Hanya Holm (born March 3, 1893, Worms, Germany – died November 3, 1992, New York City) 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]

Connection with Mary Wigman[link]

Born as Johanna Eckert, 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] 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 (on September 26, 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.^[3] In the letters 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[link]

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] Holm trained through improvisation so, a specific movement vocabulary or phrasing that could be carried on through classes does not 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]

Invited by dance director Martha Hill, 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". The American Dance Festival (ADF) arose from Bennington College. 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 choreographed Out of This World, My Fair Lady (1956), Camelot (1960), and Anya (1965).She also directed a 1960s television musical adaptation of Pinocchio. Holm choreographed extensively in the fields of concert dance and musical theatre.^[1] Other works by Holm include: Tragic Exodus, They Too Are Exiles, Dance Of Work and Play and Dance Sonata

Holm as a Dance Educator[link]

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."^[10] Holm's 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 dancer's 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.^[11] Holm had an extremely keen eye, she had the ability to look at something and verbalize what she wanted using elaborate imagery and analogies.^[12] 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.^[13] 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, and was the Head of Dance Department in New York's Musical Theatre Academy. After 1974, she taught at the Juilliard School (Martha Hill, director) 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.

Her son was Broadway lighting designer Klaus Holm. She and her son are interred in Hanover Township, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Her husband was a German sculptor who, when Hitler came to power, sided with the Reich, effectively ending his marriage to Holm.

Holm has been honored by the National Dance Association, in 1976, with the Heritage Award for her contributions to dance education. She was inducted into the National Museum of Dance C.V. Whitney Hall of Fame in 1988.

References[link]

Citations[link]

External links[link]

• Hanya Holm at IMDB

Mary Wigman
Mary Wigman (left) performing barefoot.
Birth name	Karoline Sophie Marie Wiegmann
Born	(1886-11-13)November 13, 1886, Hanover, Germany
Died	September 18, 1973(1973-09-18) (aged 86) West Berlin
Nationality	German
Field	modern dance & dance therapy
Movement	expressionist dance

Mary Wigman (born Marie Wiegmann, 13 November 1886 – 18 September 1973) was a German dancer, choreographer, notable as the pioneer of expressionist dance, dance therapy, and movement training without pointe shoes. She is considered one of the most important figures in the history of European dance^[1]. She became one of the most iconic figures of Weimar German culture and her work was hailed for bringing the deepest of existential experiences to the stage.

Life[link]

Portrait of Mary Wigman dancing by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Karoline Sophie Marie Wiegmann was born in Hanover, Germany.

She came to dance comparatively late after seeing three students of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, who aimed to approach music through movement using three equally-important elements: solfège, improvisation and his own system of movements, eurhythmics.^[2] Another key early experience was a solo concert by Grete Wiesenthal.^[3]

Wigman’s career was not that of a “virtuoso”. Rather, it was marked by a period of intense study and intellectual awakening in two artists’ colonies of the time. She learned rhythmic gymnastics, and she trained under Laban and became a professional dancer. Wigman successfully completed the program within two years and earned her certificate to become a teacher of Dalcroze’s method of rhythmic gymnastics, but she was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the limited nature of dance in the context of an institution where dance was considered to be a medium for music education.^[4]

In 1913, she was introduced to Rudolf von Laban and following his lead, she worked upon a technique based in contrasts of movement; expansion and contraction, pulling and pushing. During the First World War she worked as Laban's assistant in Leipzig.^[3]

In 1918, she had a nervous breakdown.

In 1920, Wigman was offered the post of ballet mistress at the Dresden Opera House, but conflict cut this short.

In the school year 1920/1921^[5], Wigman instead started her own dance school which became known as "Dresden Central School" or simply "Mary Wigman-Schule", a center of new, expressionist dance. The rivalry and competition between her new and the old schools of dance in Dresden emerged, especially with the Palucca School, Dresden.^[5]

Mary Wigman, dance studio, West Berlin 1959

Her students and collaborators from Europe included Yvonne Georgi, Hanya Holm, Harald Kreutzberg, Gret Palucca, Max Terpis, Irena Linn, Elisabet Wiener, Sonia Revid, Margarethe Wallmann, Inge Weiss, and Meta Vidmar who in 1930 established the first school of modern dance in Slovenia. Opera-dancer Ursula Cain (*1927), who at the age of more than 80 years could still be seen on stage and TV dancing in cross-genre projects like Dancing with Time by Heike Hennig, was another student of the Mary Wigman.

Mary Wigman toured the United States in 1930 with her company of dancers; a school was founded by her disciples in New York City in 1931. Her choreography inspired communist dance troupes in the 1930s in New York City^[6] Her work in the United States is credited to her protegee Hanya Holm, and then to Hanya's students Alwin Nikolais and Joanne Woodbury. Another student and protegee of Wigman's, Margret Dietz, taught in America from 1953 until 1972.

"Mary Wigman-Schule" school existed from 1920 until 1942 and continued to operate under Nazi rule in World War II, when she obeyed the rule of government and fired all her Jewish dancers from her schools in Germany.

Productions[link]

Mary Wigman studio, West Berlin

West Berlin 1959

Wigman's first public production was the Hexentanz, performed without music, in late 1913.

While recovering from her nervous breakdown, Wigman wrote the choreography for her first group composition, The Seven Dances of Life, after which her career and influence began in earnest.

She had several years' success on the concert stage, though her grand design, the 1929 Totenmal, was never produced.^[3]

Wigman taught again in Leipzig in 1948.

From 1950 until her death in 1973 Wigman taught at a studio in West Berlin.

She died on 18 September 1973 in Berlin, aged 86.

Selected performances[link]

• Summer Dance,
• Dream Image,
• Witch Dance,
• Dance of Lorrow,
• Visions, Cycles, and the Bay,
• Festive Rhythm,
• Dance of Spring.

Her dances were often accompanied by world music and non-Western instrumentation, such as fifes and primarily percussions, bells, including the gongs and drums from India, Thailand, Africa, and China, contrasted with silence.

She would often employ masks in her pieces, influenced again by non-western/tribal dance.

References[link]

See also[link]

• Weimar culture
• Weimar Germany
• Expressionist dance
• Isadora Duncan
• Ruth St Denis

Sources[link]

• Song, Jiyun. Mary Wigman and German Modern Dance: A Modernist Witch?Forum Mod Lang Stud (2007) 43(4): 427-437. Retrieved from http://fmls.oxfordjournals.org.hmlproxy.lib.csufresno.edu/content/43/4/427.full.pdf+html
• Newhall, Mary; Santos, Anne (2009). Mary Wigman. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-37527-4
• Manning, Susan (1993). Ecstasy and the Demon: Feminism and Nationalism in the Dances of Mary Wigman, University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-08193-5.
• Partsch-Bergsohn, Isa; Bergsohn, Harold (2002). The Makers of Modern Dance in Germany: Rudolf Laban, Mary Wigman, Kurt Jooss, Princeton Book Company Publishers. ISBN 0-87127-250-4.
• Toepfer, Karl Eric (1997). Empire of Ecstasy: Nudity and Movement in Germany Body Culture, 1910-1935 (Weimer and Now: German Cultural Criticism, No 13), University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-20663-0.
• Wigman, Mary (1975). The Mary Wigman Book: Her Writings, Olympic Marketing Corp. ISBN 0-8195-4079-X.
• Gilbert, Laure (2000). Danser avec le Troisième Reich, Brussels, Editions Complex, ISBN 2-87027-697-4
• Karina, Lilian & Kant, Marion (2003). German Modern Dance and the Third Reich, Berghahn Books, New York & Oxford, ISBN 1-57181-688-7
• Martin, John (1934). Workers League In Group Dances, The New York Times, December 24,
• Song, Ji-yun (2006). Moving bodies and political movement: Dance in German modernism, dissertation, Stanford University.
• Song, Ji-yun (2007). Mary Wigman and German Modern Dance: A Modernist Witch?, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Special Issue on Stagecraft and Witchcraft, Oxford University Press

External links[link]

• Traude Schrattenecker, a student of Wigman's.
• Photographs of Mary Wigman
• Mary Wigman-Schule in Dresden
• Dancing with Time by Heike Hennig