Beulah Gundling

Beulah Gundling
Beulah Gundling in Vivo (1977)
Personal information
Nationality:	United States
Discipline (s) :	Synchronized swimming
Birthday:	February 13, 1916
Place of birth:	Cedar Rapids (Iowa, USA)
Date of death:	October 1, 2003
Place of death:	Fort Lauderdale (Florida, USA)

Beulah Gundling , also Beulah Detwiler Gundling , (born February 13, 1916 in Cedar Rapids , Iowa , USA ; † October 1, 2003 in Fort Lauderdale , Florida , USA ) was an American synchronized swimmer , aquatic artist and choreographer . She was instrumental in the development of synchronized swimming into an internationally recognized sport and dance form.

Youth and sports career

In her childhood, Beulah Gundling was mainly interested in music and ballet. At the age of 14, at the suggestion of her parents, she began taking swimming lessons. However, she initially had negative experiences with this sport because she could not survive. After studying books on swimming techniques, she finally learned to swim self-taught and gradually improved her level. In her teens, she competed and won a gold medal in back crawl at a competition held by the AAU in Iowa .

In 1938 she finished her education at Coe College and then works as a secretary at the Cedar Rapids Chamber of Commerce. At that time she found swimming boring and developed her idea of ​​combining swimming with music and dance. After reading a book about rhythmic swimming , she created a program with movements of different swimming styles to music. At the suggestion of her husband, trainer and manager Henry Gundling, Beulah and Noreen Fenner took part in the duet competition in synchronized swimming at the Outdoor Nationals in Des Moines in 1948 and came in tenth.

In the following years she devoted herself more to her appearances as a soloist, choreographed the freestyle and designed the costumes herself. She won several important competitions in North America , among others. a. In 1949 she received the gold medal at the Canadian Synchronized Swimming Championships with her freestyle The Swan to Music from the Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns and always took first place in the air solo competitions of the US National AAU Synchronized from 1950 to 1954 Swimming Championships . Gundling presented synchronized swimming as an individual discipline as part of a swimming show at the Pan American Games in 1951 and at the Summer Olympics in 1952 , where she presented her program Thunderbird to music from the opera Natoma by Victor Herbert . After winning the individual gold medal at the Pan American Games in 1955, Beulah Gundling ended her sporting career.

1955–2000: Aquatic artist, choreographer and author

After the end of her sporting career, Gundling appeared from 1955 to 1991 at numerous festivals of the International Academy of Aquatic Art, which her husband Henry co-founded . She also wrote nine books on swimming and has lectured internationally.

In 1965 Beulah Gundling was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame as the first synchronized swimmer . She was last seen as an aquatic artist in the documentary The Mermaid's Club: A History of Synchronized Swimming by Paul Carvalho in 2000 .

Choreographies (selection)

The following is an incomplete list of Beulah Gundling's own choreographies for solo programs she presented:

• 1949: The Swan (Music: No. 13 from Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns )
• 1952: Thunderbird (music: Dagger Dance from the opera Natoma by Victor Herbert )
• 1975: Orientale (Music: In the village from Caucasian sketches by Michail Michailowitsch Ippolitow-Iwanow )
• 1977: Concerto (music from the Piano Concerto No. 2 by Sergei Rachmaninoff )
• 1977: Vivo (Music: Sevilla from Suite española by Isaac Albéniz )
• 1979: Aqua Mazurka (music: Mazurka from the ballet Coppélia by Léo Delibes )
• 1980: Fancy Free (music from the ballet by Leonard Bernstein )
• 1981: Claire de Lune (3rd movement from the Bergamasque suite by Claude Debussy )

• 

  Beulah Gundling: Claire de Lune (1981)

• 

  Beulah Gundling: Concerto (1977)

• 

  Beulah Gundling and her husband Henry Gundling (left) in 1980

Bibliography (complete)

• B. Gundling, Peg Seller : Aquatic Art - A textbook for swimmers and instructors in Aquatic Art , edited by Pioneer Litho, Cedar Rapids, 1957.
• B. Gundling: Exploring Aquatic Art , self-published , 1963.
• B. Gundling: The Aquatic Art book of figures , self-edited, 1963.
• B. Gundling: The Aquatic Art book of water shows , self-edited, 1964.
• B. Gundling: Fun with Aquatic figure variations , self-edited, 1971,
• B. Gundling: Aquatic Enchaînements and Petite Compositions , self-edited, 1972.
• B. Gundling: Dancing in the Water (Autobiography), self-edited, 1976.
• B. Gundling, Jill White: Creative Synchronized Swimming , Leisure Press, Champaign (Illinois) 1988.
• B. Gundling: To Henry with Love , self-edited, 1988.

literature

• Robert E. Kerper: Splash - Aquatic Shows from A to Z (published by Michael Zielinsky, 2002)
• Dawn Pawson Bean: Synchronized swimming - An American history. McFarland Company Inc. Publishers, Jefferson (North Carolina, USA), 2005.
• Johanna Beisteiner : Art music in figure skating, synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics from 1990 to the present . Dissertation. University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Vienna 2005, OBV . The work contains information about B. Gundling and the International Academy of Aquatic Art (Chapter I / 2: History of Synchronized Swimming , pp. 40–55).

Web links

Commons : Beulah Gundling  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website of the International Academy of Aquatic Art
• Beulah Gundling in the International Swimming Hall of Fame (English)
• Video of B. Gundling's freestyle Thunderbird at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki , official ISHOF website.
• Video of the Pan American Games in 1951 with excerpts from the synchronized swimming programs of the Taylor Sisters (duet, Canada) and Beulah Gundling (solo).
• Article on B. Gundling by Peter Bernard on SunSentinel , October 2003.
• History of Synchronized Swimming on the USAsynchro websitewith information about Beulah Gundling, 2010.
• The history of Synchronized swimming in Canada ( RTF ; 135 kB), article by Gladys Bean, Ph.D, published in May 1975, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Contains information about B. Gundling and Peg Seller .
• Books by Gundling in the Pennsylvania State University Library , 2011.
• Creative synchronized swimming. Book by Gundling and White in the University of Virginia Library , 2010.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Beulah Detwiler Gundling . Biography of B. Gundling on the website of Coe College, Cedar Rapids (Iowa, USA, 2006).
2. ^ Michael Heim, Exploring Iowa Highways , Wabasha 2006, 88 . Information about the book on Google.
3. ↑ Beulah Gundling's biography on the Coe College website, Cedar Rapids (Iowa, USA, 2006).
4. ↑ Video of B. Gundling's Thunderbird program at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki ( Memento of the original from May 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the ISHOF website.  
5. ^ History on the official website of the International Academy of Aquatic Art. USA, 2012.
6. ↑ Beulah Gundling in the International Swimming Hall of Fame (English)
7. ↑ Filmography ( Memento of the original from December 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the official website of Paul Carvalho, 2002.  
8. ^ Aquatic Art - A textbook for swimmers and instructors in Aquatic Art. Information on Biblio's website , 2012.
9. ^ Exploring Aquatic Art. Information on Google.
10. ^ The Aquatic Art book of figures. Information on google.
11. ^ The Aquatic Art book of water shows. Information on google.
12. ↑ Fun with Aquatic figure variations. Information on google.
13. ^ Aquatic Enchaînements and Petite Compositions. Information on google.
14. ^ Dancing in the Water. Information on Google, contains explanations on the International Academy of Aquatic Art .
15. ^ Creative Synchronized Swimming. Information on google.
16. ^ To Henry with Love. ( Memento of the original from April 14, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Information on GetCited , 2002.  
17. ↑ 2009 Buck Dawson Authors Award ( memento of the original from November 24, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Information on the website of the International Swimming Hall of Fame , 2009.  
18. ^ Synchronized swimming - An American history. E-book on Google, information about Beulah Gundling, on p. 62.