• Dance Form
  • Ballet / Classical
  • Modern / Contemporary
  • Multi- and Interdisciplinary Dance
  • Musical Theatre / Jazz / Tap
• Time Period
  • 1500s - 1700s
  • 1800s
  • Turn of the Century
  • 1920s - 1960s
  • 1970s - present
• Geographical Region
  • Canada
  • United States & Cuba
  • Russia, Eastern Europe & Asia
  • Western Europe & Africa

Meet The Artists

Biography

Hanya Holm

choreography / pedagogy / Broadway musicals / dance copyright

(1893-1992)

Hanya Holm, whose birth name was Johanna Eckert, was an influential German-born choreographer. She helped to introduce German modern dance and pedagogy to North America. After graduating from Émile Jaques-Dalcroze's school, Holm danced in Mary Wigman's company and taught at Wigman's school. She then became Wigman's representative in the United States as the director of the New York Wigman School in 1931.

Unlike her contemporaries in the United States, Holm did not develop a technique that became identified with her name. Instead, she continued to follow the German model, using structured improvisations to help develop students'technical abilities and individual creativity. Several talented dancers passed through the ranks of her school, including Valerie Bettis, Eve Gentry and Alwin Nikolais.

Holm had her own company from 1936 until 1944. Her work Trend (1937), a large group piece that criticized materialism, war and dictatorship, won a New York Times award for best new dance composition of the year. Holm also gained a reputation as a successful choreographer of Broadway musicals such as Kiss Me, Kate (1948) and My Fair Lady (1956). In 1952, Holm became the first person to copyright choreography when she filed a Labanotation score with the Library of Congress for Kiss Me, Kate.