various sensory inputs in the class there?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, I'd take objects in for sensory, for texture kinds of things. I
would take in photographs, pictures, and look at [them], I didn't know
what I was, doing then, but what I really was trying to do was to deepen
their perception and then transfer it into the movement. I remember
doing many things with percussion sounds, just the sounds, and
responding to them. Then, would use words, some sort of words together,
and would explore different rhythmic patterns, and then sometimes ideas
related to experiences, which got into the imagery, which I didn't fully
understand at that time. We were all using all of that kind of
experience. Then, I don't really know how I got into the approaches to
form; I don't really know how I got into a lot of these things, but I
was concerned about self-direction, and that probably grew out of group
process. I knew that they had to feel safe to really release their
creative potential. I suppose part of that came from the reading in
creativity that I was doing at that time. Anyway, when we got to the
place where you started to show studies to the rest of the group, I was
very interested in pointing up what happened successfully, but I would
have the group concentrate on it, and I would simply provide the
stimulus, so the discussion was coming out of the group. And this would
usually lead to the next level in forming. I would somehow point that
out through questions: "Did you notice—?" or something, and then we
would discuss that; then I would move into that aspect of form next
time. So I was trying to let them discover and see and then utilize the
form concept.
-
SNYDER
- What kinds of things indicated a next level in the forming process?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, one of the things that was always so obvious was, at a certain
time they no longer stayed in one place and worked in small space.
Somebody would move out into space. They would call attention to that,
and so then others started using larger space. Or almost always they
work facing the audience, and suddenly somebody turns with their back
and works in another way, so you notice that, or maybe the isolations
within the body: suddenly a hand is doing something. Well, all the
different, the off-balance kind of things. Again, those are specifics
within the differentiation, which the form, which seem to unfold
develop mentally. I'm very convinced of that now, in light of what I'm
doing. Also, at the very beginning comes the A-B-A form; you don't have
to set up a study for an A-B-A. If the motivation is there, it happens
naturally. For example: one is sitting reading a book, goes to answer
the telephone, and returns to the reading. This same kind of A-B-A form
happens with movement ideas. Then pretty soon there are the deviations
within that form. So that's what I mean about these aspects of form
gradually unfolding. I think they need to be identified so that there's
understanding of it, but I feel so strongly now that the best way to do
it— I may be wrong, but I feel the best way to do it is to facilitate
the experiencing, which allows it to unfold, identify it and let it
happen in its own, natural way. The thing that happened back in that
period of time was that because we had so little knowledge about dance
as a body of knowledge or as a discipline, we leaned on music and we
leaned on theater. So we just reached right over into music and borrowed
their forms, like A-B-A, theme and variations, fugue, and all the rest,
which originally grew out of experiences. And we imposed them on
students. Well, that's the big question about how you teach composition:
Do you teach it by problem solving or by experiencing? But I was
exploring letting it happen on its own. I guess I mentioned earlier that
I was very much interested in the role of music and had marvelous
musicians working with us in all our classes. Clarence Jackson was
working with me; he was marvelous, and we had a great relationship using
creative music and the improvisational kind of thing with the dance.
-
SNYDER
- So were these kind of things developing—?
-
HAWKINS
- I was clarifying and developing these kinds of concepts in the studio.
And then I'd go to the methods class, and I was trying to clarify the
approach and help them understand it as a way of teaching. This made me
clarify my ideas even further.
-
SNYDER
- But I thought you said that Rosalind Cassidy had told you not to have a
methods class.
-
HAWKINS
- Oh, but we did. We had an elective. Not a requirement. And almost all
the students took it.
-
SNYDER
- Were you getting other students from physical education?
-
HAWKINS
- Some. We really had two separate classes; I think we did: we had two
separate classes. It's interesting, when you take time to go back, and
see some of these things evolving, from where I am today, some things
never change.
-
SNYDER
- You said a while ago when you were talking about the philosophy class—
[With regard to] reading, what kinds of things did you find that you
were drawn to at this point?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, because I'd been so influenced by [Harold] Rugg, I did a lot of
reading on the creative development in the early—the 1890s on up. I
integrated that right into the philosophy class, so they would
understand that creativity is a part of our culture. Then into the
creativity literature. There was a lot of research going on at that
time. [I got] into Susanne Langer's books on form, and I found
those—that area was new to me—I found those fascinating. Then I was
reading in a broad range of aesthetics and trying to relate that to
dance. I tried to get some thread and perspective on the history of
dance in this country and the background in some of the contemporary
trends and tried to help students see some threads that ran through
that, and how one period unfolds out of a previous period. I guess those
were the main things.
-
SNYDER
- [Rudolf] Arnheim?
-
HAWKINS
- Oh yes, Rudolf Arnheim, Gardner Murphy, Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, Carl
Rogers, and all those on the creativity— Huge: I read everything there
was on creativity or human development and the creative part of that
develop-ment.
-
SNYDER
- Was the program— Was it Berkeley or Stanford, when the research in
creativity started at that point?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, [Henry] Schaefer-Simmern, I think, was at Berkeley. Is that the
one you're thinking about? Oh no, you're talking about the research in
creativity, that was at Berkeley, with Donald MacKinnon and Frank
Barron. Anyway, I read all of Barron's books; in fact, [I] brought him
down here to do a lecture.
-
SNYDER
- He came down to lecture quite a little bit later on, I would have
guessed around '65 or '66; their study in creativity had been going on
for a period of time before that.
-
HAWKINS
- I think it did; I don't know exactly—yes, it did. Another person that
was very important to me was Schaefer-Simmern and his book on the
unfolding of artistic activity. And his research showed what could
happen when you allow the individual to develop on their own and you
simply facilitate and provide the support. His research was with
delinquents and business people and refugees, and beautiful things that
came out of it. I still go back and use that book.
-
SNYDER
- So by '59 things were really— Did you feel that the major had really
become fully blown and if so, what, then, was the next sense of change
that was beginning to occur?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, maybe the major hadn't reached its fullest development, but it had
extended and expanded so much, and our numbers of students had grown so
much, and our summer sessions with dance and our university concert
series, that the students were saying, "Can't we go on; can't we do
master's work?" So it seemed that we really were ready to move to the
next step, which we proceeded to do.
-
SNYDER
- What was going on in the College of Fine Arts at this point?
-
HAWKINS
- It didn't exist. We started in the College of— I want to say Science,
but—
-
SNYDER
- It wasn't Arts, was it, at the time?
-
HAWKINS
- No. Well anyway, the college included several areas. We had physical
education and home economics and military science—
-
SNYDER
- Applied Arts?
-
HAWKINS
- Applied Arts. And the major was approved through that college.
-
SNYDER
- Where was theater arts at this point?
-
HAWKINS
- It was a department, and they were in little, temporary housing. I don't
know how old it was, but it was [old], comparatively.
-
SNYDER
- What went on during that time?
-
HAWKINS
- I don't really know. It must have been [in the College of] Applied Arts.
They were, and so was art and so was music. Yes, they were. Because when
I was working on the major, I went around and visited all those people.
You see, everybody told me that I'd never get a dance major at UCLA, but
that didn't deter me. But I did go to visit each one of the chairmen to
get their help and advice, and our elective course in arts gave me a
logical reason for visiting. Then [I] brought them all down to the
department for a meeting to help us. So we made lots of use of the
resources, and the same thing happened with philosophy. They said, "You
know, you can't have a philosophy course in dance, because the
philosophy department won't let you." So when we got it all finished, I
remember well, Abraham Kaplan was teaching philosophy—tall, lanky
man—and I made an appointment and went up to him, and he was sitting
there on the chair with his legs crossed. I was so scared to get to my
topic, but I did, and he said, well, he thought that was fine. And I
said, well, I had been told that we weren't supposed to have a
philosophy. He said, "Why not?" So then he started talking about his
experience with Hanya Holm. Those were all very important aspects of
clearing the dance major. I remember when it finally got to the
executive committee (it had to go through any number of steps to get
there), they asked me to explain the program, and I started and did a
little bit, and somebody asked a question. And the people around the
table (people I'd talked with before) started answering the question; I
did very little in our discussion. The point is that one. of the things
I learned was the importance of using the resources-—or better still is
helping people understand what it is you're doing, interpreting it, so
that you do get their support. But talking about the attitude about
dance and physical education on campus, I remember—I don't know which
year this was; probably it was later—I went to a luncheon by the
chancellor one time and was talking with a faculty member from Letters
and Science, an older person who had been on campus for a long time. I
introduced myself, and he said, "What department?" I said, "Dance." And
he said, "What department?" And I said, "Dance." And he asked me about
five times. So there was still a very low awareness of dance on campus.
-
SNYDER
- I remember once you telling about bringing some dance-notation scores
into some of those meetings.
-
HAWKINS
- Well, I— See, everybody had told me that we just wouldn't get this major
approved. Well, when it went to the course committee, I called the
chairman of the course committee and said, "I'd be very happy to come
and interpret the curriculum," that I was sure that some of it would
seem a little strange to them. So they sent somebody over to talk to me
beforehand, and then they did invite me. I don't know if it was that or
the graduate program, but I learned very quickly that if you could talk
about [a] body of knowledge in a way they understood, they had more
respect for what you were trying to do. Another question they asked was,
"Do you have a literature?" So I just thought that a notation score
would be a good example of our literature. I held it up, and I couldn't
read a thing on it, but it was impressive. I had the same kind of
experiences when we presented the graduate program, only that was even
more difficult.
-
SNYDER
- So just knowing that— You think that theater arts and music were
departments that were [in] Applied Arts, and you were a program—
-
HAWKINS
- —within the physical education department.
-
SNYDER
- So the College of Fine Arts was created—
-
HAWKINS
- Either '60 or '61. It was created before dance became a department; it
was either '60 or '61, some time in there. That was one of the
motivating factors, I guess, that made them think about bringing us into
the college.
-
SNYDER
- Now, who was chancellor of the university at the time?
-
HAWKINS
- [Raymond] Allen.
-
SNYDER
- And the time when the graduate program came in, [Franklin] Murphy was.
You had begun to— Along with the impetus toward developing a graduate
program, you suggested back a little while ago that there began to
emerge some tensions with physical education. When did that occur?
-
HAWKINS
- After we became a department.
-
SNYDER
- It was at that point then. Were they supportive originally of you
becoming a—? We're now talking about a department rather than a major.
-
HAWKINS
- Well, I can, I think, get into the very beginnings of that. The
educational policy committee [Committee on Education Policy] decided
that it would be a good idea to have dance move into the College of Fine
Arts and [was interested in] the possibility of a department of dance.
We did not ask for it. They came to us and asked us about that shift. At
that time the College of Fine Arts was established, and the other arts
were in the college. Our dance faculty gave that very serious
consideration; it was very attractive, because we were trying to
establish a major that was on a par with the other arts on campus, and
we thought there would be some benefits from it, but at that particular
time, there was a lot of concern on campus about physical education.
There were a lot of shifts going on in curricula all over campus, and
the existence of physical education was being threatened at that point.
Well, we had had nothing but support from Ben Miller and a lot of the
department in developing the major. I remember well [in] Room 103, the
long discussion on that, and we came to the conclusion that no, we
didn't think we should; we thought we should stay in physical education;
they had supported us; and that we were happy there and that we
shouldn't move out at that particular moment. But there was momentum in
the educational policy to make this change. Why they wanted this change,
I don't really know, but I suspect it was a two-pronged thing. Our
program had developed; it had gained a good deal of recognition on
campus; our productions were noteworthy at that point. And probably they
were trying to get the arts into one college. So then they approached us
about this, and the question was should we be a separate department or
should we be a part of theater arts. We discussed that and felt very
strongly about that suggestion. If we were to be a piece of the
department, then we should be in physical education: we could make just
as big a claim for the movement relationship as you could for the
theater relationship, plus physical education had made possible what we
had. So if that was the option, we did not wish to change. So from that,
then they went on and then did approve a department of dance. There was
a lot of very hard feeling about it. This was a very difficult period
for me, because I had not initiated the change; we even said no, we
didn't want to do it; we had been— Ben Miller was a marvelous friend of
mine, and I'd worked so closely with him on the whole department
program. I wouldn't do anything that would hurt the department or show
lack of support. But he and others felt that we had initiated the
change, and so they were very unhappy about it; attitudes did change. I
guess that's one of the inevitable things that happen when aspects of
the curriculum grow up. Later feelings changed, but it took a long time.
-
SNYDER
- I asked before about when Murphy became chancellor, because I was
wondering whether with his own deep interest in the arts, whether he was
really behind the consolidation of the whole College of Fine Arts.
-
HAWKINS
- It could very well have been; I don't know. I wasn't close enough to
see. I had no administrative role, and I wasn't close to any of the
administrative—that level of administration at that time. He could very
well have been; he certainly was supportive after we became a
department.
-
SNYDER
- Do you remember who it was, particularly in [the] educational policies
[committee]? Because in one sense, one feels as though that was a
rather— While it was difficult for you, it was a rather daring step on
the part of the university to consider that. This did make you, when the
change finally occurred, the first dance department in the university
system, isn't that true?
-
HAWKINS
- That's right. It was a daring thing, and I don't know who was in the
educational policy [committee]. Ever since then— Well, after we became a
department, then there were many other dance majors across the country
that were eager to move out of physical education. They were always
asking, "How did you do it; how did you break away?" They never could
believe me when I said, "We didn't do it. It was done." I suspect that
we're probably about the only one that didn't take any initiative on our
own to have it happen. It played a very important role in the following
years, though, because we were not only the first department in a
university but with UCLA being a rather prestigious university, people
were able to say, "But UCLA has a dance department"; and I think it
paved the way for a lot of other dance majors to gain autonomy of their
own.
-
SNYDER
- Seems I do come in this area from a very different background, Alma, and
I'm always very interested in your seeing— When you said just a few
minutes ago that dance was as closely akin to physical education as it
was to theater—
1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO
AUGUST 1, 1981
-
SNYDER
- I was starting to ask you, I think you interpret, or your experience
suggests, that physical education really, in fact, does mean that: that
it's education through physical experiences, and it's very much an
emphasis on education. Is that a correct impression on my part? You said
that when you looked at dance, given this problem that you were
confronted with of either going to theater or staying in physical
education, you felt that it was the same.
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, I agree with that, but I was always interested in education through
the physical education, so the activity wasn't the end for me. Well, I
think more basic than that, what made me and us feel that way is that
the stuff of dance is movement and the stuff of physical education is
movement. Now, granted, we may use it differently, but the stuff is
movement, the material. Yes, the creative part is an important part, and
the theater part [is too], but movement is as basic as the theater part.
I think we also felt that there was a real danger of being used as a
medium for something else and not having the chance to develop our own
autonomy as a discipline; there was a real danger in combining with
theater. I still see the two threads in dance: movement as the means of
experiencing and expressing, and creativity as a way of forming felt
experience. Then comes the theater presentation.
-
SNYDER
- I know in more recent times you've been concerned about a number of
directions that started to occur in dance. One is the loss of the
essential connection with the moving experience. Do you think that this
has in part occurred because of the whole change of moving dance out of
physical education into the arts? Particularly, I think the home has
been theater more consistently throughout the country—
-
HAWKINS
- Well, that's an interesting question. In other words do you want to get
to theater so fast that you override some of the basic underpinnings.
Well, that may be a factor. But I would be tempted to think that it's
more the day we're living in and the emphasis over the last number of
years on technical perfection in everything in our culture, and
therefore you have to point your toes just so. And probably the greater
amount of theatrical productions that are presented all over the country
motivate young people to get into the theater. I don't know, there are
probably a lot of forces; and then I think another factor is that many—
At the time that we shifted, that we built the major and shifted into
the department, we had spent a long period of time developing the
foundation, the basic structure. Then, when we got to be a department,
everybody else— Well, I shouldn't say that. Many people were wanting to
become a department and be separated from physical education, so they
could be a part of the—quotes—"the arts." And I think a lot of young
people didn't really understand what the whole discipline of dance was
about. They saw the theatrical end of it as dance, which it certainly
is, a piece of it; but we want the underpinning. Now, maybe that's
unfair, but I saw so many people, just one way or the other, getting out
of physical education and getting into the arts, but not always with a
real understanding. And many of the people who were in programs where
dance had developed did not have a very rich— Most of us who grew up in
physical education have not had a very rich background in the arts. So
that's probably a piece of it, [the desire] to belong to that other
group. Part of it, I suppose, is that dance was growing up and was
seeking a place of its own, ah autonomy of its own, sometimes without
ail the underpinnings. I don't know, it's a very interesting question, I
think. One of the things today that is a real factor is all the new
forms of, say, tap dancing and the theatrical implications of that.
Students see that, and that's the glamorous kind of tap dance. To go
back and lay all the foundation that you need for the dance as art or
that other kind of dance— not that there's anything wrong with tap
dancing— The outside forces are terrific today. All of that means the
way we travel everywhere, television brings everything to you, everybody
is acquainted with. It's very different than in '53.
-
SNYDER
- In closing, would the growth of the— Moving towards the separate
department again, can you talk about other changes that you have
perceived in the community in relation to dance, and some of the effects
that the growth of the program at UCLA might have had on people's
attitudes towards dance in the community?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, dance in high schools and colleges had developed; the concerts had
become important (I mentioned the artists' concerts—not as big as they
are now, but certainly very different than they were when we started.)
So that there was much more awareness, in the whole community, of dance.
The summer sessions, I think, had an impact on people in the community,
so that there was— [It] was very different than when we started, where
it was some-thing, generally speaking, within the education alone.
-
SNYDER
- Your largest overview always seems to me still to see dance as an
essential part of education, really a means of enrichment of a human
being. At this particular time, you had to put the priority on dance, or
the way you were doing it was by strengthening the way of teaching dance
or the whole educational foundation for dance; but your work was
centering on dance more specifically. I want to try and pose this as a
question: Am I right in that assumption, and then, am I also right that
maybe there is yet another shift in your thinking about this, perhaps as
the graduate program, which we're going to talk about in our next
session, developed? Where you began to speak so eloquently about the
critical need for movement in the total education process.
-
HAWKINS
- What you say is probably true. However, I thought that dance was dance
and [that] there was no such thing as educational dance. We were
attempting to make the experience appropriate to the human beings who
were in this program, and it did serve a larger educational goal.
However, we wanted students to develop as far as they could toward that
higher standard. Now, I think probably what happened was after we got
into later developments and students started developing their talent to
a greater degree, we saw even a closer relationship between what could
happen in education and what happens in the professional world. And
though our goal was not to make professional dancers, we were very
interested in having dance students who had that ability and had that
desire, to be able to achieve that goal. The one difference, I think,
that I feel very strongly (and I think all of us did)—how do I say
this—a professional artist is concerned with developing him or herself.
And the group is there to implement that creative life of that artist.
So they teach them to do the thing they want. I think that's a little
different attitude than you can have in education. You aren't just
putting students through certain things so that the choreography of a
teacher can be implemented. You're trying to develop dance in a way that
is sound, in a way that allows a creative development, and let it
eventually get to the other goal, if you can. I think another aspect
that I felt rather early—I don't know when—was two kinds of things: the
artist doesn't have a responsibility to study creativity and facilitate
the development of the individual's potential: that isn't their
responsibility. But I think it is the responsibility of education. And
like we realized so early, we have so little literature, we have so
little research, so little to support our body of knowledge when you
compare it to music and the visual arts, particularly. It seemed to me
that that was another role that we have, particularly at the graduate
level and when we get to that doctoral level. So those were differences
that affected our teaching. Does that make sense?
-
SNYDER
- [affirmative]
-
HAWKINS
- For instance, I've often thought, what would have happened if Doris
Humphrey and Martha Graham and some of the artists of that period could
have helped some of their very talented young dancers develop
choreographically? Or what it might have meant to dance in the future
years if that could have happened. The only studio I know [where] that
happens is the one with Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis, they're the
only ones. And how do you keep feeding the field of dance? Sure, some
great geniuses will just evolve, but I guess that you can't ask the
artists to develop the creativity of others. They have their own needs
and role to play in society. But I think— I guess what my feeling always
was was that a great university could develop that kind of potential on
a very sound basis, and that out of this could come some talented
choreographers and performers. I still believe that, and I still believe
that some of the early dreams we had were sound; you had to find ways to
implement them. And where is there in our society, other than with
Nikolais and Murray Louis, for a talented person to develop
creatively—other than the college? Where can they go and show their
first works, which wouldn't bring any funds? And what do they do when
they can't afford to pay for a theater? Where does the talent in this
country have an opportunity to evolve? It seems to me that's not the
only road, but that's one very important road. [As for] the ones who
don't achieve that level, then we've enriched the life and built
appreciation and all the other things that are important. Those are
long-range goals, I think, for the university.
-
SNYDER
- What about Doris Humphrey?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, Doris really did attempt to teach some choreography.
-
SNYDER
- —and of course, I suppose her best student was José [Limón]. On the
other hand, it's quite true that those that tend to spring from nowhere
often did so in revolt? for instance, [Merce] Cunningham. It wasn't what
she [Martha Graham] had taught but that he was really frustrated by
[inaudible] and Jean Erdman—
-
HAWKINS
- —had to move out on her own. That's what we see happening with all the
artists, and there's nothing wrong with it. But they reach a point where
they have to do their own— Just exactly like Doris did and Martha did,
they had to leave Ruth St. Denis because they had to make their own
statements. Sybil Shearer, one of our great talents, had to leave the
Humphrey-Weidman company. And I guess it seems that if you have that
kind of innate talent, it pushes the individual to go out and explore.
Some make it and some don't.
-
SNYDER
- What is the role— Because you had, with the summer sessions particularly
and later on with the graduate dance center, you brought in that great
artist into the university program. What is their role there?
If you say the role of the artist is to make their own great art, what
happens then to the student in the university setting? [What happens]
that is different from their contact in the professional studio, which
makes that experience of the contact important, even though the goals of
the artist may be different from the goals of the university?
-
HAWKINS
- When the artist comes into the university? Well, I think it'd be the
very exceptional artist that we'd have work with freshmen. It seems to
me that after a certain background and readiness, then they can really
profit by working with a professional artist. They can work at the
advanced level, experience a particular approach, and observe them
working creatively. So it's another level of development that is
important, as well as actual contact with somebody who has achieved that
kind of professional status.
-
SNYDER
- So you think that— Let's say if a student is working with Jean [Erdman]
or Murray [Louis] or artists that have been here with us at UCLA, can
the rest of the program assist in making a student gain full
appreciation of exactly what that contact is? Can the other classes, can
the basic problems that are going on in their own choreographic work,
when focused in relation to the artist and their work, help the student
to in fact really see what they are learning and seeing and experiencing
at the—?
-
HAWKINS
- I think so; I think that happens in many areas. I think it happens not
only in the studio aspects and the creative aspects, but the music
aspects, the philosophy, the aesthetics aspects. And of course, no
matter how good your program is, whenever you can bring that kind of a
person in, the students immediately are alerted and hear with different
ears than they do with what happens every day. Now, where the dance
programs are, I think the visiting artist is a very important and
integral aspect of experience. There are many other professional artists
that I think could fit right into a university faculty; not all, but
many. But most of them would not want to do that as a continuous thing.
Sometimes their background may be such that it's in violation to certain
kinesiological and other kind of factors, so there are all those things
to take into consideration. What we're talking about now relates back to
some of the early discussions that we had when we were developing the
program, [such as], what's the difference between a conservatory and a
university. I think there's a real difference—not that each doesn't have
its place—and I think that a number of places have had great difficulty
in distinguishing between the conservatory and the university.
-
SNYDER
- What do you think are the distinctions?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, the university should be more than technical and choreographic
development. It seems to me that what we tried so hard to do was to
establish dance as a discipline, in its own way comparable to chemistry
and English and all the other disciplines. That we did have a body of
knowledge that involved history, kinesiology, philosophy, and that it
was important for some segment of our society to have an opportunity to
study this. So that it's more than becoming a good performer or a good
choreographer or painter. The only thing I felt so strongly about and
worked so hard on when we were trying to get things approved, was to
question, why does dance have so little literature, while music has such
a broad literature and art has such a broad literature? when you stop to
think, they've been a part of the academic world for years and years.
All those people [in music and art] aren't public performers, but they
worked in another aspect of the discipline. So in order for dance to
eventually gain its place alongside the other arts, I think we have to
develop it as full discipline. Some of the students who go through the
university will, as we have seen, go into research or writing or that
aspect of the discipline, while some of the others are talented enough
to move on into the professional world. So we've got the broad scope.
But we still, you know, even with the number of years we have, we're
still low in our literature in dance. I don't think we'll ever get there
until we get more doctoral programs that are built on a long, sound
discipline approach. And that probably means— Look at the other academic
disciplines. Look at music, for example, or look at the visual arts.
Look at the different facets they have. It's not just the studio
experience and making paintings or making music. That has developed over
many, many years, and the doctoral program has given increased depth and
opportunity for research. It's many times out of the doctoral work that
the new foundations and the new body of knowledge emerge, not out of
undergraduate programs. That was why, I think, we felt it was so
important (and I still feel that we did do it the right way) to build
that undergraduate foundation as a basic experience in the discipline
and then let it organically grow into the graduate and, I hope before
too long, into a doctoral program.
-
SNYDER
- Any other thoughts that come to mind about this period of time?
-
HAWKINS
- I think we've covered that period pretty thoroughly.
-
SNYDER
- A very exciting period.
-
HAWKINS
- It was. It was probably the most exciting— Well, the whole time I spent
at UCLA was terribly exciting and rewarding, but probably the
development of that undergraduate major and getting it approved in a
major university and gradually moving to a department was very exciting.
You felt you were pioneering something that was important.
-
SNYDER
- One story that you said you wanted to tell—it's a little out of sequence
now—the story about the tights?
-
HAWKINS
- We were talking about how [faculty in the dance unit] had such different
backgrounds and such different attitudes and responses to things and
many times had to take a long time to work through things. (This was not
in the very early period, but later.) Carol [Scothorn] had been to
Connecticut, and of course everybody was wearing tights. We were still
in leotards and calf-length skirts, lovely colors of aqua and yellow and
maroon, I think. Carol came back and (I think it was Carol) suggested
that we ought to change our costumes to tights; this was in our unit
meeting. And that struck me all wrong. So we had a big discussion about
this, and I really was very opposed to that. The rest of them were kind
of sympathetic; they didn't see anything particularly wrong with going
to the tights. Carol felt that it was very functional, and you know,
obviously it was the thing, but my problem was that tights to me was
associated with a kind of dance that was not what we had developed. I
guess it was a kind of theater or cheaper kind of dance, and it, to me,
was doing something very bad to what we had; I just couldn't see it.
Well, I think we discussed this—it's so silly now— but I think we
discussed this in about three meetings with great energy and great
emotion. I even went to Ben Miller, who was chairman of the department,
to talk about this situation. Well, Ben didn't take sides one way or the
other, I don't know what he thought, but he really didn't come out with
what I should do and what I shouldn't do. Anyway, the outcome was that I
finally agreed that we would move to tights. I guess they had convinced
me of all its values. That was a good example of the differences and how
we took time to work them through. It's also a good example of how,
because of our very close working relationship, we all changed. And that
was a very important thing for me. We went through many of those, but we
always came out with some kind of an agreement and some kind of
consensus, and from that point on there was no problem. We just took
time to air it.
-
SNYDER
- Did you ever hit a problem that you never solved?
-
HAWKINS
- I probably did— I can't think— The big, major ones we resolved. No, I
can't think of any problems we didn't solve, but many times changed. In
working with the group, I always tried to have some kind of vision of
where we were going, some kind of goals and my own ideas. But sometimes
those were changed very much as a result of our discussion within the
group. That was very important, too.
-
SNYDER
- You wrote an article on [the subject] drill team doesn't belong in the
dance program. What was this to do with?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, that's while I was in the physical education program teaching the
juniors. I had never heard of drill teams before I came to California,
and the whole thing was drill teams and how you're supposed to have them
in the physical education department. They called that "dance," and you
go to conventions, and they talk about the drill teams, and I guess I
was having to let the world know what I felt about it. I wrote a very
strong article, as I remember.
-
SNYDER
- Any repercussions?
-
HAWKINS
- [negative] The things I was doing in— I did a lot of speaking at
conventions and meetings of teachers of dance, and the few little
articles I did write all reflected where I was in the development of
dance.
-
SNYDER
- So you think that when you were out and did express your own thoughts
and ideas on the directions that you felt very strongly about, did you
sense much resistance, or do you think that you had caught the crest of
a wave—?
-
HAWKINS
- My feeling always was that they were very interested in ideas that I was
bringing. I think we had explored things a little more in depth. I was
thinking in lines that were a little different, and they always seemed
to be very interested, in a learning sense. It was that period of going
beyond what we learned at Bennington, of putting it in a notebook, of
running back home and teaching the activities, to beginning to get
behind what it was and the creative development and whatever aspect of
it.
-
SNYDER
- I think we should call it the end for the day and start out next session
with the development of the department and the graduate program.
-
HAWKINS
- All right.
1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE
AUGUST 3, 1981
-
SNYDER
- We're going to talk today about the period from 1961 through the
mid-seventies. We had just finished up on the discussion about the
development of the undergraduate program. We had finished talking a
little bit about how, in effect, you were almost pushed into becoming a
department, but we don't need to talk about that in any detail. So why
don't we start there.
-
HAWKINS
- The department was established in 1962, and it was a part of the College
of Fine Arts, so we were associated then with music, art, and theater.
-
SNYDER
- When had the rest of— We talked last time about theater and music being
in [the College of] Applied Arts for a while. When did they make the
shift? When was the College of Fine Arts created?
-
HAWKINS
- I'm not really sure, but I think it was about 1960. It was very new.
-
SNYDER
- So you think they had all along had the intention of having you be in
the program?
-
HAWKINS
- I really don't know. The only close contact I had with those people was
working with the chairman of the various departments as a resource in
helping us, and not having any administrative role, I wasn't very close
to what was happening in the university at that time.
-
SNYDER
- Was Franklin Murphy chancellor at that point?
-
HAWKINS
- [affirmative]
-
SNYDER
- When had he become chancellor?
-
HAWKINS
- I don't know that date either, but I think that was during the fifties
somewhere.
-
SNYDER
- Was the creation of the College of Fine Arts generated by his great
interest in arts?
-
HAWKINS
- I don't really know that either, but I would suspect that it may well
have been generated. [He] certainly was supportive. He was very
concerned that the arts be developed on campus and [considered them] a
very important part of education and was supportive in so many different
ways of all aspects of the arts. He certainly was supportive of dance
after we once became a dance department.
-
SNYDER
- So you were really urged to think about this starting in about 1960?
-
HAWKINS
- No, it didn't go over that long a period of time. It must have been
maybe '61. I think the whole happenings— that we were aware of—were
within a one-year period. And so we were made the Department of Dance.
When it happened, they transferred funds; our faculty were transferred
from the physical education department to a dance budget. We had exactly
the same space: the dance department office was in my office. We were
given a budget of $1,000, because we had faculty already budgeted; we
were given a half-time secretary. We didn't have any typewriter, and
the little secretary brought a portable typewriter to work with her
every day and took it home. So we started with very small beginnings.
-
SNYDER
- Officially, who were the faculty at that time in the newly created dance
department?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, Pia Gilbert, Carol Scothorn, and Bill Pillich; I think Jessica
Nixon. Those were the key ones. There have been another one or two that
had been working with the physical education, but those were the key
people. The interesting thing, I think, in the shift was [the question
of] what should go. Of course, physical education did not want anything
to go, and if they couldn't have the modern dance, then they would want
to keep some parts of the dance. But I felt very strongly that dance
should stay together, that it shouldn't be separated, and that it
shouldn't be in two places at one campus. I don't know what made me
realize that, but I've seen so many disastrous things happen—since
then—where it was, funds were split, faculty was split. We were able to
transfer all dance, and that included all the modern, all the folk
dance, and all the social dance (and those were large programs). Later,
though, I saw that social dance really was going to be a problem,
because as we looked toward developing faculty, there were very few
people who could do a good job with teaching social dance and a good job
of teaching modern dance, or the other way around. So for some reason it
seemed to us that maybe we shouldn't move toward the recreational forms
of dance and that that was appropriate to go back to physical education.
And we made that decision. I did hold strongly, though, for folk dance.
At that time, social dance and folk dance were half-unit courses, and I
somehow had the vision that they would move from those half-unit folk
dances to specialized courses in ethnic dance. I guess that was
influenced by what was on the campus in the music department, with the
ethnic courses in music. So I held firmly on that, and we were able to
keep folk. Then, of course, [we] very quickly started shifting it into
special courses and gradually moving away from those half-unit courses.
-
SNYDER
- Was Bill Pillich full-time?
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, and he was teaching social dance and some general classes in dance
for physical education majors. This was very difficult for Bill, because
he was very torn between the two departments. And at a later point—I
don't remember when, but not very long—he decided that he would prefer
to be with the physical education department, and he moved back to that
faculty. One of the interesting things that happened very quickly when
we became a department and when we got the courses changed to a dance
prefix instead of & P. E. prefix was the change in student
attitude. I was doing all the advising at that time, and I found this
very interesting, because again and again they'd say they were so
excited about this; they were so happy that now we were a dance
department. I didn't say anything, but I always thought, "The curriculum
is exactly the same as it was before." So that the being related to the
other arts and identified as an art seemed to be a very important factor
in the development of enrollments. Because of having departmental
status, the budget started to increase, slowly, but in our eyes rather
significantly in light of what we had had previously. They were
reviewing the budget more in terms of what was happening in the other
arts, and very quickly the funds started growing in several areas:
faculty appointment and particularly production costs. We had worked on
a few hundred dollars for production, but that was nothing in comparison
to what the other arts had, and so ours gradually grew. Funds increased
for musicians to work with the classes, and, of course, all kinds of
equipment—music equipment and other equipment—so the budget as a whole
started growing, making it possible for us to do additional things. At a
later point (I don't remember the exact year, because the numbers were
growing so fast) we were able to develop two new studios (as we started,
we had two studios). What had been a recreational area out on the deck
was turned into two new studios, one small and one rather large studio.
-
SNYDER
- That happened while I was in, so it must have been after '65.
-
HAWKINS
- Yes. It was '65. By that time the graduate program had grown, so that we
just had to have more space to carry all the classes. Now at the same
time, 1962, the master's degree was approved, and of course we had
developed that while we were still a dance program in the physical
education department. That, I think, is really the significant factor
that made us grow: the development of the graduate program. We viewed
that as a progression from our undergraduate program; as more of our
students were graduating, they were wanting to go on and do more study,
and they wanted to do it here. It was interesting that as we started
working on the graduate program—and we worked about a year and a half, I
guess, developing it—we thought we'd go through with the same process we
had with the undergraduate. We very quickly found that that wasn't
exactly appropriate. We had that foundation, and we were beginning to
set up specific competences. So we shifted it over to a different
approach, and we came out with a discussion of what did we see as the
purpose of graduate education. And we established three purposes: one
was to provide advanced study in dance; two, to further the research in
creative work that would extend the body of knowledge (and we felt very
strongly about that). The third was to prepare individuals to assume
high-level leadership roles—major emphasis on teachers, developing
teachers for colleges and universities. As I was thinking about what we
are doing now, I was thinking that at that point our perception of
leadership roles was pretty much a teacher at the college and university
level. Of course that was true; we were wanting to get high-quality
teachers at the college level. But as the program developed later on, we
started seeing the possibility for leadership in many different aspects
of dance and not limited to teaching. We then described outcomes of the
program in this way: We thought that graduate study should aid the
student in functioning as an artist, as a teacher, and/or a scholar. We
made a structure like a tree, where we had an undergraduate, we
developed a block structure for the graduate studies; half of it was
concerned with breadth and depth in the body of knowledge, and the lower
half was concerned with research and creative work. We saw the graduate
work contributing in both ways, to breadth of knowledge and depth of
knowledge (I remember long discussions and diagrams of those little
arrows going out from that pattern), to desired outcomes for students.
We were very concerned that we have artist in front of each outcome: the
artist dancer, the artist choreographer, the artist teacher, and the
artist critic, writer, and researcher. We could see the program growing,
that there would be other areas besides performance and choreography. We
knew there was something about a critic, a writer, and researcher, but
again, we didn't see the specializations that grew out of the original
plan. The courses that we offered in the first degree pattern were
continuations of what we had already established as the skeleton in the
body of knowledge. These were identified as Advanced Choreography,
Aesthetics of Dance, Dance in the Twentieth Century, Advanced Notation,
Music for Dance, Principles of Dance Theater, and Advanced Studies in
Dance Education. And dance therapy came in at that time with a course
called Rehabilitation. As I look at those courses and think back about
the faculty that we had, I realize two kinds of things: There was no one
to teach them but the few of us on the faculty, so we just took the
areas that were most related to our experience. So we were teaching many
courses, and we were developing new courses. We had very few models in
the country, and so it was a creative period of developing the courses.
-
SNYDER
- Who were your faculty in this time period?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, at the very beginning, the graduate work was all taught by Pia,
Carol, and myself; and it was only later, after we started adding
faculty, that we were able to get specialized people. I thought it all
shocking as I look at it now, because we were teaching heavy
undergraduate loads also. Carol was teaching the Advanced Choreography
and Advanced Dance Notation and the Principles of Theater. I was
teaching the Aesthetics of Dance (I tried to develop a course to go on
from the philosophy class); I was teaching Dance in the. Twentieth
Century and advanced studies in dance education and then the Dance in
Rehabilitation. Pia was teaching the graduate course in music. So it was
a pioneering effort on the graduate program, and this was the first
graduate program that had been established on top of a solid foundation.
I think there were possibilities at other institutions of getting a
master's in dance, but it used courses from several sources and physical
education and other areas. So we really had no model.
-
SNYDER
- When did you actually accept your first students into the graduate
program?
-
HAWKINS
- Sixty-two.
-
SNYDER
- How many of them were there?
-
HAWKINS
- I don't know that; I'd have to go back and look. I know it grew rapidly
and very soon grew to fifty graduate students. (That date is someplace,
but I don't see it.) when we got the graduate program established, we
were making contacts in the community, in the state, and across the
country? and students started coming from all over the country. I
remember in the community we did what we called— This was in 1963; I
don't remember whether that was the first year or the second year of the
undergraduate program. We wanted to make contact with the students in
the community, and we patterned it after what we had known as a
"playday" in physical education. We invited all the high schools around
to bring in a certain number of students. We planned a full-day's
program, with all of us on the faculty teaching. We had technique, we
had choreography, we had performances, and we had music experience. That
was a very important gesture in making contact with the community. ' The
numbers grew rather rapidly, and as they grew, we became aware of the
possibilities and opportunities within the program, within the
department. I was doing all the advising at that point, and I started
being aware that as more students were coming in from different parts of
the country, they had real differences, and they had special areas of
interest. Out of those special interests that were coming with the
students, we started being sensitive to needs of students, and in a very
organic way, the specializations started evolving from that, and
choreography started to be extended. We needed more courses in teaching
because some wanted to teach at the college level; the therapy area
specialized and had more courses. Some were interested in history, which
had not been true before. Then several were interested in notation.
Then, as we developed, there was interest in dance ethnology, not only
the performance courses but in the theoretical aspects. In '63 we had
developed a number of performance courses in dance ethnology:
Yugoslavia, Bali, Java, Mexico, Yemen, and Ghana. From these
developments, we later developed the theoretical courses. In '67 we
introduced a course in dance cultures of the world; we also were
exploring a graduate course along this line. And in 1968 we developed
the first course in dance in selected cultures. Both of these, Dance
Cultures in the World and Dance in Selected Cultures, grew gradually
from one course to a full-year sequence. Eventually the graduate course
grew into a second year of work— That's accurate, isn't it?
-
SNYDER
- Yes. Going back, however, I think that you did not— In '63 I would guess
that the Yemen class was not offered, that was later; that was when I
started to be there, I would guess in '65 or '66. I think that probably—
-
HAWKINS
- Maybe it was Yugoslavia, Bali, and Java.
-
SNYDER
- And Ghana—Hazel Chung was doing the African material.
-
HAWKINS
- Gradually, we added not only the Yemen and Mexico, but also dance from
different cultures. Obviously, one of the influences here was what had
been developing in the music department with the special music courses
of different cultures. We were very interested in trying to develop a
comparable program in dance and hoped to establish a working
relationship between the music and the dance, and we did in many
instances. For a number of years we did concerts where the music group
and the dance group developed performances in Schoenberg [Hall], and
that was a very exciting development.
-
SNYDER
- I'm going to go back a little bit. When did Juana De Laban join the
faculty?
-
HAWKINS
- I don't remember.
-
SNYDER
- That would have been about '63 or '64.
-
HAWKINS
- I think so. It probably was about '64.
-
SNYDER
- And that, then, was the beginning of development in history of dance?
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, students wanted a special area in history. As the students grew and
we were able to get more money, then we tried to bring special people in
to do various areas. Probably was about '64.
-
SNYDER
- And Shirley Wimmer came in '65, I think.
-
HAWKINS
- Probably.
-
SNYDER
- She came mostly to work with the undergraduates, is that correct?
-
HAWKINS
- Yes. She was teaching the senior class, I guess, at first and working
with choreography. Then, with her interest in ethnology, she started
developing some work in that area.
-
SNYDER
- Particularly in the Asian area. So which one of those positions was
added— Bill Pillich then left your faculty—
-
HAWKINS
- Within a year, I think.
-
SNYDER
- And Juana came, and Shirley came. By '65, I think the full-time faculty
were you and Carol and Pia and Juana and Shirley.
-
HAWKINS
- You're probably right. And it stayed at about that level for a little
while. Then, as the numbers of students grew, funds grew, and the
student concerts were developing. The quality of the concerts was
developing. We then brought in— Well, Malcolm McCormack came and did his
master's work with us, and then we kept him to do special work in
costume design and to teach the course for costume. Then Doris Siegel
came in to teach lighting, and we developed courses with her for
lighting. Then at a later date we brought Barbara Mattingly in for
construction and working with the costume. So that whole theatrical end
of it was developed, and we were able to support the concerts in a much
more professional way. That, I felt, was a very important goal, because
from the very beginning we'd had Pia, who could give us a professional
approach to the music. With this kind of help, we were able to bring all
the different production aspects up to a professional level. Then at a
later date, Marion Scott, who had been a professional choreographer,
came and was full-time and started working at the senior level. Then
back starting in '65, we started bringing in other people; for example,
John Martin came, I think it was in '65, to add a very special element
to our program. He had been the critic for the New
York Times back in the 1930s, at the time of the development of
modern dance, and had followed dance very closely. He was a significant
influence in the department and worked with the students. He taught a
course called Dance Perspectives, and at one time he taught an
aesthetics course and a philosophy course. Really, what he brought was
his background in dance and aesthetics and a point of view. I think it
was in 1967 that Sybil Shearer was with us for one semester—quarter, I
guess it was at that point—and I remember one time having an interesting
opportunity for students where John Martin interviewed Sybil for the
student body. Then Ruth Currier was with us on the regular faculty, I
think for a full year; and Gus Solomon was here, and then José Limón was
here for a piece of a year; and Donald McKayle a full year teaching—all
of them weren't teaching full-time, but they were teaching throughout
the academic year. So not only were we adding the full-time people like
Juana and other people in the regular academic faculty, but we were
bringing in artists as a part of the academic faculty. In addition to
that, as the student concert quality started growing, we wanted to bring
in guest choreographers. They would come in and stay for a quarter (or
at least for several weeks) and either create a new piece or do a
repertory piece for our students; that became an important part of our
concerts—and with a long, long string of people who have contributed to
concerts.
-
SNYDER
- Some of those guests later came in as faculty in the Graduate Dance
Center. Was it not while John Martin was first with the program that you
and John began to think about the Graduate Dance Center?
-
HAWKINS
- Yes. We had big dreams. We both felt that the university could offer a
kind of program in dance that could lead to professional development in
dance. John had had ideas for a long time of what he thought was needed
to truly develop the professional dancer. We drew up a tremendous
document on a professional dance theater. Well, that was too far in the
future, so [we] pulled back from that, because we did explore funding.
There was interest in it, but it was obvious it was not going to get the
funding it needed. So we pulled back from that, and I started thinking
in terms of a program within the graduate program, not as a separate
on-top program, as we had envisioned, with an apprentice group and a
professional theater on top of the graduate program. But I felt, since
we were getting more and more talented students at the graduate
level—and the specializations were developing within the graduate
program—that along with the dance therapy and the dance ethnology, there
was place for a specialization in choreography that would provide a
sound foundation that would prepare students for professional dance
theater—maybe not go directly into it, but we'd prepare them for it. It
also became apparent that it was very difficult for young dancers to
have places to work and funds that would allow them to develop their
own talent and theaters to work in. It seemed to me there was a role the
university could play and yet keep it within a very sound educational
framework. So [we] developed a plan for this approach and went to the
Rockefeller Foundation. Norman Lloyd was then working with the arts at
that point, and over a period of years I had contact with him and
finally received grants from Rockefeller to establish the two-year
graduate program.
-
SNYDER
- When did you receive that first funding?
-
HAWKINS
- The first funding: We started the first program in the winter of 1971,
and the first full year was in '71-'72. This was set up so that there
were three parts to the study program. There was a studio aspect, which
was modern technique and ballet and choreography; and these were daily
programs. Then there was a performance class, where they worked with
repertory pieces. Then there was a theory component. I envisioned the
theory area as including aesthetics, twentieth-century dance, principles
of dance theater, and production—the areas of experience [would be]
comparable to what we had in our courses in the graduate program. But I
envisioned it in a very different way: I had a dream of that being an
integrated approach to learning and that the aspects of those various
areas of knowledge would be related to the students according to where
they were in their own development and maybe in repertory work or at a
production or whatever. And a much more flexible approach. This was a
dream, and we didn't have an opportunity to develop it. One day we could
develop it like I really envisioned it, as a— It was really a very
progressive idea of education. I still think it's right, but the thing
we discovered is you've got to have the right faculty to do this and
need the time to develop a concept. Now in that theoretical aspect, we
brought in resource people; I remember bringing in Barbara Morgan, the
noted artist in dance photography. She was dealing with aesthetics and
something of the history of the earlier period of modern dance. We also
brought in visiting artists, because we felt it was very important that
these people have a chance to work with the real professional people as
well as our own faculty. Mia Slavenska, who is a professional, taught
the ballet classes. The visiting artists taught in the technique area,
and they also came in and did choreography and repertory pieces for the
group. A little bit later we brought in Jack Cole, who worked a whole
year with the group and did a piece for the group.
-
SNYDER
- Was not José Limón one of the first people?
-
HAWKINS
- I think so. José did Missa Brevis [Missa Brevis for Chorus and Orchestra by Zoltán
Kodály 1945; choreographed by José Limón], which was presented in the
Royce Hall concert. Now the dance center group did concerts on their own
as well as participated in the large department concert. In their own
concert they presented their original works as well as some of the
repertory works that they had learned in the performance class. That
development was very exciting, and it's interesting to see that most all
of those students who graduated from that group have gone on into some
kind of independent work in choreography or performance or have joined
professional companies. So the idea seems sound, although there are a
lot of practical problems with it.
-
SNYDER
- Could you go into a little greater detail about the difference between
the student, the selected student in the Graduate Dance Center, and the
graduate student in the regular M. A. program?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, one of the things that I felt very strongly about was that all
choreography and all high-level performance should not be limited to
that group, although we were trying to do something for the specially
talented. We did keep the same kind of courses available for the
graduate student, the general graduate student: classes in choreography,
classes in advanced technique, classes in performance, and opportunities
for concert. So I guess the student in. the other program worked in a
little bit more general fashion, although they still could do a
choreographic thesis. But this was a vision; the Graduate Dance Center
was envisioned for those who were specially talented [as] a place for
them to do a very concentrated piece of work, and less of the work in
the broad range. For example, the theoretical work was condensed into
one course, which ran through the two years, so the emphasis was in the
performance and the choreography.
-
SNYDER
- The students selected for the program also, I recall, received a special
fellowship.
-
HAWKINS
- They did, but the students were auditioned; this was the first kind of
audition we did in the department, and they were auditioned in terms of
what seemed to be promise, either in performance or choreography. We
felt since this was going to be such an intensive program, there was not
time to carry on part-time jobs outside of school, and so we were able
to get stipends for them. We thought about it as a comparable kind of
stipend to the teaching assistantships that other students in the rest
of the graduate program had. That was a very important piece of the
program; we also had funds to bring in artists each year.
-
SNYDER
- As I recall, people like John Martin actually had been here before the
program started; he was officially a member of the faculty that first
year here.
-
HAWKINS
- Yes.
-
SNYDER
- In the Graduate Dance Center.
-
HAWKINS
- No, he was a regular member of the faculty.
-
SNYDER
- He obviously had been critically important in the development of the
program. Did he serve as special faculty to the Graduate Dance Center,
or had he left before then?
-
HAWKINS
- I think—these dates!—that he had gone at that point. And then we brought
him back later, for just a very short period of time, for lectures. He
came in '65, and he stayed about three years, I think.
-
SNYDER
- But Barbara Morgan, on the other hand, was specifically brought to UCLA
to work with the Graduate Dance Center.
-
HAWKINS
- For a period of several weeks.
-
SNYDER
- Did Barbara have contact with other students than the Graduate Dance
Center students?
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, I remember one or two presentations were for the general student
body. She met regularly with the Graduate Dance Center in that
theoretical course structure. I remember her showing slides to the
general student body.
-
SNYDER
- I remember at least one major presentation she did to the whole student
body. Who were other artists that were brought in specifically to work
with the Graduate Dance Center, besides Jack Cole? (We've mentioned him.
)
-
HAWKINS
- I think Manuel Alum worked with them for a period of time. Probably Gus
Solomon. Where the artists worked and what they did: I don't have that
very clear in my mind. Do you remember?
-
SNYDER
- I think it was [inaudible]. I'm not sure that Gus wasn't [inaudible]
faculty appointment for one quarter, Alma.
-
HAWKINS
- He was, and he was with us one full year, earlier. I'd have to go back
and look at the records; I just don't remember. But we did have artists;
that was an integral part of the Rockefeller grant, that the students
would have contact with professional artists. Daniel Lewis may have
worked with them.
-
SNYDER
- That's correct, I think, yes. What was your sense of the impact—I think
I'd like to go back first to John [Martin] again. What do you think the
student gained from the experience of contact with such an important
personage in the whole field of dance?
-
HAWKINS
- I think it had a tremendous impact. He was able to give them a
perspective on dance that was so different than what they got in a
regular history class, simply because he had lived in it, lived through
it. And because he was a fascinating lecturer— He really didn't lecture,
he talked. For example, to hear him talk about seeing Isadora Duncan was
a very special experience. And then he had very definite points of view
about dance and what dance should be, and. he had nothing to lose or
gain when he stated those. Sometimes students got very upset by them; as
a result, it made them think, and I think it pushed them into
philosophic concepts that were very important. I think it probably let
them see a significance in dance from a little different approach than
what they got from all of us in our year-to-year kind of teaching. And
he was just fascinating to listen to What do you think, would you agree
with that?
-
SNYDER
- Oh, yes. Tremendous—the sense of living history, too. It was wonderful
to hear John talking, to really know that he had been a critical factor
in the whole development of the modern dance field. To hear him was much
more than [to hear him] reminisce, because he would continually almost
take you through the process of history, yet, again, [he would] directly
involve the students in the questions and decisions and concerns that
were being voiced in each period of time. It was a very extraordinary
experience to have someone like that around.
-
HAWKINS
- And you talk about the questions! He carried on his sessions in a very
informal manner, though he came in with a prepared talk. But students
had an opportunity to ask questions, and that took him off on many
tangents that wouldn't happen in an ordinary class.
-
SNYDER
- As I recall, he also did an oral history, did he not?
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, he did; that's recorded in the library. ["Reflections of John
Joseph Martin"]
-
SNYDER
- Another person I want to ask you about you feeling about: José [Limón]
and his contribution to the department.
-
HAWKINS
- That was one of the very, very special times in the department. Him
being able to be with us over a period of time and teaching Missa Brevis and the contact with the students.
He met with all the students on more than one occasion to just talk. And
I'll never forget one time, in [Room] 214, the dance studio, he was
sitting on a bench in that room full of students. He always sat just
like he danced, with that back as straight as it could be, and the
students were sitting there with their eyes big. I don't know what he
was talking about, but it was something very profound about dance, and
[I remember] students asking questions and his real involvement with
those students. Those were very special kinds of experiences. And he, in
his way, shared with the students his great commitment to dance, his
great belief in dance, and gave it a kind of stature that was very
special. The students who worked with him in the Missa
Brevis for the concert had an exceptional experience of working
with an artist of that stature. When that was presented in the theater
on two or three occasions, I guess that's one of the very special
moments for me in our department concerts with students. The students
were good performers at that point, and they were well equipped to do
the concert. I remember the dress rehearsal night, sitting in the back
of Royce Hall with José; we had the Donn Weiss Chorale, so that the pit
was absolutely filled with fifty or more people singing. José was so
thrilled with that performance, and I always had a feeling that he got
more satisfaction out of that presentation, with that live choir, than
any other time he ever presented Missa Brevis. I
can't remember what he said, but I know he was terribly excited. He
loved working with the students, and particularly the two who were
taking hi s role: one danced one night, and one the other night. That
was a great highlight, I think, and it showed what great kind of
experiences can happen when students are ready and they have the
opportunity to work with a very special person like José. There were
many others that were very valuable also, but somehow that was very
special.
-
SNYDER
- What about Jack Cole, because that turned out to be an incredibly
important experience? I think it was rather a surprise to you in a
sense, wasn't it?
-
HAWKINS
- Yes. So many things happened, evolved, that you never dreamed would
evolve. In those days we were searching for artists that we could get to
come and spend a period of time with us, and we had had contact with so
many of the artists from New York City. I don't remember exactly how
[we] got to Jack Cole, but I guess we thought that he was in the
community, and maybe he would come and stay with us a whole period of
time. But I had not the faintest thought that he would be interested in
coming and working with university students. I called him, and he was
responsive. He came in to talk with me, and he was anxious to try; so we
made the agreement to do that. I had real questions about whether this
would work or not, whether [with] his particular background in working
with professionals the way he had, whether he would be able to adapt and
work in that setting
-
SNYDER
- He had been, at least for the past fifteen or twenty years, primarily
connected with Hollywood.
-
HAWKINS
- Hollywood, film, theatrical kind of dance. But he came. He very quickly
became fascinated with the students, challenged by the students. He
liked them, and he saw promise, although he saw a lot that needed to be
done in terms of his professional eyes. But he worked with a kind of
commitment that I'm sure was, in its own way, the same as the commitment
that he had given to his professional work in Hollywood. He would come
in after class and sit down and talk to me about individuals or about
the changes that were taking place. He was just very excited. That
obviously, came at a time in his life when that experience was very
important. He kept having visions of what could happen with students in
this kind of a setting, and he was trying to help them not only develop
in their performance skills but to develop their ideas about dance—of
course in terms of the way he saw dance. I remember [that at] the end of
the first year he was with us, I had him come down to lunch in my home.
I guess we talked two hours at the lunch table, and he had a dream of
what could happen with the Graduate Dance Center. He had a plan of
developing a group that could tour around the state, so they could get
professional kind of experience. He had ideas about how to go get money
to make this happen and the kind of work that we would do, and so his
whole thought was in developing and making that preprofessional kind of
training. I guess it was the next fall, though, that illness overtook
him, and none of those plans were possible to develop. The students
were— He worked them very hard, very hard, but the students got very
fond of him, in fact, very—
1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO
AUGUST 3, 1981
-
SNYDER
- You were just remembering some things about Jack Cole, Alma.
-
HAWKINS
- I remember, the last time I saw Jack before his death, I happened to be
looking out the window of my office, and I saw him going to the car, all
in a sparkling white shirt that he always wore and carrying his little
drum and beater. And walking with great vigor; he always seemed to be
very uplifted after he would teach the class, I thought of his
involvement with the group and his dreams for the group and my own, and
it seems impossible that he could appear that way and then very shortly
became ill, and before too long death came. I'm sure that his
involvement with that student group and his commitment to it kept him
going when his health really was not in good condition at all; we didn't
know that.
-
SNYDER
- I was always fascinated in the great transformation that occurred in the
students in their feelings towards Jack, from one of great apprehension
in the beginning to real, absolute adoration and deep love, I think they
were al 1 overwhelmed by his death.
-
HAWKINS
- They were, and it took them a long time to recover. Like you said, they
were apprehensive, and he was really very direct about things that were
wrong and would speak in very sharp tones to them. It took them a while
to get to the point of seeing what he really was offering and [of]
valuing that. As you say, they did get to the place [where] he was a
very significant figure for them.
-
SNYDER
- Probably the problems came in the preparation of the piece that he did
for the spring concert, and [in] his, oh, absolute standards that almost
didn't allow him to complete the piece, as I recall. After that
production had finished, then [there] became another kind of a
relationship to the students [in which there] was much more focus on a
reassessment of an actual teaching technique, as I remember.
-
HAWKINS
- That's right; I'd forgotten that. I think he seemed to be very eager to
pass on what he had learned and evolved, and a way of working. Maybe
this says that he knew what his health situation was and was wanting
this kind of legacy to go on. That's true, and several of his students
wanted very much to carry it on. Interesting: One of our graduate
students sought out ways to work with his library— I've forgotten
exactly what, but I know she went—
-
SNYDER
- She went through the library, and the subject of her master's thesis was
the content of the library.
-
HAWKINS
- One of the motivating goals there was to keep this, preserve this.
-
SNYDER
- As I recall, we hoped that we would be able to bring it to UCLA but
didn't finally find the funds to do that.
-
HAWKINS
- Apparently one of the very important libraries— I'm not sure where that
library is; I'm not even sure it's been placed anywhere.
-
SNYDER
- I'm not sure that it has yet, but I think it has been purchased
[inaudible]. Alma, talk a little bit about what appeared to be the
problems in fulfilling your dream of the [Graduate] Dance Center,
because unfortunately it didn't continue being a part of the program. Of
course that was in part due to loss of the Rockefeller funding; but I
think there you felt that the passing of the funding was really
indicative of some of the problems that were inherent in the program and
the difference between your own vision and the reality.
-
HAWKINS
- Well, obviously the fact that the grant did not continue made it
impossible for us, in that particular way, to go on experimenting,
particularly to bring artists, because budget factors were closing in at
the university also. It's unfortunate that there wasn't a longer period
of time to work with, though, because we didn't have time to take it
beyond an exploration period and to work out some of the problems. One
of the things [was] that [it] was highly integrated within the total
department, so that it wasn't too separate but was seen as one aspect of
it. I think that would have been very possible with a little bit more
experience. Another part was how to integrate the theoretical aspects
within it in an appropriate way and a satisfactory— In the quality, the
way you want it. I think that really meant the right faculty. I still
think that the idea is sound. I think it has to have the right
leadership, and I think with time it could have become an integral part
of the department, without [resentful] attitudes. But perhaps one of the
things that caused some of the attitudes (that they were special and
more special than others)) was the fact that it was new. It also was the
first time we auditioned students, and now that we audition students in
the rest of the department, it wouldn't have been such a different kind
of thing. My dream was to see that as no different than the dance
therapy specialization that prepares professionals in that field or
dance ethnology scholars that go off in another way or teachers that go
off to colleges and universities, for example. What I hope someday can
happen is development of top-flight administrators of dance. I saw the
center as a place where a student who really has ability and wants to be
a professional could do the foundation work.
-
SNYDER
- Do you think some of the frustration in the original dream was the fact
that it became clear that the goal of developing a professional company
could not be in that dream as it revealed itself?
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, I'm sure that's true, that this couldn't be a stepping-stone to
that professional company which we were originally planning. Yes, I
think it needed at that time to shift so that it was an integral part of
the graduate program without any promises, of a professional company.
The question of professional companies is still a big question. Other
universities have explored it, experimented with it, and most of them
have found that they couldn't handle it for financial reasons. There
were other problems, too, but the financial—It always comes back to [the
fact] that it takes money.
-
SNYDER
- I think it's interesting to look at what did happen to the students in
that program. Because, in fact, the critical center of the professional
dancers in Los Angeles now, in '81, is the students that came out of
that program [who are now] in several interesting companies—Dance L. A.
and Eyes Wide Open, and so forth—that were all the product of the
students that came from that [program]. So in one sense, the fact that
it didn't occur right within the context of the university— In other
words, the dream of really fulfilling, nourishing the professional field
in Los Angeles, I think, was very much fulfilled by that.
-
HAWKINS
- It probably shows that the right approach and program can play a role
locally, and some may be talented enough to move on into national
professional companies.
-
SNYDER
- What would have been "the right faculty"? You said that, in one sense,
part of the problem was not having any faculty to work with this
program.
-
HAWKINS
- Well, for the studio aspect, obviously, you have to have very good, very
talented people, in modern technique ballet, and choreography; whether
they are our own faculty or visiting faculty, they've got to be
top-flight people. The two areas that I would have continued to explore
had I had the opportunity was faculty leadership in the theoretical
aspects but integrated within the performing and choreographic aspects.
I had a vision (and I just know it's right) that it takes a certain kind
of person with a certain kind of knowledge to do that, and [with] a
certain kind of working relationship. For example, they were working all
day in the studio, physically, and the involvement was in dancing and
choreographing. Somehow the approach to the theoretical work has got to
relate to that; it can't be presented as a course in the traditional
way. I think it could be a very exciting learning experience, if we had
a chance to work out the right answer. The only thing that I felt [was]
that it needed an overall coordinator. We had good teachers, and the
students were interested in the program; but there needed to be somebody
to act as—not the artistic director but the overall leader and
coordinator of that program. Had I been able to continue, I would have
liked to have been that person and have very close contact. As it was, I
had very little contact with the graduate students. I would like to have
been very personally involved with them in all the aspects. So those two
things I see: that the person who's going to do the
philosophical-theoretical work has got to know how to integrate it
within their artistic world—I think that's it, within the artistic
world—and then somebody has to have a bigger coordinating role that
integrates the whole. Maybe that's asking for a lot, but that's what I
would have liked to have had a chance to do.
-
SNYDER
- Your reason for not being able to be that deeply involved was two
things, really. First of all, you were still manning the whole ship, and
also, your own development of your interest and deep commitment in the
dance therapy area. Is that correct?
-
HAWKINS
- And plus I moved out of chairmanship. That was the whole thing, you
know, the money disappeared; we weren't able to have the artists. I
moved out of chairmanship into teaching, and so the world is changed at
that moment. I think it's still possible to come back, not to the
identical idea but to the basic ideas. I think [they] will emerge in
another way.
-
SNYDER
- And that seed of the form of that academic component was a very critical
one, wasn't it? Because it was the difference between this being simply
a conservatory program and a program that was appropriate to the
university structure.
-
HAWKINS
- Right. But it has potential, I think, to be one of the most exciting
educational ideas that I can think of. But, you know, as we said, you've
got to have the right faculty with the [right] kind of knowledge and
under-standings and commitment. It'd have to be a real experimentation.
I didn't want to get into this now, but in light of what I'm doing now,
I'm even more convinced of the [validity of the] way I'm working now: of
integrating the aesthetics, then, with the experiential part. I think
it's the wave of the future, could be. But anyway, I think all those
things make their impact, and it will emerge when it's right.
-
SNYDER
- So you think it was ahead of its time? Or just not quite the right time?
-
HAWKINS
- No, I don't think it was ahead of its time. I think it was exactly right
in its time. I think there was a real readiness for it. I think [it was]
ahead of its time in the sense of having funds and faculty, but the idea
wasn't ahead of its time. I don't think that John [Martin's] and my
dream was ahead of itself either, but— I think the: need was there. I've
often thought (in recent months when I've been working on some other
areas) of some of the plans that John Martin and I drew up together on
the kinds of movement approach and the ways you approach the creative
work, in a very basic, fundamental way. They were very sound.
-
SNYDER
- Was that documented in detail? Did you write these ideas down?
-
HAWKINS
- I haven't; and I have his, but John told me to never let them out of my
hands.
-
SNYDER
- Never?
-
HAWKINS
- That's what he said.
-
SNYDER
- You don't foresee that they might go into UCLA archives?
-
HAWKINS
- Maybe, at some point. But it was very interesting that he would document
how to teach technique, how to teach choreography, and he was getting to
very basic approaches. The more I work, the more I see how very sound it
was. That's one of the things I wish we would have had an opportunity
to— I think with my background and my interest in teaching and all, and
his background and his ideas, it could have been a fascinating
exploration.
-
SNYDER
- Was perhaps yet another problem in the continuation of the program the
fact that John didn't stay here in Los Angeles?
-
HAWKINS
- That was a big factor. And the fact that money wasn't going to come
pouring in. Our original dream was a five-year plan or something; it was
thousands and thousands of dollars—which was very impractical. Sound,
but not practical.
-
SNYDER
- Dreams aren't always very practical.
-
HAWKINS
- No, that's right.
-
SNYDER
- I think we should go back a little bit, because simultaneously with the
development of the Graduate Dance Center, all the other important
components of the graduate program were also emerging. Certainly your
own field of dance therapy became a very critical part of the program;
the development of the ethnology program, which I've been most directly
involved with: all these things were beginning to emerge simultaneously
with the Graduate Dance Center. So I think we ought to look at the rest
of the areas.
-
HAWKINS
- In fact, they emerged before. But it's interesting, as you look back,
how all these specializations started evolving in a very organic way. In
a way, [they] grew very rapidly, as you look back on it. Yes, I had no
thought of dance therapy or that I would develop anything in it; I
really knew very little about it. Dr. Alfred Cannon, who was a
psychiatrist over at the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA, called me
and asked to come over and talk with me. He had been very interested in
movement and thought it had a place with emotionally disturbed people
and wanted to know if I'd be interested in working. I said, well, I was
interested, but that I didn't know anything about it. He said, "Well,
that's all right. We can learn." So he arranged for me to work with
patients over at the NPI, and he worked very closely with me. So I spent
regular time from that point on, about 1960, until I retired doing work
at NPI. I started with a group of children, about twelve or fifteen in
that little classroom; it was a huge group. By experimenting, we learned
all these things you don't do. We can't possibly handle that many
children. But it was a good experience. Then I worked with a group of
adults; I remember we had to use the stage area down in their little
auditorium for a place to work. That was a smaller group. Gradually we
acquired some space way up on an upper floor at the NPI, and I continued
to work. But with what I had been doing with the children and with the
adults, I was gradually discovering something about an approach: I knew
when I went over there that I wasn't teaching dance and I wasn't trying
to make dancers, but I didn't see movement in as pure a sense as I came
to see it. When we moved up to our new space, I continued to work with
an adult group; I worked with a small group of children. I worked with
adolescents trying— Dr. Cannon was trying to have me have experience
with all different kinds of people, which was marvelous. Then I decided
I'd work with individual children, because it really was difficult to
work with a large group of children and get any kind of their
involvement. I approached a couple of children, and they were
interested, and I worked with each of these once a week for a nine-month
period and then a shorter period with several other individual children.
We started filming each session, so that the film person was an integral
part. I worked with live music? Jack Jackson went over with me, and what
I learned about music is interesting (maybe we'll talk about that
later). The thing I was gradually learning there was that you don't
teach specific things, but you use some kind of stimulation that causes
movement to happen. As a result, [I] started discovering a very much
more basic approach to movement, which today— I would say the basic
movement is a means of experiencing and expressing. So that was a very
important discovery. The following—'62, I think it was—Dr. Cannon said,
"Let's do a class for the graduate students." And again I said, "We're
not ready." And he said, "Well, we'll learn, with them." So we started
a class, and he worked with us regularly and as coteacher; oh, I carried
the main responsibility, but he fed in constantly from his own
psychiatric background. So gradually the graduate work in dance therapy
grew from a single course to a year course, and then we added the field
experience, and then we added a senior course, because the undergraduate
students were becoming interested in it. We did an orientation course at
the senior year, and gradually we moved to a two-year graduate program
with two years of field experience and a very full kind of experience I
said something about music a while ago and also that I filmed each day.
I wanted a record, and I used it with the graduate classes. But I also
used the film with the patients—the children and the adults—and would
let them observe the film. [From] what I'd learned in working with the
freshmen, about not telling them what to look at, I would let them
discover and do their own self-observation. This approach was very
important with patients. I remember one time, one of the adults— I guess
I had used some kind of motivation that was related to anger, and this
person said after we'd finished, "You can't be angry with that kind of
music." And I remember I said, "Well, I guess that is difficult And so
we tried another approach to it. Then, later as I looked, and also later
as I started understanding more about movement coming from an inner
motivation, an inner sensing, I saw how music was a crutch or a
manipulator. Though I worked with music all the time then—and excellent
music—I moved away from music completely. There is a place once in a
while for it, but it was through that experimentation that I learned to
work without music.
-
SNYDER
- Did this give you a sense of a different relationship of music to dance
on the broader spectrum, in terms of creation and performance?
-
HAWKINS
- Perhaps, although I think the musicians we were working with at that
time were very aware that when they composed, they composed in
relationship to the choreography. Maybe the difference was that in
technique class, the teacher often set a movement that had a certain
dynamic, and so the music related to that dynamic; probably working in
the more fluid state, those two got mixed sometimes. It probably
convinced me more and more that the music for dance must be in
relationship to what the dance is, so that it doesn't take priority.
It's kind of like, in a sense— I just thought of this at the moment:
It's like back in the early days of modern dance when they threw all the
music out and worked in silence many times—and for exactly the same
reason.
-
SNYDER
- I was also thinking about Mary Wigman's thoughts about music, where she
felt it had to be an organic kind of interrelationship between the
movement and the music.
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, that's right. An important piece in this dance therapy development
was the summer program that we did in 1974. I had developed a
theoretical model, as we had had to do in everything else, from scratch,
and I guess I wanted to share it with a larger group of people. So we
set up this very concentrated four-week program, screened people, and
had sixty people in attendance? they came from all parts of the country
and several other countries. We did a very concentrated program, five
days a week, and included in that a lecture-discussion period that I did
at the beginning, of the morning. I tried to cover the theoretical
foundations. Really what I was trying to do was cover what I did in the
graduate program in four easy weeks. Then we had an experiential lab
following that, where Susan Lovell and I divided the group, and we
alternated so [that] they worked with both of us. Then, in the
afternoon, we did a two-hour block with a visiting faculty, who were
scholars and important people in research areas and current
understandings related to our work. I guess what prompted me to want to
do that was the kind of readings and work I had been doing that
contributed to the theoretical model that I was using— I guess now that
I think about it, I was also influenced by what we had done in the
developmental conference for dance as a whole. And [we] had marvelous
people: Dr. Edmund Jacobson came for three days and talked about effort
control and relaxation? and Dr. Robert Ornstein had just written his new
book on the nature of human consciousness (I was very much involved in
intuitive process in the right hemisphere), and he was with us for three
days? and Valerie Hunt talked on body image and movement patterns and
the whole kinesiological base; she spent four days with us. Dr.
[Alfred] Cannon was there one day, and then we climaxed it with one day
with Thelma Moss on the psychic phenomena and all her marvelous films. I
was trying to get the input from the foundational knowledge areas. I was
trying to provide a theoretical base, and then we were trying to show
the implementation of that model in the lab section.
-
SNYDER
- Let me interrupt here: There are two people that you've mentioned in the
last bit of time; one was Al Cannon and the other is Jack Jackson. I'd
love you to talk just a little bit about both of those people, because
they have made a number of significant contributions and, I guess, left
UCLA to go onto their work in the whole Watts community effort and of
the development of the Inner City Cultural Center.
-
HAWKINS
- That's right. Well, Dr. Cannon— I'd not been at NPI very long, and he
was exploring new ways to help people. As busy as he was, he came in for
a few minutes to almost every session I taught at the NPI. I remember
when he used to take me through the building to meet people and to see
the NPI, [in] every department we went into, they immediately broke into
smiles and greeted him warmly, which meant he was known all through the
building. I was impressed by the way he related to patients; the
patients loved him. They'd like to have him come in and sit and watch;
you'd think they might not, but they did. I remember the one little girl
that I worked with for a long period of time. He'd come in and sit down,
and she would stop and come over and talk to him, so there was that
close kind of relating. I remember one time she said, "I will do Dr.
Cannon," and she did her little thing on Dr. Cannon. A marvelous
person. He was very involved in sensitivity training groups at that
period of time and got me involved in those, too. Each year they had a
working conference in the dormitories. And I did movement sessions. I
sat in some of the groups that he led. [He had] a very warm relationship
with people, immediately set up communication, a kind of concern and
openness that was very unusual. Our students that got to know him— When
they had problems, they'd go over to the NPI to see him, and he always
had time. I remember when I would go over, there was never, never any
time that he didn't have time to see me and talk with me. He was always
reaching for new ideas; he was always giving me ideas to try. I remember
that he wanted me to meet Betsy Grant, who was then doing drama,
psychodrama. He was always out for new ways to approach things. When
later there were so many changes in the community— in the world, in
fact—and the Watts riot, he got to feeling that he had to make a
different kind of contribution and started developing mental health
communities in the city. I remember, I guess the first mental health
development. He took me down to show me, and we were going to do [a]
movement program there. He felt so strongly that movement was a very
integral part of the experiencing. He took an old warehouse and had it
developed, and I remember the first time I went through there being so
impressed that he had all different culture groups working in there. The
secretary might be Japanese; somebody else was Mexican; somebody else
was black; somebody else was white, [That was] the kind of atmosphere
and relationship in this makeshift place that they had set up. He kept
on developing different units, and then he got the dream that there was
a great need for a hospital for black people and somehow was able to get
the funds through the community, through the state, and through the
federal government. As a result, [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] Hospital
developed. And when he got the basic hospital in, then he started
dreaming about the training of doctors and moved toward a relationship
with UCLA and the hospital, and then the training of psychiatrists and
the development of a building for psychiatry. I remember we drew up
plans for a room and the whole movement-therapy program in the building.
Well, it would take a long time to document all that he has done; I
don't know of any person who single-handed has developed as many
different significant developments as he has. And right now he's working
in world community health organizations.
-
SNYDER
- Two questions to ask about Dr. Cannon: One, I'm wondering whether it
would be appropriate to tie his great sensitivity to movement to the
fact that he was black and—I don't think it's a stereotype, is it?—that
a black person is much more comfortable with their body and movement
than most of us are. I wonder whether that was a possible view because
he certainly was one of the first to have the courage to see that
connection.
-
HAWKINS
- That's right. Our graduate program was the first graduate program in
dance therapy. That may be. Apparently he was very active in athletics
in college, played football? and I know he always liked movement. Maybe
it isn't surprising, but after some of his trips to Africa in more
recent years (we were talking), he obviously had paid a great deal of
attention to what he saw in movement and sound and the repetitiveness
and he was filled with ideas he wanted me to try. Along with the
movement, he was very interested in the arts. He had followed modern
dance in New York City when he was studying medicine, and one of the
very important developments was the Inner City, where he wanted— What do
they call it? Inner City—
-
SNYDER
- Cultural Center?
-
HAWKINS
- —Cultural Center. He felt that it was very important to develop a center
where the people in that community, the black people, would come into
contact with the arts and have it as an integral part of their lives.
That was another aspect of a half a dozen or so organizations like that
that he set up.
-
SNYDER
- Another question I wanted to ask was whether his sensitivity to ethnic
differences as well as ethnic similarities contributed to your early
interest, which manifested itself later in— I know I'm jumping a little
bit, but to the ethnic arts program. The sense that the arts represented
another kind of expression of perhaps different ways of thinking and
being, which I think we've been away from recently.
-
HAWKINS
- It probably did. And along with that, his acceptance of people, which
was' an outgrowth of— Probably basically in him, but an outgrowth of
that whole sensitivity movement. You see, that's; another piece for me.
My own group background, the group process at Chicago, and then the
working input; take that with the sensitivity training, with a little
different tangent. I'm sure that course influenced my awareness of
different people and accepting of different people. I don't know; I
never talked much about those things, but I suspect it had an influence.
-
SNYDER
- The other person I asked you to talk a little bit about was Jack
Jackson.
-
HAWKINS
- Jack started as a musician in the department very early. I was looking
for competent people and somehow heard about him, and he came. He was a
marvelous musician and a very creative person. So when I went to the NPI
to do the work with the dance therapy program, Jack went along with me
to provide the music. Through that experience [he] met Dr. Cannon; then
at one point, when the Inner City Cultural Center was developing and A1
Cannon needed a director, Al immediately thought of Jack Jackson—because
he was black and had that kind of artistic background—as a director. He
approached Jack, and he became the director of that center, and stayed
there for a number of years and developed it from a small beginning to a
rather significant development, where not only did they offer many
experiences and classes in a variety of the arts for the people in the
community, but also brought in artists from the outside in concerts. I
remember, the first time I saw Pilobolus [Dance Theater] was at Inner
City. That has grown in different directions, and then a year ago—well,
more than a year ago—he was invited to become the chairman at City
College [New York]; I know he's working closely with the theater
department, but in overall capacity, too, with all the arts in the— I
think it's the Black Studies Center program. It's been interesting to
watch him grow and develop and assume leadership roles.
-
SNYDER
- Certainly the Inner City during Jack's leadership was critically
important to the kind of program that was useful to our students.
-
HAWKINS
- I've also seen students come from there to us, and I'm also interested
in seeing graduate students of ours go back and teach there and develop
concerts there and in other places in the community. He was very
interested, because of this contact with UCLA, in keeping that kind of a
liaison.
-
SNYDER
- It's something that's remained a very vital connection for the
department.
-
HAWKINS
- Let me put one other piece on the dance therapy, before we leave it,
which really has nothing to do with our program, but it has to do with
me. As I said, our program was the first graduate program, and then very
quickly, I think, Hunter College in New York developed a course and has
since developed a full program, and others followed. Again, I never
thought of myself as an organizer, but I must be, because as we got
several therapy programs developed, I had the feeling that we needed— We
all knew each other in the American Dance Therapy Association [ADTA].
But we didn't really work together in any way—those who were responsible
for the graduate program—
-
SNYDER
- Actually, when did that organization come into being? It came into being
just about the moment that you started the program, didn't it?
-
HAWKINS
- The ADTA? I think so? I don't really remember the date. It was in New
York City, I remember, but probably. Anyway, I had the feeling that
there was a need for us, the directors, to get together and work
together in some way. It took a little while to do this, but finally, in
1979, I had written to all the directors of therapy programs and
suggested that I thought it might be helpful if we could get together
and work together, and they were interested. We had our first meeting in
Denver, in June 1979. I didn't know whether it would go or it wouldn't
go, because we were very different people with very different
backgrounds. But it did demonstrate to us that it would be a useful kind
of organization, and the group decided that they would like to continue
to meet. So we have met annually ever since and have formalized— Not
formalized, but have made ourselves an organization which we call the
Council of Graduate Dance Movement Therapy Education? we meet to discuss
problems and standards. I think the council will be helpful to all of
us.
-
SNYDER
- When was the first major therapy conference on the East Coast?
-
HAWKINS
- You always ask me dates, and I don't remember dates!
-
SNYDER
- Again, wasn't that quite close to the founding of the program?
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, it was. It was in the sixties.
-
SNYDER
- About '65 or '66?
-
HAWKINS
- Somewhere; I don't remember.
-
SNYDER
- Was that not called the first national conference?
-
HAWKINS
- Oh, no, the first national was in New York City. Then I think it went to
Washington; I'm not sure. But it was one of the early ones.
-
SNYDER
- Just a final piece: Just recently you've had another major conference
here, again with you playing a major leadership role.
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, that was an interesting one. I didn't really wish to take on any
more responsibilities, but I did finally agree to do that, and Joan
Smallwood and I worked cooperatively on the development of the program,
along with a larger committee of about seven people. Our group was
interested in doing something that would help to clarify the body of
knowledge; it seems to be my thread, throughout my life. Instead of
dance therapy being a— Well, I guess to say it another way, to have some
foundations for the theoretical base that we were using. We felt that
too many people still were leading dance therapy in the way they had
learned it, like we taught dance at first: You go learn it and you go do
it. So we determined that structure, a conference around the body of
knowledge, but we knew perfectly well that we couldn't refer to the
current body of knowledge, because too many people just said they
weren't interested in that. So we did develop the program, with
significant pieces of the body of knowledge, and I think it was a very
successful program.
-
SNYDER
- Yes, it was very exciting.
-
HAWKINS
- One other thing that was a new development, at least a little bit more
than the others, was bringing in outside resource people, again, like I
tried to do in other areas, the foundational areas: like a Barbara Brown
talking from her background in biofeedback, but more about healing and
self-direction in healing; and Eugene Gendlin, a psychologist, talking
about his approach to therapy with focusing; and you [Snyder] did a film
presentation, which was a beautiful, comprehensive approach to movement
in different cultures and its relationship to therapy; and Irmgard
Bartenieff did a very special presentation on movement effort. I guess
those were the main ones. Oh, Valerie Hunt did— Well, she was going to
talk about imagery; she broadened it so that it included her new
thinking about energy and self-direction and self-control and the energy
phenomenon.
-
SNYDER
- You mentioned earlier on about her [Hunt] doing the kinesiology for the
dance program. Certainly her current developments, I think— There's an
interesting parallel development with her continuing dialogue,
particularly with you and with the dance program.
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, that's been important.
1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE
AUGUST 10, 1981
-
SNYDER
- We're starting our fourth and regrettably final session of this oral
history, supported by the Gold Shield program. I feel very honored that
I had the opportunity of doing the interviewing; it has been a very
great privilege and learning process for me, which is what I envisioned
it would be. I went back and listened to the tapes, and there were a few
things that I felt were not well covered, and so my first direction in
questioning you today will be to pick up on some of those loose ends.
The first thing that I became very aware of, particularly in listening
to the materials of the first and second sessions, was how active you
were in a number of organizations. You spoke about the significance of
those, organizations, and 1 sense your significance to those
organizations. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the
various groups and what they were doing, particularly, I think the
National Dance Section [of the American Association for Health, Physical
Education, and Recreation, now known as the American Alliance for
Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance— Ed.].
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, I realized as I was looking back over those experiences what a
contribution they had made to my own development, both from a leadership
standpoint and also me being in on the grass-roots dance development
from way, way back, in the thirties, when the modern dance was beginning
to be introduced into colleges and high schools; the National Dance
Section was playing the leadership role, really the bridge between the
professional group, the artists, and the educators. I have always been
very active in the American Physical Education Association— I guess the
current name of that is the American Alliance for Health, Physical
Education, Recreation, and Dance— and was active in the national, and I
was also active in the Midwest section of that organization. I was
chairman of the Midwest Dance Section from 1943 to '45, and I was on
the Midwest legislative board from '43 to'48, which meant I had a chance
to work with a much broader kind of leadership base. Then I was chairman
of the National Dance Section, 1949 to 1951, which meant I was
responsible for the dance programs in the convention for two different
periods of time; and I was on the national legislative board from 1949
to '51, so that contact kept me closely related to the dance
developments, the teaching areas, and the teacher-education programs.
Then another important organization, which I entered a little bit later,
was the National Association for Physical Education of College Women
[now part of the National Association for Physical Education in. Higher
Education—Ed.], and I was active in the national group. Then, when I
moved to California, they called it the Western Society, but it was the
western section of the national group. I was the national vice-president
of that organization in 1953 and '54; that's the year that I came to
UCLA. The primary responsibility of that office was to develop the
program for the national convention. I was interested, as I looked back
at my work with the different committees, that some of the kinds of
committees have a— Well, it's interesting to look back and see the
threads of this so-called group process and democratic relationship
weaving through so many areas. For instance, in that organization I
worked with the Democratic Practices in Physical Education [Committee],
the Professional Education [Committee], and the Educational Policies
[Committee], which gave me an opportunity to work with national
leadership dealing with these kind of concepts. Both of these groups
were very important. This National Association for Physical Education of
College Women was an outstanding group of women who had pioneered and
had given significant leadership throughout all those early years, and
they still are active, although I haven't been active with them for a
long time. I was thinking as I looked back, I think the person who
started that organization was Agnes Wayman, who was at Barnard College.
And all those very important women like Mabel Lee and Blanche Trilling
and all of those women were significant leaders in the organization. So
those two were important organizations. Then, when I was in Illinois, I
was active with the Illinois Association of Physical Education and was
chairman of the dance program in 1952 and '53. In 1951 I think it was, I
was elected to the American Academy of Physical Education, which was a
selected and invited group of leaders throughout the country.
Unfortunately, that honor came too late in my life, because I had worked
with all those leaders for years in these two organizations,
particularly the American Physical Education and the Midwest [Section],
and I had wanted so much to work with them there. At the time that I was
invited, I had reached a different place— When I came to California my
focus was shifting. At a later point I resigned from the academy
[American Academy of Physical Education], so I never was very active in
that group.
-
SNYDER
- How large were these organizations at the time that you were—?
-
HAWKINS
- Huge, huge.
-
SNYDER
- Do you have any sense of membership number at all?
-
HAWKINS
- I suppose the national would be thousands; I'm not very good on numbers,
but even the Midwest [Section] was a very active and very large
organization, with many sections. Conferences had, oh, large convention
programs with many sections around all the different areas of concern.
Very, very actively involved. I also was interested, as I was looking at
those committees— You were asking me earlier how I made contact with the
people out here. Well, it was through these organizations. As I looked
at the kind of committees I worked on in the national college women's
group [The National Association for Physical Education of College Women]
and the Democratic Practices [in Physical Education Committee], I was
rubbing elbows with people like Rosalind Cassidy and Martha Deane: I'm
sure that's the background.
-
SNYDER
- When was the special emphasis on dance to emerge in these organizations,
and were you there at the beginning?
-
HAWKINS
- Yes. It must have started almost immediately in the early thirties,
because it grew out of— Many of us were making contact with the
professional artists in New York City and then at Bennington. That was
becoming a special interest for us. Well, [National] Dance Section
perhaps even goes back further; that's where my memory starts with it
being significant to me. We felt that the Dance Section meetings were
the place to start bringing in the professionals, and I think I
mentioned earlier, we did these preconvention sessions. As I remember,
they were two days in length, before the regular national convention.
They would be one or more (usually more) artists that would actually do
classes. Then from that, the national dance section started organizing
and becoming more active in the various aspects of dance in the college
and high school, but always a great deal of emphasis on dance. Well,
now, that's not right; it was both college and high school. Usually, as
I recall— I remember so well one conference in Chicago where we had a
variety of people; it was a seminar-type thing. I was trying to recall
when I was chairman and planning the program, usually we brought in
people to teach, and we tried to relate it to different kinds of dance
and to different levels. I remember I was responsible for one (I think
it was in Dallas) and brought children in from all the area and did a
lot of work on children's dance. I guess they served as a kind of
in-training program, where you got new ideas. I remember so many times
in all those early days, writing things in your notebook and taking them
home to teach. From those, and I guess also from the experience at
Bennington in Vermont, many of us became leaders in bringing artists not
only to our schools (and that was a very important period) but also in
organizing a week's program or two weeks' program in some camp somewhere
in the country. It was the teachers of physical education, dance, who
really went to those. These programs also provided a place to belong and
talk about interests in dance and to share and to question, and that
probably was a very important role. I remember I used to always value
the opportunity to get together with Ruth Murray from Detroit, who had
developed probably one of the best, if not the best, total dance
programs in physical education (from grade one on through) of any place
in the country. And other leaders like that— I think we learned a lot
from each other.
-
SNYDER
- Certainly my awareness of you is that you have always been a leader. Can
you talk about that: Do you feel that sense of wanting to identify goals
and putting yourself into making things happen? Where does that great
strength come from?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, that's interesting. I think I said to you last time that as I
looked back over the materials, it looked like I'd been in the business;
and in relation to what you just asked, I don't think I've ever thought
of myself as a leader. It probably comes from a deep kind of commitment
in what I'm doing and a belief in physical education through all those
years, which really meant movement and working with people and a belief
in dance. I guess I've had a real commitment to try to help people
develop ideas and improve programs and do better work. I remember, so
many times when we developed the program here at UCLA, I'd be somewhere
across the country, and people would talk in very flattering ways about
what I had done at UCLA. I always said, "I didn't do it; we did it
together." I really believe that, although I see now that a leader does
have a role to play, but you don't do it alone. I have never been
interested in seeking prestigious leadership roles. I think they always
came because I had been working strongly at the underneath level, and it
just evolved. That's the only explanation I know; I think it's the kind
of commitment I have, and I think that, for example, that's what
motivated the developmental conference; I wanted to spread the word; it
was a critical time. And that's why I stayed with the Council of Dance
Administrators (plus a little pressure from them).
-
SNYDER
- I think we should move on. I think the next gap that I noticed in the
tape occurred when we were changing a tape and forgot to check back over
our notes. You had started to talk a little bit about your more intimate
time with Marge H'Doubler, during the summers that you were teaching at.
Wisconsin Since, as we've mentioned before, I think that a number of
people would say that you and Marge are probably the great leaders in
the field of dance education, to hear a little more about your dialogue
with her would be exciting.
-
HAWKINS
- Well, my association with her was more teacher to teacher, because I
never had a straight class with her. I studied there in the summer, and
so I had her work, but I did not take classes from her. One of the
things that always impressed you about Marge was her great respect for
people. Even though I came from a little bit different background and
didn't always approach things in exactly the same way, I know we had a
lot of commonality in our beliefs. She always had the greatest respect
for your idea, and that always interested me very much. One summer I
lived in her apartment, and she was up at her summer place in Wisconsin,
but we had contact with each other. I spent some time with Marge and her
husband, Wayne Claxton, in their Wisconsin home, and over those years,
we had many hours of conversation about dance and about what was basic
in dance. Of course, she always was so interested in the biological base
of dance and had a sense of it forming, but not, I think, in the same
sense that I have today. She believed— She worked very intuitively. On
the biological, she worked from very sound knowledge, because she'd had
that kind of training. But I think in other areas she worked very
intuitively (maybe all of us work that way). She seemed to believe very
much in the individual's own capacity and ability for
inner-directedness, though she never used words like that at all—and the
whole creative thrust. So she was busy trying to provide a foundation
for the movement and for the dance and allowing the individual to evolve
through that. She was not interested at all in any kind of artificial
trimmings in dance; she wanted the individual to experience at a very
deep level.
-
SNYDER
- The things you've thus far said would be very consistent with your own
thinking, Alma; What were some of the points of—not disagreement, but
where you saw your own thrust quite different from Marge's?
-
HAWKINS
- I don't really know how to answer that, but I suspect that the
influences of the contemporary people were very much within me. Even
when T was teaching at Wisconsin, Louise Kloepper was; teaching there
and teaching the Hanya Holm approach. That was not where Marge was; she
still was with that very basic experiencing and moving. So probably I
was moving toward a little bit more specific kind of preparation. I
remember one summer I taught composition there. There again, I probably
was working with a more specific approach to composition than she was
using. I can't really remember, but I suspect the prime thing was the
influence that came from the modern people, which maybe didn't quite
always dovetail smoothly— although we never disagreed violently on
anything; we had marvelous conversations. We both were so— We believed
in dance and we wanted it to be good dance, but we also were interested
in the human being and that individual's development, so we had that
common base.
-
SNYDER
- Would you say that Marge was less concerned with ultimate performance
than you were, or— I don't think of your being all the time concerned
with performance, either.
-
HAWKINS
- No, I don't think we ever had any conversation about that. I think we
both thought there must be opportunity for that. For example, her course
in rhythmic analysis, which she developed way back when, was a very
specific kind of approach with very specific exercises. I think I was
working in a much freer approach. (I don't really know how to say it any
more than that.) I guess our conversations usually were more on larger
aesthetic questions and educational questions. She was very interested
in the aesthetics, and I find it interesting to go back and read her
book, even now that— Her book is not dated; it's very sound. She may use
different words, but that whole concept of the aesthetic development in
the human being was very clear. Although that came out of a long
background. But her association with Wayne Claxton, her husband, who was
in art, in painting— So there was much sharing between them of
aesthetics in that world and her aesthetics. It's probably interesting
if you know the details of how she moved from the biological base that
she had in her college education to the aesthetic kind of development,
which I'm sure happened through her, not through her education.
-
SNYDER
- Another important area, perhaps the most important area that you have
talked about a number of times on the tape, is the group process.
Perhaps those that listen to the tape would want to have a better sense
of the group process, in particular, how it was implemented in class
structure.
-
HAWKINS
- Well, that's interesting. Sometimes things get so embedded in you that
it's very difficult to pull it out and say exactly what that means.
Well, I'm going to talk from my own understanding of it, not the
theoretical thing that might be in the books. First of all, I think it
implies a democratic process; that is, a belief that the individual
should be involved in policymaking and decisions that affect his life. I
think that comes out of an assumption that the individual has potential
for choice making and for self-directed behavior and doesn't have to
always be given answers. I think it also assumes that the human being
has a self-actualizing tendency. In the case of the teaching-learning
situation, I think it's built on the belief that motivation is higher
and the experience is more meaningful when the individual is involved in
setting goals, setting his goals, and in making decisions about
experiences that relate to that individual. With that kind of a belief,
then the leader acts as a facilitator and is responsible for finding
ways to enrich the environment and also to guide experiences, but always
with the individual highly involved in the process. Does that make
sense?
-
SNYDER
- [affirmative] Now to be more specific, the other thing that I think you
feel very strongly about is that there are bodies of knowledge, clearly
set forth in structuring the program of the department, defining a body
of knowledge in dance. You've spoken about how you loved working with
the freshmen, for instance. How here you've got a group of students who
haven't (we suppose) very much sense of what that body of knowledge is.
How do you let them gain knowledge, while at the same time. coming from
where they are in their thinking and giving them a sense of their
strength in the group?
-
HAWKINS
- That's the challenging question, I think I did some thinking about that,
and I'm going to talk about that later. But I think that the question is
how do you take the existing knowledge that will assist the individual
in growing and keep the individual focused in his own learning? And how
do you bring those two things together? Now, in some of the early period
of using group process in education (and this is just my own thoughts
about it), I think it went a little too far [towards] the student just
setting goals and moving, without [instructors] making sure that the
enrichment of the knowledge got in. I sometimes felt that when I was
working with the program here at UCLA. It seems to me—this is very much
where I am today—it seems to me that we have, to find new ways of
enriching; that is, bringing what you know at the same time that there's
a place for both. It's a process of finding out how you integrate the
two things. For example, the way I am working right now. I'm beginning
the movement class which I am moving toward choreography. I'm beginning
that with a half-hour period, and they usually don't let me stop with a
half-hour, in presenting material in aesthetics and philosophical base
of dance. I am presenting material, but it's very open for discussion
and questions at any point. I am bringing— And my whole intent is to
enrich and expand their understanding. Hopefully it's going to come out
in the experiential work. I've been doing this now for a couple of
years. I'm absolutely convinced that it's the right approach, which says
two kinds of things: I believe we've got to find ways of getting out of
the small packages of knowledge, where we take a package and we pass it
on, and we assume the individual integrates it. Well, we know that the
only way one does integrate is through yourself, that an outside person
can't do it. However, I believe there are ways to bring knowledge and
experience closer together, so that it is more meaningful. My hunch is
that the learning would be much stronger, and it would take less time.
That's a pretty far-out idea and a time-consuming process. But let's
take it in a regular class—say, the classes I was teaching in the
graduate courses in education or the philosophy class or even the studio
class. I was bringing— First of all, I always tried to set forth what we
were responsible to cover, so there was some overview, and approximately
how we were going to do it, the order we were going to do it. I always
very quickly—not necessarily the first day but very quickly—tried to
elicit from them where they were and what they wanted and frequently had
them write their own goals for that period of time. Then, almost
constantly throughout a period of time (I still am doing that with
groups), I would say, "Now, we probably need to move to—" (whatever the
next thing is), "What is your feeling?" Or "We could do this or we could
do that. Which would you prefer?" The thing I always felt very strongly,
talking about democratic processes, is that it's absolutely wrong to
give students the feeling (or faculty the feeling) that they are going
to share in making decisions, and then you put out options, and they
make an option, and then you don't follow through on it. You never give
options unless you're willing to abide by the decision. I remember I
worked that way in the studio, with the freshmen, where I had them at
the beginning of each quarter write their goals: what they needed and
what they thought we ought to cover. Then X integrated that within a
larger scheme into class periods. We would talk about where we are or
where we need to go, and I would put some options in it. I've felt
strongly about this in the last years; there's so many conflicting
demands that make it difficult, but I think it's important that students
read, even in connection with studio classes. So I would give them
options in. a variety of readings. I used to have them read John
Martin's book [Introduction to the Dance], the section on form and the
section on movement. I'd take maybe the last ten or fifteen minutes of
the class period to discuss that. Or I might have them write a paragraph
about what they thought was important. in the chapter. Well, that was
the way I was trying to extend their understanding of the body of
knowledge that was related to them. There are so many aspects of the
studio class. I think of— Just take the case of evaluation. So much
evaluation is done—I'll go to the extreme—by teachers saying to a
student in a studio (however you say it), "That's wrong, and this is the
right way." Which sometimes may be effective, but most of the time I
think it's an interfering kind of thing in learning. For example, after
we had finished some particular movement or technique and I was trying
to work around a conceptual base, I would take that and Say, "Now, would
you work with your partner" and have them work in twos. Then I'd say,
"Now, what is it we're looking for?" I had several motives in mind, and
we'd identify whatever it was, like the centering or the shift of weight
or whatever. I would identify one or two or three points, and then I'd
have one of them observe the other and then share and communicate, and
then reverse the process. My motive was to have them become clear about
the conceptual base, but I was also having them share and work with
another person. There's so many ways to involve the individual in the
process. I was thinking yesterday as I was jotting down some ideas about
some of my beliefs: I think I see learning today not as a passing on of
the knowledge but as facilitating, providing a rich environment and
facilitating discovery and self-growth. That requires some new approach
to the teaching-learning process, but I think very exciting ones. My
feeling is (you can't prove this until you had a period of time to
develop it) that the learning—I feel this in technique as well as the
broad— In technique the quality would be superior and the time would be
cut down and the transfer would be immeasurably better. The same thing
in the theoretical areas, that the relationships and the integrations
would come about so much more quickly, so that we would economize time
and yet have better quality. This may be where we have to go in
education, because everybody is saying (remember our meeting a while
back) that we ought to include this and we ought to include this. There
is so much knowledge today and there's so little time that it may be we
have to find new ways / of integrating this kind of knowledge. That
really is related to group process, but I guess I went far afield.
-
SNYDER
- It starts from it.
-
HAWKINS
- I think you said something about working with faculty. The same concept
applies to working with faculty: I think in group process you assume
that with the right kind of leadership, you will almost always come out
with a better decision than if one person made it. I know I felt that so
many times. So it's a case of faculty being involved in all basic policy
making and decision making. For a lot of reasons, you were making the
wisest decisions and pooling the best knowledge of all the faculty, so
that you keep a relationship within a faculty in an effective way. I
don't believe there's any other way to have faculty have a sense of
being involved in the total program. And unless faculty are involved in
the totality of the program and what its commitment is to education, I
think the student suffers. The thing I always wondered about— I think,
that same principle applies to a large university even like UCLA. Though
we had a long way to go yet, I used to think how important it was to
find ways to involve, for example, chairmen of various departments to
have more input in the total university process. Not that they should
make decisions, but I so often felt that the chairman of the department
was quite isolated, and decision making was happening without real
understanding of what the implications and needs of the department were.
I guess if you believe in it, you believe in it operating at every
level. Of course I think UCLA's been marvelous in many ways in
attempting to do that. I was interested when Chancellor Murphy was here:
he made many attempts, which I appreciated no end. He probably never
would have been successful in getting the quarter system to work had he
not brought chairmen together and done the kind of job he did. He
probably never in the world would identify that as group process, but
that's exactly what it was. So you had a commitment to go back to your
department and try to make it work.
-
SNYDER
- So much more to say about that, but—
-
HAWKINS
- We'll pick some of that up when we get to the end, because it dovetails,
really.
-
SNYDER
- Good. Another piece that has to do with the time period that we're still
concluding today: your whole active effort to get a credential approved
for dance and your success in that; then, unfortunately, the change in
policy which then eliminated dance and, I guess, eliminated some of the
other arts from the elementary and high school programs.
-
HAWKINS
- Yes, that was a long, hard struggle to get a dance credential, and then
to have it not last any longer than it did. After we had established the
major program and the graduate program and had become a department, it
became very apparent that we needed a new type of credential. There was
a credential provided through physical education, and we did have
teachers of dance in the secondary schools. So I set out to get a
credential in dance. I guess I worked two or more years on it (I don't
remember how long, but a long time) with the state people. Finally they
started to get some kind of understanding of the need for it, and that
dance really was a separate discipline, and of our need for
well-prepared teachers—of dance as art, not as part of physical
education—and that UCLA had developed a major program, which had the
foundation in the dance as art and the graduate program. I developed
piles of material and finally met with the committee. The person in
charge was very supportive, but It took a period of time to work it
through. I finally met with them at a hotel out near the airport, and I
remember being called into that meeting. It was a long, narrow table; I
never saw a table like it before. They put me down at the end, with
these people. And the chairman— I thought he would present the problem,
but instead he just introduced me and, in effect, said, "Go." So I did:
I had my little speeches all down pretty well by that time, after going
through the undergraduate major and the graduate major at UCLA; but
probably the point that was most convincing to those people on that
committee (or board or whatever it was) was my deep concern about the
need for creative development of young people in our schools. They
started to ask questions about that. So very quickly after that the
credential [was] approved. We were related also to UCLA's Credential
Program, so that we had the combination between UCLA and the state and
placed many students in the secondary schools. Then, without anybody
knowing it (at least I certainly didn't know it), they changed the laws
so that that special kind of credential was out. Well, unfortunately, a
lot of other things started shifting at that same time. Many of our
students, being very interested in dance and the serious study of dance,
did not wish to spend their time doing the physical education credential
or some other credential that would make them eligible. So what happened
was that the students started focusing toward college and university and
losing interest in teaching at the secondary school. Of course, there
were also increasing number of positions at the college and university,
so there was no problem for our students to move right into very good
positions. But I think that was one of the very important factors that
started the decrease of dance in the secondary schools in this area. And
of course, we still don't have a credential.
-
SNYDER
- The change in policy was the [California State] Ryan Act?
-
HAWKINS
- I believe it was, the Ryan Act.
-
SNYDER
- What was that, about sixty—?
-
HAWKINS
- I think that we got the credential in about '64 or '65, and I don't
remember how long it was in operation. Time: I have no sense of time. Do
you remember?
-
SNYDER
- I would guess that the Ryan Act came in about '70 or '71 or somewhere in
there.
-
HAWKINS
- We probably had about a five-year span of the credential, probably not
longer than that.
-
SNYDER
- We had talked about this, I think, in relationship to what you've sensed
is a change in the quality of students entering the program, certainly
at the undergraduate level, where many of them originally had had a very
excellent experience with dance, usually taught by somebody who had in
fact also been a student from the depart ment. Since that whole chain
has been severed now, the problem of introducing a student almost
without any knowledge at all to the field at the freshman level, I
think, increases the problem of quality as they graduate from the
program.
-
HAWKINS
- I just had a thought that had never crossed my mind before. I'm sure
that the change in the high school program is a result of many factors,
not only credential, but financial and leadership and a lot Of other
things. But it never had occurred to me until this moment—this sounds
very smug, but I think it probably is true—that the people who have gone
in to teach physical education in the high schools over these last
number of years have not had the dance background that the physical
education student had had before we established the dance major. Because
as dance majors were established, there was less dance, and the quality
was different. Take, for example, UCLA. There's very little dance in the
[physical education major]. Practically none now. That points up,
doesn't it, a great gap in keeping things together in education, that
the dance major evolved as a natural kind of evolvement and growth of
dance and [found] its place in the academic world. But its relationship
to employment of teachers and credentials in the secondary school is
still at another level, and so we don't have the kind of preparation for
teachers that you need.
1.10. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO
AUGUST 10, 1981
-
SNYDER
- [We] talked about the problem of having the average elementary
schoolteacher use dance, or the whole relationship of the—in
quotes—"artist in the school," or your work with CEMREL [Central
Midwestern Regional Educational Laboratory], and some of the problems
that you see right now with dance in the elementary school.
-
HAWKINS
- Well, it's a very complicated problem. I certainly feel that credit goes
to the people who have tried to introduce dance, some of the programs
that have brought artists in, which help children see the arts—children
[who] probably would never see them at all before; some of them
certainly wouldn't see them—and [enable them to] experience dance to
some degree, so [they] know there's something there. I think some of the
efforts to have elementary teachers actively involved in teaching— For
example, the experience of CEMREL. I worked with that group from its
inception up until a few years ago.
-
SNYDER
- I forget what CEMREL stands for.
-
HAWKINS
- Oh, dear. Central Midwestern Regional Educational Laboratory, I think.
Anyway, it was concerned with promoting aesthetic education in the
schools, particularly the elementary schools and to some degree the
upper levels. Its concern was not so much to make painters and dancers
and other specialists in the arts, but rather promote an understanding
of the aesthetics so that it would enrich their lives and would
contribute to the community, and the whole effect of aesthetic
education. CEMREL was built around consultants in each of the arts, and
I was there as a consultant in dance. [There were] also people in the
field of aesthetics. Philosophically, that was an interesting kind of
experience, too, because it's very obvious that the person in aesthetics
comes from a different point of view than the person who's working
actively in an art. The person in aesthetics is interested in a broad
conceptual, philosophic kind of understanding. The person working in the
arts always keeps coming back to: But they have to have some experience
to understand it. But we worked that out so that we had a working base
and developed programs, guidelines, in all of the arts, and then
developed materials that could be used by the teachers in the schools;
and it has been brought to many of the schools out across the country.
But the thing that had me wondering, when I was working with it closely,
I'd go out to the schools and observe a teacher doing a class in
movement. I would see them being very committed to it and would be
following the guidelines that were set forth in the written material.
The children were extremely responsive, because they always liked to
move? they were also spontaneous and creative. But the teacher—at I.
least the ones I observed—did not really know how to pick up on what was
happening and carry it on, as somebody who had been trained in dance
would be able to do. The best they could do was to follow the guidelines
and the suggestions that were made in the paper, and that they did very
well. It made me wonder, so many times after I'd do those visits: But
can we ever prepare the elementary teacher so that they can teach the
art effectively or successfully? Now, maybe if the elementary teacher
had more actual experience in dance, even very basic kind of
experience—and I think some of them have in some places— then some
materials could be used in a fuller way. But often that isn't true, and
the problem is that the elementary teacher has to learn so many
different things, how can they spend much time on specific areas, like
dance? One of my dreams (that was a big one) after I was working with
CEMREL for all these years was to develop a program at UCLA through our
education (because Dean John Goodlad [of the Graduate School of
Education, UCLA] was so interested in the arts), so that the elementary
teachers would get this kind of basic experience. I was hoping the dance
department could provide the basic course. In fact, that's what was
behind the original concept of the ethnic arts [program]; I had the
dream of developing a basic course that would involve all our arts
departments (this grew out of what I had gained in CEMREL), and tying it
into the elementary education. I used to say to the— Later [when] I
worked with the advisory board in CEMREL, I used to say, "I don't think
we'll ever make this thing work until we tie it into academic programs,
prestigious universities, and begin to build it into the teacher
education program, because the short teacher education programs of two
weeks or so, in my view, just doesn't do it." Dr. Goodlad was
interested, but we never— That's one of the things that didn't get
developed.
-
SNYDER
- Just one more area of looking back at things before we move ahead. It's
been a very exciting morning, because I think you're speaking about so
many ideas which are very current ones. Several times in the last couple
of tapes you've spoken about the right faculty, the right faculty,
specifically to do with the Graduate Dance Center. But I wonder if you'd
had the opportunity in actually choosing every one of your faculty
members when you created the department, would there have been different
qualities and directions that you would have defined for the faculty if
you were starting from virgin territory? And does that relate to this
right faculty that you've spoken about, particularly in relationship to
the Graduate Dance Center?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, going back to the original dance program, of course that kind of
thought never crossed my mind. But looking back, I would say no, that in
light of the way we worked, having the diverse faculty I think was a
very enriching factor. Since we did evolve a common commitment and a
common understanding and a common approach I think we had a working base
that penetrated the whole department. Then, I think, as you add faculty,
you try your best to bring faculty in who not only have the special kind
of expertise that you're trying to bring into the department but also
people who will work philosophically in harmony with what the department
has established. I think on the whole we've been very successful at UCLA
in doing that. I don't think that you would be very wise to bring in a
faculty where all are exactly the same, because I think you lose an
enriching factor. When you refer back to the Graduate Dance Center,
maybe what had to happen there—It's just too bad we didn't have— Maybe
two things [are] too bad: Maybe we needed a little more time to think
through its way of working. Maybe I had it in my head, but we hadn't
worked it through as a group beforehand. Then, the other thing that's
too bad is that we didn't have a longer period of time to iron out some
of the errors in it or the bugs in it. But it's probably the same thing
that was true in our early development, with the early major: probably
the total faculty had to work through what its role was, how we were
going to integrate the knowledge and the courses in it, the process to
be used, and then [finding] a person who was competent in doing that
kind of thing. I would doubt if you could go out and pick any person. I
had the feeling that it had to be an evolving understand ing and
commitment. First of all, we're talking about a philosophy of learning,
a teaching-learning process. Second, we're talking about a
process-oriented experience You're talking about personality
relationships that work, and you're talking about excellent knowledge in
the art and its production. It needs this kind of— Not that they're
going to be expert in all this, but this kind of blend.
-
SNYDER
- So in effect, you create your right faculty, and it was just a matter
there of, as you say, the length of the process, really.
-
HAWKINS
- I really think so. I think as we had a little experience with it, we saw
what we needed to work on. You know, that's interesting in relation to
what's happened in other universities, where no one else tried the
graduate dance center [idea]. I was trying to pull it into the program
proper, but where there was this movement toward the professional dance
company. I think in almost all of those experiences, it's been [a
question of] attaching something on; in almost every instance, there
have been problems. Probably you can't attach things on: to make them go
forever, they've got to organically evolve within a system-
(disregarding the financial factors).
-
SNYDER
- Maybe we should now deal specifically with some more of the major things
that happened for you and for the department and for the field during
the period of '60 through your retirement. One of the things that we
didn't have a chance to talk about last week was the developmental
conference [Developmental Conference on Dance, UCLA, 1966-67—Ed.].
-
HAWKINS
- Well, that's probably one of the highlights of my professional
experience. The developmental conference was held in 1966 to 1967. It
was developed in two phases: seventeen days in total. As you look back
now, it seems unbelievable that you could get funds to do this. It was
sponsored by the U. S. Office of Education, [Division of] Arts and
Humanities. At that time Kathryn Bloom was the director of that program,
and Jack Morrison was the assistant 'director. It came into being, I
guess, because of the time and the needs that existed at that time. We
had been actively involved in developing the graduate program, and then
dance was growing everywhere. I felt that it was time to bring people
together, that dance was in a very rapid period of development and a
rapid period of change. New major programs were being developed: there
were many more theater productions, and there was a closer relationships
among educators and professional artists. And we were moving rather
quickly from the broad physical education program, where dance had been
an integral part, to dance as a performing art. Leaders all across the
country were having to make very critical decisions that seemed to me
were going to affect dance for many years in the future, and I felt we
needed to get together and talk about this kind of thing. I guess it
happened at the right time and with the right people, and we were able
to get funds to have those two very important sessions. I was able to
bring— It seemed very important not just to bring the educators together
but to bring people from the professional fields as well and also to
bring people who were scholars and researchers in the foundation areas.
As I think back over that now, this obviously was influenced by what I
had been trying to do in developing not only the department but also the
philosophy class and all the kind of knowledges that I had been into. So
we had forty-five people altogether, and they came from all parts of the
country. Our purpose was to evolve a point of view that would give
direction to the immediate and the long-range development of dance. In
the first phase, we were concerned with the role and the nature of dance
in education and in developing curriculum guidelines. In the second
phase, we were interested in drawing up a blueprint for the next
twenty-five years. As I look back in the materials, I saw that
twenty-five years, and I was kind of interested: That was so right. This
involved much discussion, many different points of view, again, that we
had to work through, and here again the group process came in. We sat
around a big solid, broad table with all of these people and worked
through every single thing and finally got a commitment on that
blueprint that later was published. The program had three main sections
to it. There were presentations by scholars and researchers; there was
much general discussion, where we worked these things through. Then
there were work groups, where the whole group was divided into smaller
groups around specific topics, and they worked in the evenings. It was
an amazing working group, and they often joke about this in later years,
how I worked them to death, because we worked— I think we started at
nine in the morning, and we stopped probably ten o'clock at night. We
worked the whole day long. Some of the people that we brought in to do
presentations were top-flight people. For example, John Martin happened
to be out here at that time, and he did a presentation on dance in
perspective. And I had to have Susanne [K.] Langer, because I was so
committed to what she was writing and how important it was, and I felt
we just had to get this kind of philosophic base into our thinking. She
came and talked about the expression of feeling in dance; I had a hard
time getting her, because she was busy writing her last two big volumes.
And she really had no interest in running across the country to make a
speech to a little group of dance people. I somehow learned that her son
lived down in Laguna, I think, and finally, in one of my telephone
conversations I said, "Well, I thought maybe it might be nice if you
could come and spend a little time with us, and then you'd be able to
spend some time with your son." Somehow I think that did it. This is a
sidetrack, but I will never forget the day that she appeared: we were
having lunch, and this little tiny lady with this little cap on her head
and her little flat shoes came walking down the hall. I went out to meet
her, and I thought, "You're the Susanne Langer who I'd been reading and
reading," and brought her in to the table to have lunch with us. She
was very special. And then Frank Barron—I was very interested in the
research he'd been doing in creativity—talked on creativity.
-
SNYDER
- He was the name we both stumbled on the other day.
-
HAWKINS
- That's right. Frank Barron, doing research at Berkeley, University of
California. Betty Walberg did a presentation on music for dance, and
then Valerie Hunt presented on the biological organization of man to
move. What she really was getting at was the biological base and the
kinesthetic approach to movement, and she did both a presentation and a
demonstration. Then we had statements by artists related to whatever
they wanted to say that they felt would be useful to us in dance and
dance in education. These were made by Jean Erdman and Alwin Nikolais
and Patricia Wilde and José Limón. Then we had additional presentations?
for example, Juana De Laban talked about history, and you, Allegra
Snyder, did a presentation on film and its relationship to dance, and
Mary Whitehouse did a presentation on therapy. Then there were some
others on choreography and different aspects of dance. So we were
constantly (this is what I was talking about a while ago) bringing in
the experts and providing the best, of knowledge. Then in our
discussions and work groups we were trying to integrate that into its
relationship to dance for our university programs. The result of this
conference was the development of a philosophical framework, which took
a great deal of doing, because we did come from such different
backgrounds. The interesting thing was that the differences didn't come
from the professionals, who were sitting all around the table, but from
some within our own field, who had very different points of view. It was
very interesting: The professional people were very sensitive to what we
were trying to do and were trying to help. They knew that there was a
difference in what we were doing and what they were doing and were very
supportive. But we did develop the philosophical framework, a plan for
curriculum development, and standards for departments of dance. Prom
this came a publication. I have all that; we taped the whole thing, the
seventeen days, had all that transcribed, and then I edited it and
worked with Mary [Marian] Van Tuyl, who was editor of Impulse at that time. [I am] very grateful that she was
willing to make it a regular issue of Impulse. So
this was published in 1968, the title Dance: A
Projection for the Future. Unbelievable, but we had a little
bit of money left. We had developed so much that was so rich, and all
the departments were just at a place [where they were ready] to really
go into full bloom. I talked with a few people, and I thought about it a
lot, and it seemed to me that we needed—some of us—needed to meet again
to see how do we take this and how do we begin to implement it. I asked
the [U. S.] Office of Education if we could use the remaining money to
bring ten leaders together to do just that, and fortunately we could! So
we met in Washington, D. C. (The other meeting, the seventeen days were
held at Santa Inez Inn in Los Angeles.) We met in Washington, D. C., in
a hotel and spent two days, a marvelous two days. The people I invited
were the ones who were leaders in major programs and large, active
programs. They were Helen Alkire, at Ohio State University;. Betty
[Elizabeth] Hayes, University of Utah; Jean Erdman, who was developing a
program in dance at NYU [New York University]; Charlotte Irey,
University of Colorado; Bill Bales, at Bennington College; Margaret
Erlanger, University of Illinois; Louise Kloepper, University of
Wisconsin; Carl Wolz, University of Hawaii; Dorothy Madden, University
of Maryland; and Nancy [W.] Smith, Florida State University. Our primary
concern was how do we implement the ideas that we developed in the
conference. We got very excited, even though we had lots of problems,
and at the end of that, everybody said, "This was so valuable that we
can't stop; we have to continue to meet." So we did meet the next
Thanksgiving, and we had to go back to Santa Inez, which had been so
important to us. And that group has met annually ever since on the
Thanksgiving weekend, and [we] finally organized ourselves with the name
of Council of Dance Administrators.
-
SNYDER
- Was Shirley Wimmer not in that Washington meeting?
-
HAWKINS
- No. Shirley wasn't chairman of a program at that time; I think she was
at Ohio State. She was at the—
-
SNYDER
- At the conference, yes.
-
HAWKINS
- I think she was teaching in Ohio at that time.
-
SNYDER
- And was Bill Bales still at Bennington or had he moved on to Purchase
[State University of New York at Purchase]?
-
HAWKINS
- No, he was there.
-
SNYDER
- Well, that was—
-
HAWKINS
- That was the developmental conference [at UCLA].
-
SNYDER
- An extraordinarily important and exciting conference and
process—again—that's so interesting. It was as much the process, I
think, as— The outcome was extremely significant, but that bringing of
everybody together and working through all of the thoughts and ideas
was— I know it: Having been just briefly a part of it, I nevertheless
felt the energy of that whole working session
-
HAWKINS
- Well, you know, there are two kinds of things, I think. All of these
people have said so many times that we never could realize how much that
working process had meant to the development in each of our
institutions, and I have told Kathy Bloom (and more than one time) that
it's all very intangible: we have nothing on paper. But the impact of
that on the development of dance across the country has been great.
Another factor that I've thought about and we've talked about: Because
of that working process, seventeen days, and really working through to
where we had a consensus on things, the Council of Dance Administrators,
the organization that grew out of this—it meets annually—has been an
amazing group. Again, we sit around a table and discuss our problems and
new ideas and developments. We may have different ideas and different
points of view, but there have never been any clashes in that group. But
even more important, I have never felt any competitive kind of action
among all of us who have been active as chairmen. Now, I'm sure each
person was trying to make their program the best in the country, but as
far as really doing underhanded, competitive kind of things, it has
never existed. I've had experience in other organizations, which is a
very different one. A very different sense; and I'm sure it goes back to
that working process
-
SNYDER
- It is really. quite amazing, when you think about it again. [l] had the
privilege of being part of that group for a while, and it was always
just learning and sharing. I never sensed any competition at all.
-
HAWKINS
- No.
-
SNYDER
- The field of dance is an interesting one now, Alma. I think that people
who are involved with dance are so committed to the experience and to
the art and to the
-
SNYDER
- Now, at the time of the developmental conference, how many of them had
graduate programs?
-
HAWKINS
- I think we were the only one.
-
SNYDER
- So it was really—
-
HAWKINS
- [Inaudible] to really get the framework. See, I had learned so much from
the three year process we had gone through in developing our program,
and I was so wanting other people to think things through like that,
because we had gained so much by it—but we were the only ones. But I
think very quickly that Ohio— Then, I think, Utah, and I'm not sure the
next order. I think it was a while before the others. Illinois was
probably next.
-
SNYDER
- And Nancy Smith, at Florida State [University]?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, Nancy's dance major went into the music department, probably next.
And Dorothy Madden, at the University of Maryland, was probably next.
-
SNYDER
- Yes. In essence, what we're talking about is critical change in the
field in fifteen years' time.
-
HAWKINS
- Oh, yes. Critical in the sense that we were establishing dance as a
discipline in the university framework and setting up an autonomy that
made it possible for [the discipline] to evolve. So it's had its
problems, but it's really amazing what was accomplished in that period
of time. The thing that was so exciting, I think, about our annual
meeting of the council was that— In recent field. People in the field of
dance I find wonderful people to be with.
-
HAWKINS
- That's probably very true, that most people in dance are committed to
something bigger than themselves. It's not the self that's the prime
thing, but it's that bigger commitment. I guess you'd say that
penetrated the dance section way back in those early days, I think
that's true. But when you think about what has happened in the
universities across the country in a comparatively short period of time,
it's amazing. Again, done because of the commitment, because in every
instance faculty have carried intolerable loads, looked at in relation
to the rest of the university faculty, without much money, without
adequate—anything adequate. But because of that commitment, [they have]
just moved ahead and developed some striking dance programs.
-
SNYDER
- You keep saying that you're not very good with dates, and I won't;
pressure you too much, but have you a sense of, for instance, when Ohio
State's graduate program came into being?
-
HAWKINS
- I'm not sure about this. We should get this for us. I think that maybe
Ohio was the next one, and probably Utah was the next.
-
SNYDER
- This would have been, what, sixty—
-
HAWKINS
- Well, in the sixties. years, we started focusing on a broader range of
topics, but all of the early years, it was a case of a group coming
together and talking about their problem: How did you solve this, and
how did you do that? All these years we have worked, I would send out an
announcement of the meeting and ask them to send in agenda items, and
they would list all their problems and concerns, and I would develop an
agenda from these. It was really a round-table discussion of where we
are. That not only helped us as a group to think things through but it
also often brought new ideas to people [about] who they were. I remember
discussions (this is in more recent years). Now that the people who were
chairmen and developed, pioneered, all these programs are getting to the
place that one by one they're leaving the leadership roles, I remember
the topic coming up: Would it be better to have a manager-type person
(not necessarily from the dance field) or a dance person. Long and
vigorous discussions with the pros and cons. It was a kind of a working
base. Then I think where disastrous things happened, because of certain
kinds of appointments. That came back into the meeting and was shared
very honestly, and I think it helped other people avoid those mistakes.
I've never seen any organization function like it.
-
SNYDER
- This is another instance where I feel a great deal of concern, as I have
expressed, even with our new needs to yet again reexamine the program in
the department. That lack of opportunity to really go through the full
process with departments now well established— Yet as you say, now [that
there is a] need for a second generation of leaders in those programs,
without those leaders having the wonderful advantage of going through
that whole developmental process, what happens? Does our field begin to
take the shape of every other field and be isolated or competitive? It's
so upsetting to think about that and what can be done so that that
doesn't become the fate of our field.
-
HAWKINS
- That' is a danger. I think dance on the whole across the country evolved
in a more personal way than the usual academic department. Now, I don't
have any clear-cut answer to what is needed, but I suppose from time to
time, because changes do take place in the world, and changes take place
in a faculty, and changes take place in students, that maybe there has
to be time to reassess what is our commitment, what are we trying to do,
what is the role of dance in the academic world: A commitment to that.
So that it's seen in a total sense of commitment rather than [as] an
individual carrying on a specialized duty and a certain piece of the
total—the fragmentation thing. Then, I suppose, not only that larger
educational kind of commitment, [but also] what are we really trying to
do in dance: what is our commitment to dance? For example— I can think
better in terms of UCLA than I can others—do we really believe that the
so-called modern dance, contemporary dance, is the heart of our program
and that we are concerned with it as an art? Then I think there's a side
issue on what you mean by that. Then, if that is the heart of the
program, what do we see as refinements and evolvements from developments
from that base of human experience and creative expression? Does that
mean, then, what has started to emerge at UCLA: a movement off into
history or a movement into choreography of a movement into ethnology or
a movement into therapy. And what is the relationship of all of that? Is
there a commitment to it? Ideally, if there is no commitment to it, a
person shouldn't be— If the department has that commitment today, then
if an individual doesn't have that commitment they shouldn't be on the
faculty. Then I think there are some other issues, which very very much
[arose among] us in those early days, because of our experience of
teaching in the physical education program. I see two prongs. What do we
believe about teaching learning; what do you really believe about it?
Granted, we've got all this stuff we've got to help them learn, [but]
what do you believe about it, what do we know about it? Then the second
thing is a more specific look at dance itself, the kind of stuff I'm
trying to do today. Granted, we're looking at dance as a performing art,
and you must have technique, and you must have choreography. But how on
earth do you provide the best learning experience in that, with all the
knowledge we have? It seems to me that if a faculty, wherever they're
located, could identify certain questions like that and then take time
to work through to some kind of consensus, that doesn't mean that you
have to go back to a competency statement; what I've been talking about
are much bigger, broader issues. And maybe the big, broad issues are the
first kind of things, because I think as we get big, as we get more
specialized, as time gets more pressing, [as] outside things pull on us
more, the tendency is to move off into our own little area and try to do
it the best you can. And we lose something very important. In the last
analysis, the student is the one who loses.
-
SNYDER
- I think the challenge is, as the very body of knowledge grows— As the
field continues and people do become specialized, in effect what they
are doing is enriching that body of knowledge. But how, then, to keep on
integrating that with the whole and, as you say, not letting it go off
on its own special tangent. I feel that issue is the one that is of
greatest concern for us in the department right now, as we have gotten—
You know, each area of the graduate program is very special, is very
rich.
-
HAWKINS
- And very special.
-
SNYDER
- Yet if we can't see each part in relation to the larger whole, the whole
effort is defeated.
-
HAWKINS
- I wonder. I think that's true, that the knowledge has expanded so much
that each person on the faculty can't have all that knowledge. But I
wonder if there isn't a place where there can be an understanding of a
relationship and a commitment to the relationship. If you have that,
then I think you trust the person to go on and develop the refinement
within it. But if you don't have the other understanding, then there
begins to be the lack of trust in the other. What popped in my mind
right; now— I was thinking about [how] oftentimes people don't really
understand what the relationship of dance therapy is to a dance
department. Granted, it does have some other tangents, but in my way of
thinking, the basic dance is the groundwork of it. What I started to say
was, for example when we were laying out all the early foundations and
working, nobody questioned at all that we should do history of dance,
that we need to have some background in our field, but I would have been
the last one to say that I had the definitive knowledge of history of
dance. So there was a commitment, and then I trusted whoever was
teaching the history of dance to do that definitive kind of thing.
Because I saw its relationship to the total. Probably that's what has to
happen as we build these super-specializations. Of course, there's
another question here also. History of dance is integrally related to
the common core. Now when you get into dance ethnology, I think it's
integrally related, but it also begins to draw in other disciplines, and
the same thing in dance therapy. To me, the basic root is in movement
and dance, but you better know something about psychology before you
start doing therapy. For me that's very exciting, if you just see what
the roots are.
-
SNYDER
- In the last tape, when you were talking about your vision for the
curriculum of the Graduate Dance Center, and you talked about how the
integration of the conceptual with the whole involvement with the studio
and performance— I'm wondering whether you have also thought of the need
to integrate these knowledges— I'm just thinking now we're talking about
a student going through our program so much richer, and in fact we're
asking of the student, then, as he goes to the history class, to gain
all of that knowledge he gets from a teacher of history and as he has
some exposure with therapy to get— Are we asking them to do an
impossible job, in a sense, when there isn't, then, [an] actual attempt
within the curriculum of the department to synthesize these things
(given the fact that at a point, the student also will go out into their
area of specialization)? Should not particularly the under graduate
program reflect in a different way, now, this incredible expansion in
knowledge and suggest a different way of dealing with all of this
knowledge, besides the specialized package that they have in a history
class and in a philosophy class?
-
HAWKINS
- It might well be. You aren't implying specializations. You're really
talking about integration, aren't you?
-
SNYDER
- That's right. But how to integrate now with the level of specialization
so much more developed than it was fifteen years ago, as the field began
to open up.
-
HAWKINS
- Well, I think there may be something very important there, because what
you're saying is that some of us see a much broader vision, but that an
undergraduate student doesn't get an inkling of that broader vision
until they get put in one area of specialization. I don't know, I don't
have any set answers, but I have two kind of feelings—
1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE
AUGUST 10, 1981
-
SNYDER
- Alma, you were just about to talk about two threads, or ideas—
-
HAWKINS
- Well, in light of what I'm doing now, I just wonder how it would be
possible to provide longer blocks of time and integrate areas instead of
specialize. I'm not proposing this as an idea but, for example, along
with the studio experience, if some of the conceptual, theoretical,
philosophical material could be integrated right with experiential all
the way through. I know it works from what I'm doing. I know students
like it, and they're not even dance majors. I also know there's a real
luxury in a long block of time. You have time to think; you have time to
respond. You aren't watching the clock and running to the next—those
short classes are ridiculous. Then in light of what you were saying, I
wonder— Sometimes we talk about orientation in the freshman year. Well,
the poor little freshmen are so concerned about finding their way around
the university and don't even know much about the whole thing, I wonder
if maybe, since we're moving to [a] graduate program and hopefully a
doctorate,: if there might be something of an integrative nature at the
senior year, junior year, somewhere later on? But I think it has to be
integrally related. I don't think a lot of the students would— I'm sure
[they] would say, "Oh, I'm particularly interested in that; and I'm not
interested in that." It has to be somehow woven in so it's meaningful
to them. The junior year is currently swamped as it is, but it might be
with some kind of a— [Students are] beginning to get a broader
orientation in the junior year, and I still think [that] some degree of
specialization in the senior year is appropriate. Might make more sense
than some of the things we tried to do in the freshman year. However
it's done, I'm sure you're right that we have some obligation to
acquaint the student with a larger field as we're trying to develop in
the department. Maybe the aesthetics philosophy should flow along with
the studio experience, and maybe what now is the philosophy course
should be philosophy and something else of a larger— I don't know
exactly how it's being done now, but I was trying to do that big
integrated kind of view of dance.
-
SNYDER
- Do you think that really is still attempted? I think the students very
much find what Pia [Gilbert]'s doing serving in that sense. It's
interesting (and I'll pull us into one other portion of material you
wanted to cover today by mentioning this) that the ethnic arts senior
colloquium, I think, was put into the structure of that program very
much with this vision that you are now mentioning and I think it was in
your mind at that time. That is indeed a very, very successful
experience, I think, for the students. However, it comes out time and
again that while they are excited about that, they also keep saying,
"But couldn't we have had an earlier sense of this integration of
ideas?" So it's to introduce it, to then go through the whole process of
really seeing, hearing, experiencing the things that they have had some
clue about in an earlier— And then again to resynthesize these things at
the senior level when, in fact, they are a part of synthesis at that
point, based on their own learning experience. That feels to me as
though that would be a very satisfying course.
-
HAWKINS
- You're saying, in a sense, you need it both places.
-
SNYDER
- Yes.
-
HAWKINS
- An introductory, even though they don't get it all, and a more
definitive one: That may be right. It's like setting goals and seeing
where we're going, even if you don't understand them all. It may be that
[we'll] have to find some things that can go. You know, we never think
anything can go, but I know they can, because when we shifted from the
semester to the quarter, I know we all had to make adjustments, and I
know I took big hunks out of courses that I thought were very important,
but we lived just fine without them. I have a hunch education is due
for a complete overhaul; I don't know how many years it's going to take
to do it, but I think that we just have to find some new ways. In
education it's the same as in, well, anything: You were just saying you
have to— It's a new time; you have to relook. You can create something
and get it operating well, and then if you just pass that on, it gets to
be routine and loses the excitement. And it's the same with knowledge, I
think. If you just package and pass on the knowledge, important as it
is, it's dull. There has to be an excitement in learning and a
motivation and a meaningfulness to it. Probably we're more successful if
we establish that, even if we skip parts of learning that seem
important.
-
SNYDER
- I'll stop this for just a second. [tape recorder turned off] I think I
feel as though if one can always keep the excitement of learning in the
student, they'll find the ways to actually gain the specific knowledge.
-
HAWKINS
- And I think from time to time, we have to go back and say, what are the
absolute essentials in this area, not all the periphery but the absolute
essentials. If we would do that, and do that with excitement, then
there's a base to go on. The tendency is that we have to— We want so
much to pass on everything we've learned, and it's so ridiculous. I so
often think of wanting so much to help students learn all I know, and
then I stop and think of the years I've spent, and it is impossible. So
that's really what I'm trying to do today is: What are the essential
ingredients? I may be wrong, but my feeling is— Just take, in technique
or the movement study. There's no question but what you have to have a
continual experience with this and that you have to develop that
instrument to move effectively. But I'm so convinced that if we had time
to really establish what are the absolute essentials related to basic
movement, in light of what we know kinesiologically—strength,
flexibility— In light of what we know about, if we got the absolute
essentials and if we taught that in a way where there was an
experiencing of it—not a repetition of it, but an experiencing of it—we
would cut the technical development down immeasurably in time and end up
with quality far superior. I just know that's so. We're very much better
than we used to be, when we taught everything we had in our notebook,
but I think there's an entirely different level of understanding that
could happen. And that's going to take a lot of work. I keep hoping that
CODA [Council of Dance Administrators] will take that job on, but so far
we haven't— I think the same thing's true in choreography. I happen to
be working with the choreographic process now, but I think that one of
the next big definitive jobs to do in understanding the dance discipline
is refining, based on the knowledge we have of the body and the
knowledge we have of what has to happen in the aesthetic field. Don't
you think that there's room for a lot more—?
-
SNYDER
- Yes.
-
HAWKINS
- And then the motivation would be so much higher, and the learning would
be faster. Now, I'm dreaming, you know, I'm really projecting, but I—
We've had the feeling that we have to actually teach all these things in
movement, and there's certain things we do have to teach. But I am
constantly being amazed at what unfolds in movement and use of movement
when it comes out of an experiential base and an inner-directed base.
(I'll talk about that later.) But I think there's the developmental
process that is very innate, if we only understood it and then if we
knew how to use our refinement, understanding, and help move into those—
Probably I'll sound very vague, but—
-
SNYDER
- Why don't we, even though we're not proceeding in quite as orderly a
fashion as we might—But so much that you've said in the last hour hinges
on, I think, your current awarenesses related to your newly directed
work at Santa Monica City College. So why don't we get into that now,
and then we can go back to some of the other things and pick up our
loose ends.
-
HAWKINS
- Well, while I was still at UCLA, I had the feeling that I had
discovered, through my work in dance therapy and the work at NPI, some
very basic elements of movement and ways of working with movement. I
suddenly started seeing its relationship to dance in a very clear way.
At the same time, for the last number of years, I've been very
concerned, rightly or wrongly, about what I see in choreography. My
feeling has been that much of the time, it's very contrived; it doesn't
move you. I don't think it's just me at my age; I hear many other people
young people, saying that. It doesn't seem to me that it is achieving
what the dance art is really about and what it has been about all the
years through its history. So that pushed me into thinking more and more
about what can we do in the teaching-learning situation, and how can I
use what I think I've discovered? Here again, everything, you see, comes
in, all my work with Rugg and the creativity, all my work with
philosophy. Anyway, I've said this to Linda [Gold] one day, all these
thoughts, and Linda said, "Why don't we try it?"
-
SNYDER
- Who's Linda Gold?
-
HAWKINS
- Linda Gold at Santa Monica [City College], chairman of the dance program
and one of our graduates. So I said, "All right!" and we started
experimenting. We called the course Fundamentals of Choreography. We had
to call it that in order to get it approved; I really wanted a more
basic term. I was trying to draw then from all of my knowledge, and I
really have been experimenting semester after semester; this is about
the fourth time that I taught it. I'm trying to work with movement in a
much more basic way. I'm trying to see movement as the basic human means
of experiencing and expressing. I'm not calling what I'm doing
choreography, but the preparation for the beginnings of choreography. At
the present time I'm very interested in certain human tendencies,
specifically, the self-actualizing tendency and the forming tendency,
which I think are innate tendencies, and the relationship of movement to
those tendencies, the self-actualizing and the forming. You see there
immediately how I see the dance therapy and the art together. I'm very
convinced that not only is there the forming tendency, but that the
human being has a basic need for symbolizing experience. Now when you—
You play back and forth; you find yourself between two things all the
time, and this is what I hope I live long enough to get into a book. We
know that it's human nature to focus, to reach out, to take in, and to
move in an ever-expanding life space. More and more I'm fascinated with
the parallels between learning at an adult level and the developmental
thing that happens with the infant growing up. They're different, but
they're the same. For example, we know the infant gradually focuses,
gradually reaches, gradually moves, gradually relates—that whole kind of
process. So there's a kind of cyclic process of reaching out, taking in,
integrating, reaching out, taking in, and a forming that takes place in
that. Now, I've been working, experimenting, trying to use all my
knowledge in broadening the aesthetic background where I do do the
discussion. I try to work with facilitating experiences, but always with
a self-directed opportunity in it. Maybe I'll get into that a little bit
more; maybe I'm jumping ahead of myself. The things I am observing make
me even more convinced. I saw these back in the work I did in dance
therapy with the children in the sixties: that there is a basic
developmental pattern that goes from fragments to wholes, goes from
gross to differentiated wholes. It goes from concrete imagery to
abstract—the whole thought process, from concrete to abstract. There's a
very natural process that involves spontaneity, creativity, and forming
and making one's own statement, if the environment facilitates that. One
of the things I'm trying to do right now is to clarify some of these
developmental stages that happen in movement when you don't program
them, as we usually do in a class. Though I'm not actually working on
choreography, I'm assuming that choreography must grow out of human
experience and out of the felt experience. So this raises, from a
teaching standpoint, some very big questions: How do you facilitate
getting in touch with the felt experiences? I have the feeling that
that's what is missing in so much of choreography. They have no idea of
what that inner sensing is or what the felt experience is. It's all
intellectual and outer-oriented. How do we facilitate the developmental
growth that is inner-directed? How do you keep it with the
inner-directed and facilitate the growth? Then, what are the critical
aspects in the learning experiences? What are the aspects that must be
incorporated somehow to help them make that developmental growth? At the
present time I'm working on several areas that seemed to me crucial in
the foundations for choreography. It's becoming aware of body self and
its relationship to space. If the art comes out of inner experiencing
and felt experiencing, then the self is central. Now granted, I'm not
doing therapy, but self is the core, it is it. When you go back to the
early writings of Isadora [Duncan], you see some of the fundamental
material. Granted, she didn't take it to where we are, but she knew
where the roots were. Secondly, an area of experience I think is very
important is becoming skilled in using relaxed concentration; that is,
being able to perceive more fully, focusing and inner-attending, and I
am using relaxation in every single class. Partly for those reasons, the
inner-attending and the perceiving more fully, decreasing the undue
tensions but also the deep relaxation is, I'm very convinced, the
transition into another state of consciousness, which gets at that
inner. The third is sensing at the felt level. That goes— Every one of
these have a developmental pattern within them, going from the
kinesthetic level to the emotional level. A fourth area is freeing the
imagery potential, and I think that—I know now, with my experience, that
the imagery potential is tremendous, and yet we do very little with
developing that imagery potential in most of us. We give it to them
instead of evoking it. Another area is experiencing and flexibility in
using the aesthetic elements, the energy-space rhythm; that is,
experiencing the polarities in each of those and all the shadings within
and being able to use them in a flexible way. That's the kind of thing—
I have the responsibility to do some feeding in, but not saying, "Now
today we're going to work on space, and our problem is—" And the last
area is the transforming of felt experience and images into externalized
movement patterns, so that I'm constantly facilitating so they are going
from that inner sensing and that imagery and transforming it into
movement patterns, and then, of course, you get into the whole question
of, from the simple form to the complex form. Now, I'm trying to clarify
developmental stages in each of those areas so that I know how to
facilitate in relationship to it, and so I also—and this is very
important—have patience to wait. (I'll talk a little more about that in
a minute.) I'm trying to learn how to expand their understanding, like
the aesthetic and principles of form, without intruding upon their
individual self-involvement. How do I feed it and enrich it? But they're
constantly moving out of their own self-direction. And this is very
exciting: I'm trying to find new ways of providing sensory stimuli and
images. What kind of images work? Obviously they have to be images that
evoke movement. So many of the images that are used are so bad, they
don't even evoke, but they have to have potential to touch feeling and
experience, and they have to be very open-ended, so there is no set
answer. So what kind of images work, and what is the developmental
pattern within that? Then I've been fascinated with working with new
cues in getting response. For example, we know that space is an
aesthetic element, and they have to explore big space and small space.
Sometimes we have said, "Make it larger" or "Make it smaller." We've
used the conceptual terms, [terms] for a quality. I've been trying to
find action words and not use those other words at all, like bigger and
smaller. For example, words like darting or quivering immediately change
the energy quality, but it comes from an inner sensation, an inner kind
of experiencing. I've been trying to build a whole new vocabulary of
that kind of thing and trying to discover how to bring about a good
relationship of aesthetic, philosophic material, connection with the
experiential; how do you time it, how do you relate it, how do you bring
it in at the right moments? I know it works, because I've seen it come
back at me. Then how to provide experiences that facilitate this ongoing
growth but allow the individual to work at his or her own level. One of
the things— Of course I've been videoing in all of this. It's
interesting the role that video plays, because when you go back over
those videos, maybe not once but several times, you begin to see things
that you did not see when you were teaching and leading the group and
[are] able to see them in a sequential. For instance, I've been
videoing, beginning about the middle of the semester, eight or nine
sessions, and video each individual in a little entity. Then I edit
these so that they're in sequence. Well, the thing you discover is that
a person will work at one level over a period of time even though [with]
the imagery you put in, you intended for her to go someplace else, but
they weren't; they were still back there. Linda and I talked about how
in the composition class the tendency has been to say to oneself, "Now,
today I'll work on this particular kind of problem and study," and
then, "Well, now I've done that, so I'll go on to this." The fact is,
they haven't done that yet. Well, that's just one of the many reasons
that I just think the problem-solving technique is all wrong, that it's
got to be some kind of imagery stimulation. Oh, it's so complex to say—
What I'm working on through the whole experience is having the
individual, first of all, learn to inner-sense and become aware of that
felt sensing inside and allow movement to come from that and to
externalize that and to allow that to grow from fragments to larger
wholes, to sustain it over a longer period of time. To learn to get in
touch with imagery. Then at first they say, "I can't. I don't have any
image"—to sustain the imagery. The thing that happens then—you see, I
think I'm talking about the stuff on making choreography—what happens
then is that the imagery begins to shift—and the literature; is full of
this—is that the imagery constantly shifts. When you have that inner
sensing and the shifting imagery and the externalization of movement,
you have a cyclic kind of process going. In that process you begin to
get back into past experience, not the immediate sensory, and there
begins to be a selecting, synthesizing, integrating process that is
given form. I think that's the very heart of the creative act that makes
dance. Now I'm moving with imagery and stimulation. I never talk about
making studies or making dances. But because this involvement develops,
they are making longer movement-events, and then I try to go from the
relaxation period. The first part of the period, I'm more directed,
partly to get them moving and active and integrated and a lot of things.
But I'm also feeding in material; I'm trying to enrich there. Then after
the relaxation, I'm trying to move deeper and deeper into involvement,
and I'm using imagery, and they become more and more open, and it's
those last images which I've tried to evolve to the biggest thing that
we tape. Then, oh, about the last third of the semester, I say, "Now,
you bring your own motivation this time" (and again we aren't saying
dances), and these are longer. So it's in the sequence of those last
little movement events that we're able to see how they work on the same
thing over a long period of time, and when they're ready, they shift.
Also begin to see, well, so many things that I started learning in dance
therapy, for example, the spatial things. The space tends to be very
small, stays close to the floor; gradually it moves out; gradually it
moves in bigger space. You see it in those videos. I didn't say, "Now
today make it larger." The other thing that I'm interested in studying
this next year very much is, even though I did input at the beginning of
the period— At a certain point, [I began] experimentation just with the
hand, when I really was working on isolations or differentiation in the
body and do a lot of work off-center at a certain point, [the]
asymmetrical kind of thing. At a certain point you begin to see a hand
beginning to do something different. One of the most exciting ones that
I've seen recently is one of the fellows. Suddenly that foot started in
rhythmic patterns out here. Well, I guess what I'm saying is, I think
there's a developmental pattern that goes from this gross body movement
to a refinement; rhythmic energy using different parts of the body. Now
that's undoubtedly related to the imagery getting stronger and with more
ramifications in the imagery. I've said to Linda so many times, "I've
known it for a long time, but now I really know that we need some very
significant developmental studies." From a young child, like some of
those marvelous studies we have in the visual arts, you know, from two
years old to twelve years old. I think we would find that if you
facilitate with your knowledge and build this inner sensing and this
imagery potential, you would find a sophistication in form developing in
dance, exactly as [Henry] Schaefer-Simmern showed in that research he
did with painting and a more recent one with the child, Heidi's Horse [by Sylvia Fein], that shows the
sophistication that child went through in a period of time. And you see
[development facilitated] without ever once saying, "Now, today we're
going to work on this," and "Yes, you did it" and "No, you didn't do
it," and that— Well, that's what has me absolutely fascinated, and
that's why I said a while ago, I think it's not a case of just passing
on what you've learned, but it's a case of enriching in a very subtle
way and allowing the discovery and growth. In dance, which— Well, I
think they're saying this at all learning, that the felt experience must
be involved in the learning experience. For instance, Eugene Gendlin
says that there can be no real learning until it's connected with the
felt aspect. But in dance, if dance, if choreography comes out of human
experience, and particularly the felt aspect of human experience
(because you can't state it any other way), then it's absolutely
critical that we help the person get in touch with that felt aspect of
their life. And our society has crushed it constantly from about five
years on. So that's what I'm doing, and the last— It's interesting also
how each semester I've pushed it faster, and this last semester, in the
early part, I even was talking more specifically about dance and about
choreography, and this year I'm going to push it even faster. The things
that came at the end last year in those videos, if you were to present
it in a studio, people would have said that they were dance studies that
they did at the end of the period, but they never were established as
studies. Does that make sense, what I'm saying?
-
SNYDER
- [affirmative] Alma, I'm not sure that this belongs here, but you had
suggested that this was related. I mentioned to you that in listening to
your remarks about John Martin—the reaction of the students to some of
John's ideas, where you said he was very, very definite about his own
thinking about things and that some of the students got very irritated
or even angry at the ideas, and yet there was great learning that had
occurred in that process— and I was interested in your saying this,
because it certainly is just the opposite from the learning process that
you've just been describing; yet when we talked about this in our
preview of today's session, you said you didn't think these two things
were incompatible at all.
-
HAWKINS
- See, I think if John had added a studio experience, he would have added
another element, though he had specific ideas of what ought to go in.
But relating it back to my own, for instance, in the first thirty
minutes of the session, I'm presenting material, and I present very
definite material: the nature of art, how it's related to human
experience, what we know about the two modes of consciousness, the two
ways of knowing. I quote people who have done research on this; and I'm
saying, many times, everybody has to decide what they believe, but I
believe this. So I'm presenting very clearly where I am and sharing the
knowledge that I've acquired. Now I don't say you must give it back to
me in the next sessions, but I'm presenting it. The whole purpose is to
take them into a new area of experience. I remember, in teaching the
philosophy class many times, I would do the same thing. I guess for a
long time I have said, there may be others— I often say even now, there
are others that wouldn't agree with me on this, but this is what I
believe. You have to decide what you believe. I used to do that in
philosophy class a lot. So I think there's a place for both, but always
with the under-standing that you have to decide your own: what you
believe. If it comes to— Then the creative part, then I think that is
input of background. But you've got to free the individual to make his
own statement and not be critical about it, because all the research on
creativity shows us that there has to be trust in the situation, there
has to be safeness, psychological safeness. I knew it before, but if I
didn't know it, I would have learned it in therapy: people are not going
to expose themselves. The minute you begin to move, you are becoming
very vulnerable. If you think it isn't safe, you tend to hold back. So
that environment has to be supportive, I think. The example of this,
where I'm working now, I always say more than once at the beginning of
the semester, "Now, there is no right or wrong. I'm never going to tell
you that's wrong. It is your own statement." Again and again, I will
have people say at the end, when we come together at the end of that
session and reflect back over the experience and share, and again and
again somebody will say, "Well, I really didn't want to do that when you
said that, but I sort of thought maybe I ought to." So then I always
come back with, "Well, next time you stay with where you are." But with
adults it takes a good deal of the experience before they actually trust
you, that you're not going to expect certain results. You know, on the
sharing thing, which obviously I got out of therapy— I used to do that
with the freshman majors. We'd come together at the end of the period
for something or other.
-
SNYDER
- Yes. Isn't that really the group process?
-
HAWKINS
- Of course. We didn't spend long but did it. But talking about—What they
often pick up on is: "That image just really didn't work," or whatever.
But the sharing of that seems to be extremely helpful to people who are
having difficulty getting into the imaging. Suddenly they have said,
"All those things happen for you? That doesn't happen for me." There
seems to be a freeing kind of thing of what is a potential and movement
toward that. Of course, the other thing that comes out of sharing is
that I think the verbal— Following this other level of thought process
often brings a new clarification and a new kind of synthesis, which then
goes back into it the next week. It's fascinating; I don't think there's
anything that's more fascinating. Like I said earlier, this— The
movement is so basic to the human being's life, just in [the] everyday
world, and it's so basic a means of expression that goes all the way
from everyday gesture to forming. I believe that movement is the most
basic means of integrating and forming the felt aspect of life, this
whole symbolization experience. You see, I would dream of dance
departments— If the world allows it to evolve that way, I see the dance
department— Well, like Rugg said, it's the center of the university. I
see dance being one of the most fundamental disciplines in the
university. Because, like we've said in some of our groups sometimes,
it's sad but true that some of the literature that's coming out on
movement and its significant role is not coming out of dance. Yet we're
the ones that have the stuff in our hands. If I were still working in a
university, I think that's the direction I would try to move it,
[toward] a better understanding of this basic phenomenon, movement, and
the many, many ramifications that it has. The relationship it has to the
choreography and to the real art and the ramifications it has into the
whole interaction, interrelationship, sharing communication. I think
that begins to merge over into the ethnology and its role in the
cultures and into the— If you really follow the role of movement in the
developmental process, what happens in emotional disturbance, illness,
is the thought process gets blocked or there is a regression in
movement. So then the role of movement is helping one reexperience,
reactivate this means of discovery in everyday living. Not only seeing,
but the experiencing of the basic, basic nature of movement related to
living, to art, and to the thought process. That whole thought process,
this other way of knowing, I think, is one of the real frontiers for the
dance department in the years ahead. That, then, cuts across not only
the choreography but the therapy and the ethnology. Does that sound
farfetched?
-
SNYDER
- No.
-
HAWKINS
- I read just recently where someone was saying that one of the great
needs was [for] integrators today. I felt that for so long, and I guess
in a sense I played a little bit of that role in what I've done, taking
the knowledge that has come out of research and experiential work in the
different fields and seeing its ramifications for our own discipline. I
think this kind of integration contributes to a further kind of
development. Maybe that's one of the roles the doctoral program can
play. It's such an exciting field. Another thing: Talking about these
interrelationships in this particular class I'm teaching, I am not
saying a single word about therapy; I'm not referring to anything in
therapy. But when I am able to begin to get them to get in touch with
felt experience and inner sensing and I use imagery that has nothing to
do with therapy, what do I get? I get things that are very personal,
related to their own personal problems. And this is another one: I've
got so many threads that seem to be developing. It seems that first one
has to deal with the material in terms of self and where you are in
terms of your own needs, your own relationships. It's only after you've
started moving through that that you can begin to see the relationships
of a specific [thing] to the world out there. I was intrigued especially
with that this last spring and struggling with approaches that would
help them move to that other level of abstraction. But the interesting
thing is, when you begin to get some of the transition into that, or
when they work long enough with this, they begin to see their own
problem in a new light, and it frees them to move on. Maybe that doesn't
make sense, but, for example, I find the image of a tightrope is a
marvelous image, because it's very open-ended, and you can just plain
walk the imaginary tightrope, if that's where you are, or it may
immediately transfer into a much larger concept. This last year, after
we had moved through that image, wherever they took it, I said, "This
time, take it in terms of a life situation; moving through life,
encountering certain problems, and so on. Then [continue] in terms of
another person doing that." One of the challenging questions I'm
working on right now is, how do you move from the concrete to the
abstract, how do you move from self to viewing it in terms of other
people, which I think is essential, to get at the essence, which then
leads you to abstracting that is universal in nature.
1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO
AUGUST 10, 1981
-
SNYDER
- As we were shifting the tape, you mentioned that you wished that others
were having the kind of experience that you're now having in getting at
these very root experiences in teaching. How can that happen?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, I suppose there has to be the desire to explore something or the
awareness of something you believe is true, and you have to have a
chance to try it out. It gets back to that commitment we were talking
about earlier. Then, it also says that if you're doing it within a
university framework, you have to have some kind of open-ended things.
You have to be willing to trust what comes. Well, I'm just thinking in
my mind that— Let's say the whole four-year core program decided that it
wanted to— First of all, you'd have to clarify what it was trying to do
and be very committed to it and then have some kind of— And you took
them through a sequential progression. You'd have to be willing to
believe that quality movement patterns are going to come out and be
willing to take whatever did come out, because if you didn't you'd
immediately begin pushing them into molds. So maybe there needs to be an
experimental class within the university, like I'm doing an experimental
class over there [Santa Monica Community College], as a tryout kind of
thing. I don't know? it's very complicated. [There's] been lots of
discussion in the last few years about the problems with the core
concept—with technique and choreography involved in the same class—
because people come in at different levels; and I think that's a real
fact. I still like the idea of being able to integrate it all, but I
believe if you have a basic philosophy, a way of working with techniques
so you weren't just teaching techniques and making technicians, and if
the people teaching the technique were committed to and understood and
also [were] using some of the same approaches that you were using in the
choreography, I think it might be possible to separate technique and
choreography. I've thought a lot about that, because, you see, Linda
[Gold]' s working with the technical development—they also do creative
work, but that's where they get their technique. Some of the same people
are working with me in my class. Well, the thing that's happened is that
both Mary Bender and Linda have worked with me (Linda has worked with me
every semester since I've been there); they take the concepts back into
their class and are using them in their approach. So really what I'm
saying, going the long way around, is if there was a common kind of
understanding about the teaching-learning process and what are the
essentials and the way of working, then I don't think it would be too
difficult. The beautiful thing about the relationship of those two
aspects in the early days was that we didn't teach technique, we worked
with movement, and we worked with improvisation, and we just slid it
right into the choreography. Maybe that isn't practical today, but I
know it's made a difference in the teaching here, in the way of
teaching. But maybe if, like we were saying earlier, if maybe a
university faculty—any one of these universities that had developed—
reassessed and were clear in commitment, probably the more difficult
thing would be the approach to learning, to get a commonality of belief.
Then maybe [they would] need to do an experimental group—don't need to
call it experimental, but give it a name. That might be one way of
breaking through to new approaches; it might be a faster way than trying
to shift a faculty of thirty-five.
-
SNYDER
- This is the last side of the last tape, and there are a few important
things that I think we've overlooked. I don't want to lose this last
train of thought, which, because it's your most recent, is also probably
the most important, but perhaps it would be important also to go back.
One area that we didn't really talk about is, we talked a little bit
about the development of the [dance] ethnology program in the
department, which is one of what are now the four critical areas in the
graduate program. We've mentioned the name ethnic arts several times,
but that was actually a different program outside of the dance
department, which you were again leader in establishing. I think that
would be important to enter into this tape, and perhaps in talking about
the ethnic arts [program], this will also clarify the ethnology program
as well.
-
HAWKINS
- Then we can add a few things about the ethnology. Well, the ethnic arts
major was established in 1972, and it turned out to be a curriculum that
drew from five different departments: dance, art, music, theater, and
anthropology.
-
SNYDER
- Six: folklore and mythology.
-
HAWKINS
- Folklore and mythology, right. So it was six departments, wasn't it? And
it was designed to offer an opportunity for [an] individualized program
based on a student's particular interest. It's interesting that the
major really grew out of a period of campus unrest and a lot of pressure
from students for new approaches to undergraduate education. I guess one
of the elements that started all that was the so-called student strike
in, I think it was 1968, during the Vietnam period, that brought about
this student pressure and also caused faculty to start looking at
methods, courses they were offered, the requirements that were held and
the curriculum opportunities. I was working with a university committee
that was doing this very kind of exploration of possibilities,
particularly at the undergraduate level, and I suddenly thought of this
combination of the courses from these various departments that would be
more liberal in nature, more general in nature, and not tied directly to
a graduate education degree. That's what the students were so concerned
about: that everything in the undergraduate meant you were building
yourself to do graduate, and some people didn't want to go on and do
graduate work. I felt that the broad experience in the so-called ethnic
arts could provide a foundation that could be useful in several fields
of study. I know I was very interested at that point in how valuable it
could be to the elementary teacher; I was still working in CEMREL.
[Central Midwestern Regional Educational Laboratory], and I thought, if
the student did an undergraduate major in ethnic arts and then went on
to the elementary teacher [preparation], it would be a very rich
background. It was built so that it could be a very general program,
drawing from all of these areas. But even though we knew we were trying
to build something that wasn't tied to a graduate degree, we also knew
that some students would want that and would be concerned if they had
too many deficiencies. So we made options, so [that] the student was
aware of the kind of courses they would need to take if they wanted to
go on in art or theater or whichever department. The committee was made
up of the chairmen of these six departments and met regularly over a
period of months—what was it, two years?
-
SNYDER
- I think two years, yes.
-
HAWKINS
- Two years. And met at rather regular intervals. It was a remarkable
committee. As far as I know it's the first time that chairmen, not
people from departments— that wouldn't be remarkable—but the chairmen of
departments, met regularly over that long a period of time to develop,
create a new kind of major. There was a tremendous kind of commitment
and input and really creative endeavor, I think, and we finally did get
the program curriculum developed and approved, and the students
enrolled, and it is still an active program. Has it grown in numbers, or
has it stayed about the same?
-
SNYDER
- It's stayed about the same; it's wobbled around a bit, I think. The
whole history of what students were looking for was certainly reflected
in the enrollment. I've been very interested because in the last year or
so, I feel in a very different way that students are again excited about
the notion of an integrated program. There was a period in between that
they got very afraid of the fact that it wasn't specifically directed
towards something, towards a graduate program, and they were afraid of
being committed to that kind of an undergraduate degree. But a number of
students now really are hungry for a true liberal arts program, and the
ethnic arts curriculum, I think, remains the truest liberal arts program
in the university. I think we've really—and I'm speaking now as the
continuing coordinator of the program—we are passing now into a new
level in that program, a different kind of university interest and
support, and I think it will continue to make its contribution. It's
interesting, Alma, and this you spoke about a while ago, if one of the
premises of the dance department was that our central concern was with
modern dance, then the rest of the curriculum would unfold in a certain
direction. It's my feeling that with both my experience along with Elsie
Dunin, another member of both the faculty in the ethnic arts as well as
in the dance ethnology, and Judy [Judith] Susilo, joint faculty in both
programs, that perhaps one of the things that we. 're wondering in terms
of the curriculum for the dance department is whether simply focusing on
modern dance is in fact what the department should be doing now as more
students and more of us on the faculty begin to attempt to understand
world dance in its many, many forms and find ourselves that such an
enriching experience— I think we're tempted to say we would like to see
more of the dance majors get that larger perspective. It in turn, I
think, allows for some of those fundamental questions that you're
suggesting we should be constantly looking at: What is dance? What does
dance say? What does dance affect in society? I'm wondering what your
feeling about this larger perspective is, and whether it should be
allowed to more effectively intrude on the parameters of the curriculum
of the dance department.
-
HAWKINS
- Well, I think two things: this is not what you're implying, but I'm
jumping to another thing. I think the department has to decide what they
can do, what they want to do, and what they can do. For example, some
departments have a major in ballet in the undergraduate, along with a
major in modern. I personally like the idea [of] a solid base, and then
moving out. However, when we first introduced the ethnic dance
performance classes, we did it and moved from the half-unit folk dance
class to the two-unit courses in ethnic dance—Yugoslavia, Bali, and
Java, I believe, were the first ones. o We did it because it was
important for our dance majors to understand something about dance of
other cultures. Then we gradually added more: Mexico and Yemen. Not that
they would take all of them or become expert in all of them, but that
they would experience that other form of dance for two kind of reasons;
one was just what you said, to understand something about dance in a
larger world view, and also we felt that using the body in different
ways would make them aware of different potential of movement than our
so-called modern dance tends to use. So yes, I do think we should have
that, and the further development of that was done primarily as a part
of the dance major. The idea of a specialization grew out of the idea
that some people would experience that and want to go on in modern
dance. Exactly how you do it— What I understand now is that there are so
many pressing needs that students don't always get ethnic dance courses.
In those days they did. I think almost every major had at least one
experience in another culture. Exactly how you get that, I don't know. I
still like the idea of being integrated at the senior year. Maybe what
has been the lower division comprehensive course, a 70 course, maybe
that needs to be rethought or redone. I always felt that was a very good
course; I guess the question is, how does one expose the major to these
areas; when and how? In the original major we had several courses— what
was it, three or five?—from the other arts. Those have gradually gone
because of pressures of time, which is kind of too bad. Maybe there
needs to be a requirement in something in the ethnic dance at the
undergraduate level, with elective possibility within them. With the
pressures that are on programs now, it seems you have to have some kind
of safeguards or— Another area which I hesitate to get into, but you can
do so much in advising. I know it's a different day, but all those years
when I was doing all the advising, I was constantly making them aware
and not saying, "You must," but "And what about this; would you be
interested in this?" Or "Were you interested in a Methods of Teaching
Dance?" It wasn't required. I think one of the tendencies when a
department gets large and gets compartmentalized and the requirements
grow with less electives available, the tendency is to follow the
structure, and the student is so busy. One of the sad things, I think,
is that you lose that; as departments get larger, you lose that sense of
a person knowing the student and guiding the student into the larger
concepts all the time. I feel that way about the graduate program too,
the tendency to get it so specialized that students— I felt it was one
of the very special things about our graduate program that they could
work in the area that was of their special interest. But also they could
take advantage of the wealth of the department that other departments
didn't have. For example, I always felt it was very good for people in
dance therapy to take the graduate courses in education, because after
all, they are using leadership skills. The cross-cutting [is so
valuable], and when it gets to specialized, you lose that value. But
maybe, as we said I think earlier, maybe when the doctoral program
comes, that can make a little more flexibility. It is sad though,
because there is not such wealth across the board in any other graduate
program in the United States, and for a student to come and just go one
path is unfortunate. But going back to the ethnic arts major and its
generalized— It's now existed ten years. Granted, it's changed, but it
does show that an integrated program cutting across different
departments can work. It does show that you can get chairmen of
departments to work together on things.
-
SNYDER
- It's interesting also: I think it's the only program born out of that
attempt to respond to the student turmoil that has survived. All the
rest were implemented and then [it was] decided to go back to other
structures.
-
HAWKINS
- I think that's probably true. Of course, again it means that somebody
has to believe in it, and somebody has to do a lot of work. Like when at
that particular time, students were concerned about not having contact
with professors; [there were instead] teaching assistants and professors
teaching big classes, but the faculty concern didn't last very long. The
contact with full professors was marvelous while it lasted, but the
concept of students having more contact with outstanding professors got
lost. It doesn't happen without a lot of work, does it?
-
SNYDER
- No, nothing does.
-
HAWKINS
- That's true.
-
SNYDER
- I have the feeling that we're both getting towards the end of our
endurance here. Are there [any] thoughts that you want to close with?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, I don't know about that; I'll think about that, but there are a
couple of dates we probably ought to get recorded in this. The day I
came here, it was 1953. And the day I left the chairperson role was
1974, and I retired in 1977; that is the complete cycle. No particular
thoughts, I guess, except I think that the future potential is great for
the dance department at UCLA, in a great university. The opportunity and
the challenge— To pioneer and be on the forefront of some new edges
today that have implications for dance. I just hope that is possible.
Time will tell.
-
SNYDER
- Before we were actually starting to make the tape this morning, we were
looking at the Brain Mind Bulletin. You were
speaking a little bit about the whole developing research in the two
sides of the brain, and so forth. Are there other areas of research now
in other fields that you feel will give even greater strength to the
core of the importance of dance as a basic experience for human beings,
which you've spoken about so eloquently a little while ago in the
context of introducing dance into all areas of education?
-
HAWKINS
- Well, there are a couple that interest me very much besides the brain
research. More and more literature is coming out on form, and a lot of
it I don't understand, but I know it's so. I'm fascinated that people in
physics are moving into that realm and dealing with things that are very
relevant to where we are: the whole form concept. They go all the way
from the individual and the biological base to the cosmic base, and
somehow I think that the new concepts—some of them aren't so new, as
I've just been reading; some of them were stated very clearly years and
years ago—not only the disintegrating but the integrating and the
evolving, fascinates me, and I think it has real relationship to
symbolization and dance choreography. Then the other one is the things
that are happening in the way we look at movement—not as dance, but
movement in relation to the human being and in relation to expression,
in relation to behavior. It's called all kinds of things, but there is
an awareness today of movement out in the field— Years ago, when I
started, movement was activity and physical education and fun and games,
and now there's research seeing it in a very different way. Then, of
course, the other one that isn't particularly related to dance that I
still read in every time I get a chance is the whole area of human
development and human interaction and the self-actualizing tendency.
That seems to be recognized more and more, because that's the humanistic
psychology trend. And they all impinge on each other.
-
SNYDER
- I think here's where you said that didn't relate to dance, [but] isn't
dance a very fundamental bringing together of a variety of things?
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HAWKINS
- For me it is; for me it's the core. But a lot of people— What I guess I
meant was that it isn't a specific movement in choreographic
development, but it's the underpinning, it's the core. That's, of
course, what I said a while ago. The thing I'm seeing is that until you
do something about that, you can't get on to the other business. I think
that one of the things that is so important in our field (I guess in all
fields) is that some people— Everybody can't play that role, but some
people are playing the role of being aware of these foundational
knowledges that are in other fields and seeing the implication and
bringing them to bear and integrating them and at the same time evolving
of the specifics of dance. I guess that gets back to what we talked
about earlier, about [how we] need some kind of integrating visionary
role. It really is an integrating role. For years I found as I read—and
I don't read in dance; I read in everything else—but I'm constantly
translating what I'm reading in my own specific area. I remember I used
to tell students, take philosophy or other courses. They're not going to
be talking about dance therapy, but you've got to get the essence of
that and then see what the implications are for— What's so exciting is
when you're reading—sometimes very frustrating—you're reading in another
field, and you say, "That's exactly what I'm doing; it's what I'm
interested in, what I want to move ahead with."
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SNYDER
- Well, it seems to me that these last statements—while you didn't intend
them to be closing statements, they suggest why you were, have been, and
will continue to be a leader in the field, because you have always
reached out to the very broadest perspective and brought it back to that
thing which you love so deeply: dance and the movement and the
expression in the human being. I think we should end now. Thank you for
the experience of sharing this with me; I'm excited that it's now on
tape so that it will be shared with others as well.
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HAWKINS
- Well, I really have enjoyed doing it, and I appreciate it being done,
and I appreciate you doing the interviewing. It was really fun to talk.
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SNYDER
- It was wonderful. So we come to an end.