Publications Home | Table of Contents
Peru Exhibition | What's Up? The Museum as Classroom
Inside the Beltway with the Class of ’64 
RETIREMENTS ’01  |   Stringing Beads of Friendship
Of Sculpture, Shopping and Serendipity |  Putting Diamonds to Work
News Notes  |  Alumni News  |   Andover Bookshelf
Phillips Academy Home

RETIREMENTS ’01

Midge Brecher

Midge Brecher takes a class through its paces in this 1992 photograph.

"Midge Brecher has stacks of notebooks in her den. If you open one, you find page after page covered with small, faint handwriting and complicated diagrams drawn in pencil and organized under headings such as "Pickles," "Exodus" and "Yarn Dance." Now about to retire, Midge has been a modern dance instructor at PA for 27 years, teaching students to express themselves through the wonder of creative movement. Her notebooks contain the "scripts" for such movement—the choreography she has created and put on paper.

Always athletic, she remembers growing up in Middletown, Conn., as somewhat of a tomboy. "I used to play football with the neighborhood kids, and I was one of the first girls in Little League," she recalls.

At an early age, she studied ballet and modern dance with a local dance teacher whom she calls offbeat and inspirational. "My parents never enrolled me in a typical dancing school—and perhaps that was to my good," she says.

During high school, Midge studied dance on weekends with Pearl Lang at the Juilliard School of Music and became a regular at the Martha Graham studio. For many summers, she attended the American Dance Festival in New London, Conn. "I loved it there, and it was there that I got a strong foundation in technique and choreography," she declares.

Following high school, Midge attended Juilliard for a year, then transferred to Bard College, where she graduated with a major in dance. For the next few years, she lived abroad and in this country—studying, performing, choreographing and teaching. She spent time in Switzerland with dance master Harold Kreutzberg and taught in the United States at Ohio's Antioch College, in the California University system and at the Putney School in Vermont. During this time, she married and had two children.

In 1974, Holly Owen, head of PA's theatre department, decided to expand the school's dance program. On a trip to Putney, he visited Brecher's class and offered her a position teaching modern dance at Andover. She accepted and joined forces with Cristina Rubio, a dance teacher who had come to PA from Abbot after the merger. "She taught ballet, and I focused on modern dance," Midge explains.

During Midge's time at PA, the dance program has expanded. She helped establish the department in 1974 and has helped it grow to its present strength and popularity. She teaches beginning, intermediate and advanced modern dance as well as one term of Dance 400, a performance-oriented class. Her classes emphasize not only technique, but also choreography. "I think it's important for students to learn to choreograph. It's really a form of communication, and it allows them to have greater input into the creative process. With choreography, they can create their own vision," she observes.

Midge is constantly fueling her own vision of dance and admits, "I'm never away from it. I see shapes, I hear music, I look at architecture, and I think 'That would make a great dance.' " Even everyday sights and sounds—the whish of automobile tires on the pavement, the patterns of light on the grass—act as a springboard to Midge's imagination.

And while she takes pride in the fact that several of her former pupils have gone on to careers in modern dance, she feels dance is a positive force for all who study it. "It helps develop a sense of self-possession and awareness—and dance provides a wonderful avenue of physical and emotional adventure," she notes. "Being able to share what I love and do best has been a privilege."

In addition to teaching dance, Brecher has worked part time as an electronic imaging assistant in PA's audio-visual department. "I've learned a lot there, and it's been a nice complement to my life in the dance world," she declares.

What of her plans for retirement? Travel looms large, with trips scheduled to Japan, England and Scotland. Midge will make her home in Vermont, where she hopes to devote time to playing chamber music and pursuing her passion for designing and knitting sweaters. When she moves to northern New England, Midge will also bring her dancing with her. She plans to scout the state of Vermont for people of all ages interested in forming an intergenerational dance group.