A TEI Project

Interview of Alma Hawkins

Contents

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?
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."
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.
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.
SNYDER
It was wonderful. So we come to an end.


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