About the Lecture
How do we describe movement? What does it mean to describe movement with “movement language?” Why is that important?
In this talk, Debra McCall, Certified Movement Analyst, dancer, choreographer, and dance historian, discusses HOW we move, the qualities that personify our movement style, psyche, and inner intention. Touching upon movement over time and across cultures to illustrate the diverse applications of Laban Movement Analysis, McCall highlights her own history—from classical ballet, modern dance, dance therapy, world dance, and avant-garde performance, to the art, architecture, and archaeology of dance in ancient Rome, at the modernist 20th century Bauhaus, and in medieval reliefs of sacred dancers at Thillai Nataraja temple.
McCall will introduce the historical context of Laban Movement Analysis, how it made its way across the Atlantic to the United States, and its contemporary relevance for dance and the body politic at large. The talk is meant to provoke thought [and action] about what the anthropologist and cross-cultural researcher Edward Hall coined The Silent Language and by implication, the anthropology of space, and body psyche.

About the Speaker
Dance historian, choreographer, Certified Movement Analyst, and performer, Debra McCall is best known for her reconstructions of Oskar Schlemmer’s 1920s Bauhaus Dances. Recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, she also received the National Endowment for the Arts Rome Prize in Advanced Design from the American Academy in Rome and a Fulbright-Nehru Professional and Academic Excellence Award from the US-India Educational Foundation for her documentation of medieval reliefs of sacred dancers at the Thillai Nataraja Temple in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu.
Her Bauhaus Dancesreconstructions toured internationally to critical acclaim and sold-out houses and was cited as a tour-de-force of scholarship and performance by Artforum and the New York Times. McCall’s work has been presented at numerous venues, including the Museum of Modern Art New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York, the first International Biennale de la Danse Lyon, France, Artissima 17 Italy, the Laforet Museum Tokyo, Japan, Alabama Halle Munich, Germany and the original Bauhaus, Dessau Germany.
Her pursuit of historical dance reconstruction extended to her project at the American Academy in Rome. Researching art and artifacts in private archives in southern Italy, visiting Egyptian temples to understand myth and ritual, and scouring Roman museums and archaeological sites, McCall choreographed Psyche’s Last Task, based on the second century AD Metamorphoses of Apuleius. Presently, she is engaged in writing about her Bauhaus reconstructions and archiving her documentation of medieval reliefs of the sacred dancers at Thillai Nataraja temple in Chidambaram, India.
McCall served on the graduate faculties of New York University and Pratt Institute where she was Mellon Lecturer. She has lectured at a variety of institutions including Harvard University, Cooper Union, the Art Institute of Chicago, Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center, Temple University, and Annamalai University. As Director for Curriculum at Ross Institute, and Dean of Cultural History for Ross School in East Hampton New York, she was responsible for implementing its innovative Evolution of Consciousness Spiral Curriculum. An Honorary Board Member of Art Therapy Italiana where she directed the dance/movement therapy program, she also created the Body of Myth workshop series which led to a collaboration with the Jungian psychoanalyst James Hillman. She began her career in movement therapy at BellevuePsychiatric Hospital, New York and studied under Irmgard Bartenieff who brought Labanotation and Laban Movement Analysis to the United States.
Recognising the fragility of dance and dancers due to environmental devastation as well as political and religious zealotry and conflict, McCall founded Performing Matters, an organisation dedicated to bringing awareness to endangered dance and dancers’ rights.