Margaret Barr

Margaret Barr (29 November 1904 – 29 May 1991) was an Australian choreographer and teacher of dance-drama who worked in the United States, England, New Zealand and Australia. During a career of more than sixty years, she created over eighty works. She had one younger sister, Betty. After time spent with other family members in the United States and England, Margaret and her sister settled with their parents in Santa Barbara, California, They studied drama with Little Theatre Movement founders Maurice Browne and Ellen Van Volkenburg, then briefly ran their own dance school.

Career England, 1929–1939 In 1929, Barr left New York for London,

At Dartington Hall, Barr taught dance-mime. Dance historian Garry Lester has explained, "The work was called 'dance-mime' for very clear reasons: the choreography clearly had movement as its basis, valuing and using the attributes of modern dance (in terms of the form it took, the structuring of component parts and the movement style), and relied equally on finding and sustaining through improvisation the character of the protagonists within each of her works." and taught both students at the school and, through the Workers' Educational Association, groups of people from the surrounding communities. Several reviewers were struck by the way some pieces "welded the group of thirty adults into a unity that was so purposeful that no one in the audience was left unmoved"; in particular, dance critic John Martin wrote: "The unity of spirit with which they worked together provided a model of ensemble playing." Lester observes that "Margaret practised the politics of inclusion, with a simple pre-requisite: participants must show commitment to the work itself and the idea of a 'group'." Plain Song; Its first production was Pacific, incorporating Polynesian dances.

Critics had strong, and strongly contrasting, responses to Barr's work in England. W. A. Darlington, reviewing a performance at the Arts Theatre, London, described it as "nothing better than posturing and pattern-weaving ... [despite] "moments of sheer beauty — especially in The Three Sisters and in a little Hebridean scene, The Storm ... immense pains and skill were being wasted".

Dance critic Fernau Hall described many of Barr's works from the Dartington and London periods in his 1950 book Modern English Ballet: An Interpretation. Although Hall thought that some individual pieces were failures (describing Means Test (1937) as a "propaganda work" in which "the movements [were] so vague that the result had little meaning"),

Barr married Douglas Bruce Hart, a carpenter and communist, in London in 1936. Other works performed in New Zealand included Hebridean, Three Women, Funeral and Wedding, Breadline, and Factory.

Australia, c. 1950–1990 In 1949 Barr sailed to Sydney, Australia, with her partnerEfn|According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Barr's marriage with Hart had ended before she left New Zealand, and she sailed with a new partner, Walter Brown.

Barr became the first movement tutor at the newly established National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in 1959, a position she held for seventeen years.

In addition to her work at NIDA and with the dance-drama group, Barr was called on to develop choreography for other productions, including The Royal Hunt of the Sun for the Adelaide Festival of Arts in 1966. She collaborated with playwright Mona Brand in several works, and choreographed Austrian-Australian composer Eric Gross's Sinfonietta in 1965.

Barr died in Sydney at the Royal North Shore Hospital, by 1959, it had grown to thirty dancers; and by 1967 to forty.

The group did not have principal dancers or stars. As a 1959 article explained, "technique is made to serve expression and not vice versa, as with classical ballet." strong women; Many works explored more than one theme, and had multiple inspirations.

Australian themes Reviewers during the 1950s commented that Barr was "tackling seriously and with considerable ability the creation of Australian characters and the expression in dramatic form of many aspects of our Australian life". These themes included the Australian environment and its weather, as well as historical events and relationships between different peoples with Australia.

Bushfire (1955), with music by Dag Wirén,

Postscript from Queensland (by 1958), in which the dancers "as honey-eaters, rainbow lorikeets, green leeks, soldier birds, spangled drongos, budgerigars and kingfishers hold and absorb one's interest as they swoop, scream and swerve down to take the food proffered by the visitors." Snowy! (1961) showed the landscape of the Snowy Mountains, Snowy! was filmed twice: first in 1961, when the stage version was filmed and again at Easter 1962, as an entry for the 1962 Prix Italia, The second version was screened on ABC TV on 8 May 1963. Antill orchestrated his score with music by Australian composer Laurie Hagerty, included a "celebration of the blood of the earth poignantly caught by the bodies of the dancers", "depicts the arrival of the early explorers in Australia, their search into the unknown, while the gay Sydney colony lived on quite unaware of the tragedies occurring inland. Miss Barr once again created strong contrasts with the two topics being danced simultaneously on the stage or in the auditorium." It drew inspiration from Patrick White's novel Voss, and had music by Laurie Hagerty. First Tuesday, 11th Month, 2.43p.m., Melbourne (1967), The building of settlements was symbolised by a house with red roof timbers, inspired by paintings by Lawrence Daws. Aide Memoir 1788 1888 1988 (1988) depicted laws relating to Aboriginal welfare over the two hundred years following British colonisation of Australia.

Women Another recurring theme in Barr's work was the portrayal of strong women. to music by Elgar, was inspired by Henry Lawson's short story and by Russell Drysdale's painting of the same name. Fleur-de-Lis (by 1970), presenting the lives of Eleanor of Aquitaine, George Sand and Marie Curie. Judith Wright — Australian Poet (1974), set to 26 of Judith Wright's poems, In 1981, a forty-minute film showing Barr working with her students to rehearse this piece was made by a former student, Lois Ellis. New Sonnets from the Portuguese (1975), with music incorporating guitars and castanets, was set to music by Alan Hovhaness. A 29-minute film of this dance was made by director Rosalind Gillespie In 1980, the film of Climbers won the Silver Plaque at the 16th Chicago International Dance Film Festival. with a script by Joan Scott which was spoken live during performance by the dancers, and by an actor and actress. Ellis felt that the theme of climbing symbolised Barr's celebration of effort in her work. The Sydney Morning Herald reviewer felt that despite the concepts, original songs and music, and authentic costuming, the dancer in the central role lacked intensity, and "the scenes of village life, alternating between joy and tragedy, proceed without the core of a single strong performance to draw them together."

Anti-war Three Women (by 1941; revised from the 1930s Three Sisters), with music by Rubbra; "an acid commentary in the circumstances of war." "Grouping and lighting for "Three Women" ranged from the graphic indictment of a Daumier composition to the rich glooms and glowing highlights of a Rembrandt composition." It comprised three sections: " 'Carnivale', reworked over the years to reflect changes in social and political attitudes; 'In der Nacht' [In the night] ... an anti-war statement [with] a woman playing the violin being attacked by a helmeted soldier ... [and] 'May Day' ... a celebration of youth in harmonious movement". with music by Villa-Lobos, was "a most effective and artistically realised affirmation of support for the Vietnamese people in their struggle against American intervention. Miss Barr and her dancers portrayed graphically and movingly the assault on the Vietnamese people's customs and national dignity, the ballet's final sequence ("We face you, you Big Peoples, and are on our guard") showing them entwined in barbed wire but still offering defiant resistance." Another reviewer wrote, "one of the highlights is [Barr's] imaginative interpretations of the battle of Dien Bien Phu in dance form." The Hurdlers (1969) It was first performed at the 1969 Ballet Australia choreography competition. A Day in the Life of Mahatma Gandhi (1982), which "conveys a feeling of the contrasts in India that brought the country to crisis in Gandhi's lifetime: dust, poverty and desperation among the Indians against the autocratic, leisured luxury (relatively speaking) of the British Raj." which explored the Catholic Church's reactions to priests' and nuns' commitment to liberation theology.

Inspired by paintings

Breadline (c. 1929), with "brilliant and colourful sequences" was based on the painting of the same name by Elaine Haxton, and had music by Arnold Butcher. This was a tribute also to Dolores Ibárruri, and depicted aspects of Spanish society, and Lorca's and Ibárruri's lives and struggles. "an interesting, at times exciting presentation. There are moments of humour and horror, joviality and lyricism ... But ... t comes out as a series of costumed tableaus rather than a dance drama. It has moments of complete achievement, but between them it depreciates disappointingly." The First Anniversary (not new in 1955), and depicted life on board ship as symbolic of everyday life, with its storms and quests for adventure. Le Sacre du Printemps / The Rite of Spring, (1962, first produced in 1946) to music by Stravinsky, disappointed some reviewers. One commented that "nexpectedly, from the choreographer's dynamic history, this came out with a gentle, lyrical, pastoral quality", which he felt failed to match "the savage harshness and tremendous vigour of the Stravinsky music." Parts of it did please another reviewer: "n the 'Introduction' ... ecumbent dancers, in effective and evocative green costumes with white and black markings, create the primal awakening of the earth. In their groupings and movements, they become exotic plants, up-thrusting buds, spasmodic caterpillars, and beautiful, emergent butterflies." The Pratie Eaters (1983), "a typically idiosyncratic look at Ireland".

Reception During the approximately forty years in which Margaret Barr choreographed and produced dance-dramas in Australia, she was "talked about, not always with much comprehension or even friendliness." and another observed that "Working mostly with relatively untrained dancers, Margaret Barr communicates through movement in a way that eludes most choreographers working in Australia at the moment." and "control of spatial relationships",

Different opinions have been stated about the influence of Barr's dance-drama group or her seventeen years of teaching movement and improvisation at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, from 1959 to 1975. Some members of her group went on to further study of dance, including Juliette Fisher, a New Zealander and Kai Tai Chan, a Malaysian-born dancer who founded the One Extra Dance Theatre in Sydney in 1976. Theatre director and critic Rex Cramphorn, who graduated from NIDA in 1968, saw "little evidence of [Barr's] work or methods having any impact on Sydney theatre." Written by James Tulip, produced by Robert Allnutt; art by Guy Gray Smith; sung by Lauris Elms; choreographed and spoken by Margaret Barr; danced by Christine Cullen; composed by Diana Blom. 1977 — Dialogue: director Rosalind Gillespie, dancers Diedre Scholfield and Lindsay Anderson. 1980 — Climbers: Won the Silver Plaque at the 16th Chicago International Dance Film Festival. 29 mins; director Rosalind Gillespie, cinematographer Martha Ansara. 1981 — Judith Wright — Australian Poet: Barr rehearsing the dance-drama group; 40 mins, made by former student, Lois Ellis, for the Victorian Department of Education. 1981 — Women Climbing Mountains: developed in collaboration with Lois Ellis especially to be filmed. 1982 — A Day in the Life of Mahatma Gandhi: planned by Lois Ellis to document Barr's research in India for this dance-drama, its performance, and the influences on Barr's choreography.