Ann Hutchinson Guest

Ann Hutchinson Guest ( Hutchinson; 3 November 1918 – 9 April 2022) was an American authority on dance notation and movement analysis, long based in the United Kingdom. She studied more than 80 dance notation systems and translated 20 to Labanotation. This gave her access to a number of dance works in their original version – such as Vaslav Nijinsky's L'Après-midi d'un Faune. Her extensive research, performing, and teaching career led her to establish the "Language of Dance" approach to empower educators, artists, researchers, and other professionals in their study and use of Motif notation to engage and deepen movement understanding.

Career Hutchinson Guest studied Labanotation with Sigurd Leeder at Dartington Hall in England from 1936 to 1939 and trained in modern dance and ballet. In New York, she co-founded and directed the Dance Notation Bureau, danced on Broadway and taught at the Juilliard School, the High School of the Performing Arts, the Philadelphia Dance Academy, and the Royal Academy of Dance, where she created the Language of Dance Centre UK.

Personal life and death Ann Hutchinson Guest was born on 3 November 1918, in New York City. She spent most of her childhood growing up in England (Littlehampton, Sussex; and Spelmanten, Kent, before attending Dartington Hall in Totnes, Devon). For two years, she resided in Tunbridge Wells, Kent until the house was taken over by the army and her parents returned to London and she returned to the United States, age 21. In the 1940s, she had a brief marriage with Ricky Trent, a trumpeter she had met while performing in One Touch of Venus. She performed on Broadway from 1945 to 1951 and taught at the High School of Performing Arts, Philadelphia Dance Academy, and Juilliard School of Dance until moving to London to marry Ivor Guest where she created the Language of Dance Centre UK and taught at the Royal Academy of Dance. In 1962, she married dance historian Ivor Forbes Guest and they remained together until his death in 2018. She spent summers in her cottage on Goose Pond, in Lee, Massachusetts enjoying activities at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival.

Hutchinson Guest died from heart failure at her home in Kensington, London, on 9 April 2022, aged 103.

Awards and honours For her contribution to dance research and education, Hutchinson Guest was awarded two honorary doctorates as well as many lifetime achievement awards. In 1997, she received the "Outstanding Contribution to Dance Research" award from the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD). In 1998, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Dance Studies.

In 2021, Hutchinson Guest was appointed an honorary Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Queen Elizabeth II. It was made substantive in 2022 shortly before her death, indicating she had taken British nationality.

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