Margaret Morris

Margaret Morris (born April 17, 1891, London, England—died February 29, 1980, Glasgow, Scotland) was a British dancer and dance teacher who pioneered modern dance in Britain and developed a system of notation using abstract symbols.

Morris incorporated Isadora Duncan’s “Greek positions” into her ballets of 1910; into her production of Orpheus, based on Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo, at the Savoy Theatre, London; and into her performance of The Blue Bird, based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s play L’Oiseau bleu, at the Haymarket Theatre. She later opened a school and toured with her own company. Morris applied her techniques to helping physically and mentally disabled children and developed special exercises for athletes and pregnant women. By World War II, Margaret Morris Movement centres had been established internationally, but the war forced the closure of all her British centres except the one in Glasgow. There she founded the Celtic Ballet, which in the 1960s became the Scottish National Ballet. But when both her husband, Scottish painter J.D. Ferguson, and her principal dancer died in 1961, she closed her London and Glasgow dance schools. The movement classes, however, continued to flourish, and Morris herself trained dancers for the 1972 Glasgow production of the musical Hair.