ABSTRACT

In Doris Humphrey’s landmark work on dance composition, The Art of Making Dances (1959), she described the dynamic between words and movement:

Words can be fun, and with movement gain an added sparkle which is not found when they are used separately. At any rate, there is a special delight in their combination. I cannot remember any of these combinations of wordplay and dance on a professional stage, except by one choreographer who developed in my classes, but there have been plenty of them as a result of class work. […] This sort of thing can be great fun, and it is only in the combination of words with movement that the full flavor emerges. (Humphrey 1959, 129)