Hanya Holm

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Hanya Holm, 1929. (credit: Courtesy of the Dance Collection, the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, Hanya Holm Collection)

(born March 3, 1893, Worms-am-Rhein, Ger. — died Nov. 3, 1992, New York, N.Y., U.S.) German-born U.S. choreographer of modern dance and Broadway musicals. After training in Germany, she worked at Mary Wigman's Central Institute in Dresden as a dancer and teacher and later codirector. In 1931 she opened a Wigman school in New York City, which became the Hanya Holm Studio in 1936. In addition to works for her own company, she choreographed musicals such as My Fair Lady (1956) and Camelot (1960). She promoted the use of dance notation, and her choreography for Kiss Me, Kate (1948) was the first to be copyrighted.

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Holm, Hanya [née Johanna Eckert] (1893–1992), choreographer. A German‐born dancer who worked with Max Reinhardt before immigrating to America, she performed alone or with an ensemble prior to choreographing “The Eccentricities of Davy Crockett” in the Broadway production of Ballet Ballads (1948). Later assignments included Kiss Me, Kate (1948), Out of This World (1950), The Golden Apple (1954), My Fair Lady (1956), Camelot (1960), and Anya (1965). Her work was eclectic, ranging from lively, witty routines to elegant dances. Biography: Hanya Holm: The Biography of an Artist, Walter Sorrell, 1969.

Hanya Holm (born Johanna Eckert; 1893-1992) successfully moved from Germany to America, from modern dance to the Broadway musical in a unique rise to prominence.

Hanya Holm was born Johanna Eckert on March 3, 1893, in Worms, a small town near Frankfurt am Main in Germany. She spent her first 12 years of schooling at a Catholic convent. In those years she learned respect for knowledge and creative ability, a belief in perfectionism and discipline. At the age of 10 she studied piano, and after graduation from the convent she attended the famous music-oriented Dalcroze Institute.

Seeing a dance recital of Mary Wigman in 1921 became decisive for her life. She immediately joined Wigman's company and soon advanced to the position of chief instructor and co-director of the Mary Wigman Central Institute in Dresden. During the 1920s Holm danced many parts in Wigman's company, culminating in Das Totenmal (Death Monument) in 1930.

Holm was a petite person with fair skin and blonde hair. There was a distinct delicacy and an expressive lyricism in her dancing. She developed an impressive fleetness and strikingly quick footwork. What also distinguished Holm's dancing was her intimate relationship with music, which strongly motivated her. In 1929 she danced the princess in one of the early productions of Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier's Tale), her first major solo part for which she did her own choreography. At that time she was not yet quite sure whether to become a dancer, choreographer, or teacher. Destiny decided for her when she became the head of the Mary Wigman School in New York.

In settling down in America in 1931, she did not immediately rush into creative work. During the first six years she traveled south, west, and north and lectured, taught, and demonstrated at more than 60 colleges and universities, creating real interest and helping tremendously to expand the scope of modern dance. She left bridgeheads at logistically important places which she soon secured with some of her best students who continued to teach and perpetuate Holm's concepts.

Her lecture-demonstrations, which explored the space and tension on which her teaching was based, were almost dreamlike in their lyric molding of space and mood. The distinctive movement of her students had a light and lyric air. Holm knew how to fuse her principles of the old world with the vitality, the energy, the swift spirit of the American dancers.

When she created for the concert stage, her dances were emotional responses to life. In 1937 she showed her first major work, about which she said: "The idea of Trend grew upon me, it was not a sudden inspiration. The theme issued from life itself." In New York Times John Martin called it "a colossal theme … Miss Holm opens up a new vista for the production of great dance dramas."

At one point the small company she held together for a few years became a financial burden, and she had to dissolve it. Then for some time her major activity was teaching, but this changed in 1948 and changed her destiny completely. The lyricist John Latouche asked her to choreograph the third episode of his Ballet Ballads: The Eccentricities of Davey Crockett. It was an emphatic success, an event of great consequences. John Martin and another critic, Walter Terry, agreed that Holm "has done a magnificent job, " that she had supplied the show with "witty and imaginative movement throughout."

Shortly thereafter Holm was acclaimed with even louder critical kudos when she choreographed Kiss Me, Kate. With this show she had become an established choreographer for Broadway musicals. John Martin summed up her accomplishments in January 1949, stating, "Nobody could have stepped more gracefully into a new field than Holm has done in her transition from the concert dance to show business."

Her most significant success came in 1956 with the musical My Fair Lady, based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, with such stars as Julie Andrews, Rex Harrison, and Stanley Holloway. It was the biggest hit Broadway had seen since Oklahoma!, and it turned out to be even bigger. Everything in this show, and particularly in what Holm had to contribute, was flawless. My Fair Lady was called "a whale of a show" by the publication Variety and "sensational" by all the critics. One could feel Holm's hand in every effective entrance, in the grace with which the actors danced, or rather acted as if they danced. It was the overall pattern of motion which ran through the entire show.

In the final analysis it was theater that seemed to fascinate her. She ventured into directing plays and she staged a couple of operas. Her great success with the operatic musical The Golden Apple (1954) brought her to Hollywood, where she filmed The Vagabond King, based on the poet François Villon's life, for Paramount in 1956.

Holm had many firsts to her credit. Her Metropolitan Daily, a newspaper satire, was the first modern dance composition to be televised by the National Broadcasting Company (in 1939). The entire score of the choreography for Kiss Me, Kate was recorded in Labanotation and was the first choreographic work to be accepted for copyright at the Library of Congress in Washington.

She won a long list of honors, among them a Drama Critics' Award for Kiss Me, Kate and a Critics Circle Citation for The Golden Apple "as the best musical of the season" in 1954. She was nominated for a Tony for My Fair Lady in 1957 and received an honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts from Colorado College in 1960. Holm was still active as a teacher until her 92nd year, and before her failing eyesight forced her to retire she received the highly endowed Squibb Grant.

In 1990 the Dance Magazine Award was bestowed upon her for her unique contribution to dance in America, a vital force that brought new vision to the most ephemeral of all art forms. Holm died on November 3, 1992, in New York City.

Further Reading

Hanya Holm. The Biography of an Artist by Walter Sorell (1969, paperback edition 1979) was the best source for information on Holm's life and work. Hanya Holm published the following essays: "The Dance, the Artist-Teacher, and the Child, " in Progressive Education (1935); "The German Dance in the American Scene, " in Modern Dance, edited by Virginia Stewart and E. Weyhe (1935); "Mary Wigman, " in Dance Observer (November 1935); "Dance on the Campus - Athletics or Art?" in Dance Magazine (February 1937); "Trend Grew Upon Me, " in Magazine of Art (March 1938); and "The Mary Wigman I Know, " in The Dance Has Many Faces, edited by Walter Sorell (1951; new revised edition, 1966). Her obituary appeared in the November 4, 1992 edition of the New York Times.

Holm, Hanya (née Johanna Eckert;b Worms, 3 Mar. 1893, d New York, 3 Nov. 1992). German-US dancer, teacher, choreographer, and one of the formative influences of American modern dance. She studied at the Dalcroze School in Hellerau and joined Wigman in 1921 both as company dancer and as teacher in Wigman's school. She performed in the premieres of Wigman's Feier (1928) and Totenmal (1930) and in 1931 went to New York to open an American branch of the Wigman school. This evolved into her own Hanya Holm Studio which was one of the city's most important dance schools between 1936 and its closure in 1967, with Tetley and Nikolais among its pupils. In 1936 she also formed her own group with which she choreographed her epic work of social criticism. Trend (mus. Varèse, 1937), also Metropolitan Day (mus. G. Tucker, 1938) and Tragic Exodus (mus V. Fine, 1939). In 1941 she established her Center of the Dance in Colorado Springs at which she taught annual summer courses and further developed her method of teaching by creative exploration rather than set technique. Despite the strong political bias of her work she was a great humorist and populist, and created awardwinning choreography for the hit musicals Kiss Me, Kate (1948), My Fair Lady (1956), and Camelot (1960). In 1961 she was appointed head of the dance department of New York Musical Theater Academy. She continued teaching at various schools until 1985 and in the same year premiered a new work, Capers, for the Don Redlich Dance Company, which performs much of her work.

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Hanya Holm (birth name Johanna Eckert) born in March 3, 1893 in Worms, Germany and died November 3, 1992 in New York City. She is known as one of the “Big Four” founders of American modern dance. She was a dancer, choreographer, and above all, a dance educator.^[1]

Contents 1 Connection with Mary Wigman 2 Holm Technique and Choreography 3 Holm as a Dance Educator 4 References 5 External links

Connection with Mary Wigman

Hanya Holm was drawn to music and drama at an early age, so she attended the Institution of Emile Jacques-Dalcroze throughout her childhood and young adult life. At the age of 28, she saw the German expressionist Mary Wigman perform, and decided to continue her dance career at the Wigman School in Dresden where she soon became a member of the company. Mary Wigman and Hanya Holm shared a special bond through movement. Egyptian Dance was said to be the first time Wigman realized the artistic impression Holm was capable of. She had the creative will and ability to shape a choreographic vision into reality.^[2] Mary Wigman invited Holm to teach, co-direct the Dresden School, and in her recognition of the opportunity that opening a school in New York could offer the world of dance, eventually sent Holm to launch a Wigman branch in New York City (September 26th 1931). The initial letters of certification and agreement from Wigman to Holm about the migration over to America to direct the school were found in her house after her death in 1992. These letters were published in Dance, Business, and Politics: Letters from Mary Wigman to Hanya Holm. These letters are evidence of the responsibility Wigman was entrusting to Holm. In them, the salary was laid out making sure that the transfer would continue to support her son, Klaus, who stayed in Germany, and the letter of agreement signed by both parties “promises to apply all her strength to the advancement of the New York Wigman School and to conduct the work according to Mary Wigman’s ideas...as well as to see that the M.W. philosophy of dance is implemented faithfully within and outside the New York Wigman School in every possible way”.^[3] Holm was not only capable of rising to the challenge of representing the Wigman name and teaching philosophy, she also helped to shape the school and build an influence of her own. Due to the rise of fascism and a need to distance the school from German ties, it became known as the Hanya Holm Studio (1936-1967).^[4]

Holm Technique and Choreography

Hanya Holm had a unique form of technique that shaped generations of dancers including Alwin Nikolais, Mary Anthony, Valerie Bettis, Don Redlich, and Glen Tetley. Her technique stressed the importance of pulse, planes, floor patterns, aerial design, direction, and spatial dimensions. Holm's movement emphasized the freedom and flowing quality of the torso and back, but remained based on universal principles of physics for motion.^[5] Hanya Holm trained through improvisation so, a specific movement vocabulary or phrasing that could be carried on through classes doesn’t exist; instead her focus was about learning through discovery. Choreographically her movement focused on the body’s relation to space and emotion, which was an extension of Wigman and Rudolf Laban. She worked on movement that projected into space.^[6] Holm’s stylistic idea was about “absolute dance” without pantomime or dramatic overtones. Attention to conveying an idea in her choreography was more important than the dancers’ technical ability.^[7] Holm would say, “I want to see a sign of passion. I want to see the raw if struggling to express itself. A work must have blood.”^[8] Holm was one of the founding artists at Bennington College in 1934 along with: Martha Graham, Charles Weidman, and Doris Humphrey who came to be some of the most influential modern dancers of their time, “The Big Four”. Out of Bennington College the festival ADF, American Dance Festival was pioneered. This was an opportunity for modern dancers to come together to take class and present new works. Holm's first major work, Trend, (1937) dealt with social criticism and incorporated Ausdruckstanz and American techniques.^[9] In 1941, she started a Center of Dance in Colorado Springs where she had summer courses and was able to perfect her creative exploration technique. In 1948, she choreographed for Broadway: Ballet Ballads and Kiss Me, Kate which led to twelve other musicals. Holm's dance work Metropolitan Daily was the first modern dance composition to be televised on NBC, and her Labanotation score for Kiss Me, Kate (1948) was the first choreography to be copyrighted in the United States. She also worked on My Fair Lady (1956), Camelot (1960), and Anya (1965). Holm choreographed extensively in the fields of concert dance and musical theatre.^[10]

Other works include: Tragic Exodus, They Too Are Exiles, Dance Of Work and Play, and Dance Sonata

Holm as a Dance Educator

Hanya Holm’s approach to teaching was to liberate each individual to define a technical style of his or her own that should express their inner personality and give freedom to explore. She would tell her students, “You have a perfect right to branch out, if you have the stuff in you, if you discover your own richness, if you have something to say.”^[11] Hanya Holm thought that teaching was a fundamental part of a dancer’s life; it let her know how much she knew which in turn helped her as a dancer. Her philosophy of teaching was how to find the essence of dance and understand where the movement comes from in the body that way it is a natural response in the dancers’ body. She brought weltanschauung to her dance teaching. Holm was strict; she expected greatness from her students which would come from a willingness to work hard. It was her thought that if you worked hard and truly wanted it, you would achieve the desired outcome.^[12] Holm had an extremely keen eye, she had the ability to look at something and verbalize what she wanted using elaborate imagery and analogies.^[13] She used her technique class as a preparation for her improvisation and composition classes. These classes were where the students could expand and experiment on the skills that were presented in class, making the movement innate in their bodies. A large amount of Holm’s choreography came from the improv and comp classes.^[14] Hanya Holm taught anatomy, Dalcroze eurhythmics, improvisation, and Labanotation at her school. She taught at Colorado College, Mills College, University of Wisconsin, Alwin Nikolais School in New York, and was the Head of Dance Department in NY Musical Theatre Academy. After 1974, she taught at the Juilliard School in New York. In 1988, a documentary of her life Hanya: Portrait of a Pioneer narrated by Julie Andrews and Alfred Drake, and featuring interviews with Holm, Nikolais, Murray Louis, and others, was released by Dance Horizons.

Holm 's son was broadway lighting designer and educator Klaus Holm . She and her son are both buried in Hanover Township , Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.

She was honored by the National Dance Association, in 1976, with the Heritage Award for her contributions to dance education.

References

1. ^ "Hanya Holm." The Oxford Dictionary of Dance. Ed. Debra Craine and Judith Mackrell. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2000. 235.
2. ^ Sorell, Walter. Hanya Holm; the Biography of an Artist. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969.17.
3. ^ "Dance, Business, and Politics: Letters from Mary Wigman to Hanya Holm", 1930-1971. Claudia Gitelman; Marianne Forster; Mary Wigman; Hanya Holm. Dance Chronicle, Vol. 20, No. 1. (1997), pp. 1-21. JSTOR
4. ^ Foulkes, Julia.Modern Bodies: Dance and American Modernism from Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey. The University of North Carolina Press, 2002.121.
5. ^ Cristofori, Marilyn. "Hanya Holm." International Dictionary of Modern Dance. Ed. Taryn Benbow-Pfalzgraf. Detroit: St. James Press, n.d. 358.
6. ^ Sorell, Walter. Hanya Holm; the Biography of an Artist. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969.162-163,165.
7. ^ Nancy Reynolds and Malcolm McCormick. "Hanya Holm." No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century.New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. 167-168.
8. ^ Sorell, Walter. Hanya Holm; the Biography of an Artist. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969.103.
9. ^ Nancy Reynolds and Malcolm McCormick. "Hanya Holm." No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century.New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.170.
10. ^ "Hanya Holm." The Oxford Dictionary of Dance. Ed. Debra Craine and Judith Mackrell. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2000. 235.
11. ^ Sorell, Walter. Hanya Holm; the Biography of an Artist. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969.102-103.
12. ^ Sorell, Walter. Hanya Holm; the Biography of an Artist. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969.167-169.
13. ^ Sorell, Walter. Hanya Holm; the Biography of an Artist. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969.172.
14. ^ Sorell, Walter. Hanya Holm; the Biography of an Artist. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969.171.

External links

• Hanya Holm at IMDB

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