Dance Teacher Founded U-Md. Department

Dorothy G. Madden, 96, a dance instructor and administrator who served as founding chairman of the University of Maryland's dance department from 1967 to 1972 and spent the past several decades teaching and mentoring in Europe, died Feb. 18 at a nursing home in London. She had had several heart attacks in recent years.

In 1962, she completed a doctorate in "dance as a creative art" at New York University. She was reportedly among the first to receive a degree in this field, which made a choreographed dance part of doctoral study.

She advocated this approach at Maryland, where she was affiliated from 1948 to 1977, and later at dance schools in London and Paris.

Dr. Madden had arrived at College Park as the sole dance instructor in the Department of Health and Physical Education, through which dance was offered as a minor. At her urging, the university added a dance major in 1957 and a separate dance department in the College of Arts and Sciences in 1967.

"That's what a university is for, isn't it?" she told The Washington Post in 1967. "The total experience of man, including his artistic experience, should be included in the curriculum."

Operating from a small office and one dance studio in Preinkert Field House, Dr. Madden supervised the department's growth until stepping down as chairman in 1972.

Under subsequent leaders, the department's curriculum and faculty grew. In 2000, the department moved into the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

During her administrative career, Dr. Madden performed in Washington with the Chamber Dance Group, Children's Dance Theatre and the dance companies of Pola Nirenska and Ethel Butler. In 1971, she founded the Maryland Dance Theater, a touring company that performed contemporary dance in the Washington and Baltimore corridor until shuttering in 1988.

Her directorship of the troupe lasted a year, and under directors Larry and Anne Warren it evolved into what Washington Post arts critic Alan M. Kriegsman called "one of the area's most consistently solid, adventurous and exciting dance organizations, and one that can hold its head high in the national arena as well."

Dorothy Gifford was a native of Manchester, N.H., and was a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont. She earned a master's degree in arts in 1937 from Syracuse University.

After leaving the University of Maryland, she settled in England and was affiliated for several years with the Laban modern dance conservatory in London. She also mentored choreographers through her mid-80s at dance schools in Paris.

In 1996, she published a biography of the late Louis Horst, who had been music director for Martha Graham and the founder and editor of Dance Observer magazine. The University of Maryland began a dance scholarship in Dr. Madden's name in 2003.

An early marriage to William Madden ended in divorce. She had no immediate survivors.