Australia Dancing - Barr, Margaret (1904

Barr, Margaret (1904 - 1991)

Vining Brown, Leone: Margaret Barr Dance Drama Group in 'Antique forms in an antique sun', Ballet Australia, 1972

Margaret Barr was born in Bombay, India, and raised in England, India, and the USA. Receiving her initial dance training from Geordie Graham, she later trained at Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn’s Denishawn School, and with Martha Graham in New York. In 1923 Barr choreographed her first work, Hebridean.

In the mid 1920s Barr travelled to England, where, with Joyce Peters she established the Workshop of Modern Dance in London. In 1930 Barr took up an appointment as the director of the School of Dance Mime at Dartington Hall, Devon, becoming head of the Dance Department the following year, a post she held till her resignation in 1934. During her time at Dartington Hall she choreographed a number of dance-dramas including The Family to music by Edmund Rubbra, The Breadline to music by Lord Berners, and The People to music by Donald Ponds. Many of the works she created during this time were to specially composed scores by the composer Edmund Rubbra.

After leaving Dartington Hall Barr continued teaching and choreographing work in London, subsidising her work by taking up a position as a movement and improvisation teacher at Ronald Adam’s Embassy Theatre School during 1935. Strongly influenced by the left-wing views of her partner, and later husband, Bruce Hart, Barr began to choreograph increasingly socially and politically conscious dance-dramas, including The Three Sisters, Dance for Two with Chorus to music by Bartok, and Mill Girls, this latter about an industrial revolt by female mill workers.

In 1940 Barr travelled with her husband to Auckland, New Zealand, hoping to escape the outbreak of war. After an initially being forced by wartime regulations to work in a munitions factory for six months, Barr began working as a movement tutor at the Auckland Theatre School, which was run under the auspices of the Auckland University and the Adult Education Department. During her time at the Theatre School Barr choreographed the dance-drama The Factory. In 1948 Barr separated from Hart, a year later she married Walter Browne with whom she emigrated to Australia in 1949.

Barr restarted her performance and choreographic work in Australia with the establishment of the Margaret Barr Dance-Drama Group in the early 1950s, and later continued her teaching as the director of movement at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) from its inception in 1958, and held the position until 1975. Her choreography for the Margaret Barr Dance-Drama Group, for which she was sole choreographer and director, was motivated by strong social and political concerns. Her dance dramas ranged over diverse topics, and included such work as The Fence (1953), Voyageurs (1956), Poly Asian Nursery Rhyme (1960), The Explorers (1963), Vietnam (1970), Antique Forms in an Antique Sun (1972), Judith Wright (1974), Three Sisters of Katoomba (1975), Enclosures (1977), A Day in the Life of Mahatma Gandhi (1982), Celebration of the Desert (1984), The Wild Colonial Boy (1987). In all Barr choreographed over sixty works during her time in Australia.

Bibliography:

Joanne Harris, 'Margaret Barr, storyteller: part one Snowy', Brolga, 20 (June 2004), pp. 41-50; Joanne Harris, 'Margaret Barr, storyteller: part two Climbers', Brolga, 21 (December 2004), pp. 39-49. A list of Margaret Barr's choreography from 1923 to 1990 is in: Caryll von Sturmer, Margaret Barr: Epic Individual (Sydney: L. von Sturmer, 1993), pp. 171-173.

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