Dance is the art of movement. Democracy is the practice of social equality and respect for the individual within the community. Is it possible to express the principles of democracy in dance? Barbara Mettler (1907-2002), creative dance pioneer, addressed this question in a career that spanned more than 60 years. 

Mettler was active from the 1930s through the mid-1990s. Her work was characterized by her commitment to free movement expression and her use of improvisation with large groups of dancers.

She practiced an accessible and egalitarian approach to the art of body movement. Her work was organized around her conviction that dancing is a basic human need and therefore must be accessible to all people (1985). “Creative dance expression is for everyone: everyone can dance,” she wrote (Mettler, 1953, p. 118). She identified a democratic philosophy based on equal opportunity for participation. She developed methods to support people of all ages and abilities in finding their own ways to move alone and with others. Her students learned to balance their individual freedom with the needs of other dancers in order to create satisfying group forms. In doing so they discovered that active engagement with others can empower the individual. One might experience the wonder of having their movement amplified by the “community” of dancers. Or one might discover new ways to express oneself by taking on another’s movements. One might be called on to lead, or follow, or to take on a completely unfamiliar role within a creative study. Everyone had equal value to the dance and everyone bore equal responsibility for its fulfillment.

Underlying all her methods was the principle idea of freedom of movement and self-expression.“Freedom is the basis of my work,” she stated in the 1983 PBS documentary, "Face of Wisdom." To be free, she explained, dancers must be allowed to find their own unique expression; but, Mettler cautioned, “It isn’t just moving around. It is the form that satisfies.” The dancer must objectively shape the material of movement to achieve a clear outwardly perceptible pattern. Though individual creative expression was paramount to Mettler, she recognized the need for each person to function within the greater reality of community and also said, “We are not alone in the world. Our humanity demands relationship to others.”

Mettler’s perspective on democracy can be summarized in this way: Every person is welcome and valued in the dance. Everyone is expected to contribute but individuals must have freedom to find their own way to participate. As members of a creatively functioning group, dancers must learn to look beyond themselves and recognize the needs of their fellow group members. The group is responsible for including and supporting the individual. The ongoing balancing act of individual and group needs is a creative problem that is rich in possible solutions.

The roots of Mettler’s commitment to creative freedom and democracy can be found in her childhood. She characterized her childhood home as supportive and stimulating. “We had a lively home which was always filled with family and friends and where the arts were practiced as ordinary, everyday activities” Her mother acted. Her father was a musician. Her sister painted and wrote poetry. Mettler, of course, danced, continuing, “I skipped and hopped and swung and turned and rolled and rocked for no other purpose than to create enjoyable moveable experiences” (Mettler, 1985, p. 8).  Yet, Mettler remembers refusing to show her dancing for her parents’ friends, explaining, “A child knows nothing about the theories of art but I could sense an over-emphasis on performance, whereas to me – then as now – dance and music were creative art activities, valid whether or not they were performed for others” (Mettler, 1985, p. 8).

She loved to move and dance, yet found no satisfaction in the formal dance training available to her. In her autobiographical work, Dance as an Element of Life, she wrote, “My eight years in high school and college were lost years because they offered me no opportunity to grow as dancer beyond the level I had achieved in childhood" (p. 9).  Mettler relied on sports to satisfy her need for movement. In  high school she had a brief opportunity to study with Margaret H’Doubler. “I was one of only two girls who loved the classes and we were ridiculed by our classmates who contemptuously called it ‘flitting’ "(p. 9).” She found social dancing unsatisfying for her partners had “no movement, no rhythm, no relationship to the music" (p. 9).  During her college years dance was available as an extracurricular activity. Mettler joined a class, “but when I was put in a green frog costume and directed jump around on all fours under a tree to Tchaikovsky's music, I felt humiliated and gave up on college dancing" (p. 9).

Mettler lost touch with her love of movement until she attended a concert by Irma Duncan’s dance group. The daughter of Isadora Duncan, Irma Duncan’s work similarly built on natural human movement elevated to artistic expression. “It was a bombshell to me. I knew that dance was my field and I was ready to follow the Duncan dancers back to their school in Moscow” (Mettler 1985, p. 10).  The friend who had accompanied Mettler to the program kindly informed her that she was too old and that one must begin dance training as a young child. Mettler remembers feeling deeply disappointed; “I believed him and the door was closed on the one thing I really wanted” (Mettler 1985, p. 10).

It was not until a vacation abroad in the late 1920s that Mettler found a way to reconnect with her love of movement. By chance she visited the Mary Wigman School of Dance in Berlin. “This time the walls fell down. I knew that I could and must study dance and that, if I could just have one year at this school, my life would have some meaning” (Mettler 1985, p. 10). Mettler managed to rearrange her life to study with Wigman in Dresden, Germany for two years in the early 1930s. Mettler felt her time in Germany was too short to allow her to integrate or fully understand what she had learned. Yet having been denied the thing she most loved for so long, it is no wonder she took to heart Wigman’s belief that “Everyone can dance” (trans. Sorrel 1975, p. 53) and used it to guide the choices she would make over the coming years.

When Mettler returned to the USA she first settled in New York City. This time period has been called “The Heroic Age of Modern Dance” and New York City was a hub of innovation and experimentation. The influence of the Denishawn dancers and German Expressionistic dance inspired a generation of choreographers and dancers who at this time were developing new techniques and new philosophies to express their ideas (Cohen, 2013). Mettler took classes with Martha Graham and understudied briefly with the Doris Humphreys Dance Company before opening her own studio to better pursue her distinct path.

During her six years in the city Mettler began to believe that the focus on dance performance prevalent at that time ran counter to the very ideas of creativity, freedom and equality that she pursued. “Dance is an activity. . . It is primarily something to do and only secondarily something to show“ (Mettler 1989, p. 409). People are social creatures, however, and Mettler recognized that performance could be a way to share the experience of dance. When Mettler presented her work for an audience she favored the use of a circular space with the audience seated around the dancers so that they could experience the movement up close and from all directions. Her goal was for the audience members to observe creatively and to “sense the dancers’ movements in their own muscles and be part of the dance” (Mettler 1989, p. 409).

Mettler felt that as other schools of modern dance perfected their forms of technical expertise in order to create set pieces for audiences, a kind of exclusivity developed that set some dancers apart from others and valued professionals above amateurs. She remembered,

Eventually Mettler left the city and opened a school in rural New Hampshire where she taught and developed her work for thirteen years. Later came more moves, first to Boston, Massachusetts and in 1960 to Tucson, Arizona where the Tucson Creative Dance Center became her permanent home. But it was in New Hampshire that she first articulated the philosophy and principles that would guide her work. In her converted barn studio and the fields surrounding it she put her methods for teaching into practice and developed principles that would define her work.

“Modern dance is modern only if it has a democratic philosophy,” she wrote (Mettler 1953). As she saw it, this meant that first and foremost, dance is for everyone; and that second, it was incumbent on the teacher to make dance accessible by meeting the students on their own terms. She felt this was best accomplished with “Free creative expression . . . freedom for every individual to find his own unique forms of expression according to his age, sex, body structure, temperament and life experience” (Mettler 1953). Mettler taught all comers--“They were college students, office workers, teachers, housewives, men and women, employed and unemployed”(Metter 1985, p.14).

Mettler’s classes began with the movements that her students already knew how to make. She would expand that range with creative studies using the “everyday language of movement.” (Mettler 1989, p. 53)  “Wiggle, stretch, shake . . . twist” were typical directions for students followed by the questions, “How can you stretch? Can you find new ways to stretch?” (Mettler 1973, pers. comm., June 22). The force, time and space elements of dance were introduced as a series of creative problems that were solved through improvisation by individuals or groups.  Classes were taught in a circular space with no mirrors, no front and no “top of the class.” Within the creative process each person was important and equally valued.

Individual freedom was essential in Mettler’s work yet she was well known for developing the practice of group dance improvisation. In her mind,

Later she wrote, “The group expresses itself through its members just as its members express themselves through the group” (Mettler 1989, p. 409).

“Large group dance improvisation is known as a contribution of mine,” Mettler acknowledged in Face of Wisdom (1983). Today practitioners in many movement disciplines improvise in groups and draw their material from the dancers’ inner experience rather than focusing on the technical virtuosity of performance. Yet Mettler’s work remains unique. It is similar to authentic movement, a technique developed by another Wigman student, Mary Starks Whitehouse. Mettler’s work, however, is focused on outer expression while authentic movement “invites descent into the inner world of the psyche” (Stromsted 2008). Mettler acknowledged that her work began in one’s inner self, but she demanded that her dancers keep their attention outward and “have as objective an attitude toward the movements of one’s body as the sculptor has toward his clay. . .” (Mettler 1953). Contact improvisation, introduced by Steve Paxton in 1972, is one of the better known forms of improvised dancing and shares Mettler’s creative attitude and sensitivity to following movement feeling. However, “contact improvisation is a dance technique in which points of physical contact provide the starting point for exploration” (Novack, 1990). In Mettler’s work the starting point is the movement impulse which might lead dancers to be in physical contact, or they might be separated by a large stretch of empty space. Regardless of proximity, they will be in a movement relationship and attentive to the force, time and space qualities of the dance as it unfolds.

Barbara Mettler’s work is an example of a living democratic process. Individuals are supported in their development and given the creative freedom to find their own way forward. A satisfying group dance improvisation is more than a collection of individuals going their own way, however. Every group member maintains awareness of the larger community. This allows them to make creative choices that are shaped by both individual need and group feeling. The requirements of the dance transcend personal preferences. When balance between group and individual needs is achieved, a functional creative community emerges that has potential for expression far beyond that of any one person’s abilities.

The experience of balancing one’s personal need with one’s responsibility to the larger community within a dance reflects real life. Who among us has not had to struggle at times to contain an impulse to act or had to force ourselves to speak up in a group? What would our lives be like if we felt free to contribute to our society in ways that fulfilled our needs while supporting the greater good? And what if that society gave us the means to develop our full potential as a person? For Mettler, dance was one path to a functioning democratic society that would celebrate the individual and simultaneously create a strong community.