While gathering the articles for this issue of Dance Research Journal with Dianne Woodruff, I often smiled as I recognized “the essential Juana” in the written perceptions of my colleagues. It has been hard to resist adding my own reminiscences, for “Dr. Laban” was a powerful figure in my introduction to dance after I transferred to UCLA's Dance Department in 1963. In fact, it was Dr. Laban who taught me dance history.

I particularly remember laboring for months on my first dance history term paper. The topic consumed me then and amuses me no end today: Dancing had been born of animals and evolved to great humanistic expressions. How such a daringly broad yet hopelessly unlimited hypothesis got accepted, I will never understand. Part of the explanation may lie in the fact that Curt Sachs's World History of Dance was the uncritically-used text for the class, and part of the explanation may lie with my valiant effort to rationalize two earlier undergraduate years as an analytical biology major. Dr. Laban grasped the opportunity for interdisciplinary education and had me reading many things in science, including Jane Goodall's work with chimpanzees and Darwin's Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals. I was fascinated by the worlds of thought opening, but completely at sea in the necessity of bringing ideas together for a term paper.