page_title: Irmgard Bartenieff
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Irmgard Bartenieff / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Irmgard Bartenieff in Sarabande pour Femme, a dance reconstructed from Raoul Auger Feuillet's Choreographie (1700).
context_page_description: Irmgard Bartenieff was a dance theorist, dancer, choreographer, physical therapist, and a leading pioneer of dance therapy. A student of Rudolf Laban, she pursued cross-cultural dance analysis, and generated a new vision of possibilities for human movement and movement training. From her experiences applying Laban’s concepts of dynamism, three-dimensional movement and mobilization to the rehabilitation of people affected by polio in the 1940s, she went on to develop her own set of movement methods and exercises, known as Bartenieff Fundamentals.
  Bartenieff incorporated Laban's spatial concepts into the mechanical anatomical activity of physical therapy, in order to enhance maximal functioning. In physical therapy, that meant thinking in terms of movement in space, rather than by strengthening muscle groups alone. The introduction of spatial concepts required an awareness of intent on the part of the patient as well, that activated the patient's will and thus connected the patient's independent participation to his or her own recovery. "There is no such thing as pure “physical therapy” or pure “mental” therapy. They are continuously interrelated."
context_section_description: Irmgard Bartenieff (born February 24, 1900 in Berlin, Germany, d. August 27, 1981 in New York City) was a dancer, physical therapist, cross-cultural scholar and pioneer in the field of dance/movement therapy. A Renaissance woman who enjoyed weaving disciplines together, she was always ready to investigate movement in a variety of fields—including child development, ethnic dances, nonverbal communication and physical rehabilitation.
caption: Irmgard Bartenieff dancing
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