My Fifteen Minutes of Choreography Fame

Renaissance, square, contra, social, modern, international folk: I’ve done many kinds of dance over the years, none of them well. When I failed the audition for the modern dance honorary Junior Orchesis in high school, the judges said my choreography was creative and original but I didn’t point my toes on the leaps.

Composing dances was always fun. Even as a beginner, my response to any new step was, “Here is my variation.” Floor plans in choreography appealed to the same part of me as maps and house plans. My teacher, Toni Intravaia, was among the few dance instructors anywhere to teach children Labanotation, a system to record human movement on paper. That led to my implausible credential as a prize-winning choreographer with “Country Capers,” national winner of the Dance Notation Bureau’s Junior Dansnotator Choreography Contest.

Today, handheld devices can record movement electronically, and digital technology lets me rediscover “County Capers” on my computer. Labanotation expert and Dance Notation Bureau co-founder Ann Hutchinson Guest turned 100 this past Saturday. Toni Intravaia died this past April at 95. I’m ever grateful for their encouragement of children’s creativity more than half a century ago, even if I never did learn to point my toes.