Hanya Portrait of a Pioneer Hosted by Juile Andrews and Alfred Drake 

This DVD traces the career of Hanya Holm from Germany in the 1920s through the Broadway stage. As one of the famous “four pioneers” of modern dance, Hanya was a founding artist in establishing new forms and educational principles in America. Introduced by Julie Andrews and narrated by Alfred Drake, this DVD features archival footage from the 1930s and 40s, and interviews with Holm and many of her students, including Murray Louis, Alwin Nikolais, and Harold Lang. Hanya Holm began her career as an assistant to Mary Wigman. She came to the United States in the 1930s to establish a Wigman school there. She was soon choreographing and performing: her most famous work of this period, Trend, premiered at Bennington College in 1937. In the 1950s and 60s Hanya began a new career as a Broadway choreographer, choreographing My Fair Lady, Camelot, and Kiss Me Kate. Hanya: Portrait of a Pioneer was first presented at Duke University on the 50th anniversary of the American Dance Festival, when Hanya received the Samuel H. Scripps Award for her lifetime achievements in dance. Also in 1985, it won the Grand Prize in the Dance Film Association’s Dance on Camera Festival, held in New York. This is its first release on DVD.

Source: Dance Horizons

More information: www.dancehorizons.com

Trend is a piece for 37 dancers, an epic work about human survival in the face of worker alienation, egocentrism, authoritarianism and the trauma of war. Arch Lauterer designed the minimalistic set, which critic Jean Martin described as “the first truly modern set design for dance”. Many of Hanya Holm’s dancers would go on to make politically and socially engaged work. 

Source: Céline Roux, The American origins of modern dance: [1930-1950] from the expressive to the abstract 

(1893-1992)
Born in 1893 in Worms, Germany, Hanya Holm was a student and dancer with Mary Wigman. In 1931, fleeing from Nazi persecution, she opened a Wigman school in New York, renamed the Hanya Holm Studio in 1936. 

In addition to works for her own company, she choreographed musicals such as Kiss me Kate (1948), My Fair Lady (1956) and Camelot (1960) and encouraged use of dance notation. When she created Ratatat in 1982, she was ninety-two years old, proving the tremendous vitality of this woman who had lived through the tumult of the 20th century! Among her disciples are a large number of American artists, dancers and choreographers, including Alwin Nikolais.

Specialists in the publishing and distribution of dance books and dance videos for over 35 years, with a list of over 500 dance related titles. We publish under the imprint Dance Horizons and distribute for The Dance Notation Bureau and Dance Books Ltd. In March of 2000 we launched a new imprint to publish books of general interest, Elysian Editions, with The Magic Of Provence: Pleasures of Southern France by Yvone Lenard. Visit our Elysian Editions pages to see Ms. Lenard's books as well as other titles under this imprint.  

Source: Princeton Book Co. Publishers

More information: https://www.dancehorizons.com