About BARBARA METTLER

BARBARA METTLER Artist or Educator? Autobiographical Sketch 2 Page 1 of 3 Although my work has become known through my teaching, I do not consider myself an educator. I am a dancer who has become deeply involved in teaching because I have needed to share with others my great love of dance as a creative art activity. I began dance in my childhood home where dancing, singing and playing the piano, painting, writing and acting were practiced by the entire family as ordinary daily life activitites. There was no radio or television, not even a record player because my father objected to "canned music". We never attended performances outside the home, with the exception of Ravinia Park. Our home was in Hubbard Woods, Illinois, on the shore of Lake Michigan. Ravinia park, a pavilion for outdoor music (and mosquitoes), was only fifteen miles away. On summer afternoons, women would bring there sewing and sit on benches listening to music while their small children (I was on of them) played in the grass at their feet. The husbands, some of whom commuted to Chicago as my father did, would come out of the city on the Northwestern train to have a picnic supper at Ravinia with their families and attend opera that night. So I became familiar with Lohengrin, Aida, Carmen, and all the rest, through which I sometimes slept. Once we attended a dance performance by Ruth Page, a ballet dancer, at Ravinia. I found it intensely boring. My father practiced neurology but was primarily a musician. He spent much of his time playing the piano. As far back as I could remember I would wake up and go to sleep to the sound of his music, always of romantic composers. I can still sometimes hear in the silence of the night the rich tones of a Chopin Nocturne or the Polonaise. We never had lessons in dance or music outside home. I danced to my father's music as naturally as a bird flies, sometimes envying a friend who went to ballroom dance classes. My father taught us to play the piano. There were two pianos in our home and father would bring home two - piano pieces easy enough for members of his family to play on the old upright while he played on the new grand. I was the youngest, so I was given the easiest. In retrospect I can see that my father was part dancer, because he was so concerned with the movement element of music. As I fumbled through my two part piano piece, he cared less about accuracy of the notes than of the rhythm. I had to be on the beat. People like to hear me play the piano and to watch me dance, but I never thought of music and dance as performance for others. To me they were fulfilling activities. When my mother would say to me , "Won't you play or dance for my friends?", I would refuse and run away. This was not shyness. It was intuitive realization that my mother was more interested in the show than in the experience. A child knows nothing about theories of art but I could sense an over-emphasis on performance and instrumental technique whereas to me - then as now - dance and music were creative art works, valid whether or not they were performed for others. next >>>