Anna Halprin

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Anna Halprin (2010)

Anna Halprin (* 13 July 1920 as Hannah Dorothy Schuman in Wilmette , Illinois ; † 25. May 2021 in Winnetka , Illinois) was an American dancer and choreographer .

life and work

Anna Halprin was introduced to dance by her mother as a child. During her school days in Winnetka , Illinois , she was able to develop her interest further. It was clear to her early on that she wanted to become a dancer. Halprin was initially based on the dance style of Ruth St. Denis and Isadora Duncan . After she began studying at the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 1938 under the guidance of Margaret H'Doubler , she moved away from the more personalized style and began to pursue her own artistic paths. Halprin graduated with a BA in 1942 .

In college, she met the landscape architect Laurence Halprin, whom she married in September 1940 while still a student. After an engagement with a dance company on Broadway in New York, she went to California with her husband in 1945. There Halprin founded the San Francisco Dancer's Workshop in 1955 to give like-minded artists a home. Here Halprin designed and choreographed pieces, some of which were received controversially. On a stage designed by her husband, built in the open air in the middle of nature, she collaborated with a variety of artists, including Min Tanaka and Merce Cunningham (dance, choreography), John Cage and Terry Riley (music) and visual artists and poets such as B. Richard Brautigan and Robert Morris . Her students, along with many others, were Meredith Monk , Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown , some of whom were already at the San Francisco Dancer's Workshop and founded the avant-garde ensemble Judson Dance Theater in 1962 .

The Halprins' marriage resulted in two daughters: Daria Halprin (* 1948) and Rana (* 1951). Together with her daughter Daria, who also learned and teaches dance, Halprin founded the Tamalpa Institute in 1978 . The independent school for dance and body experience based in California is still run by her daughter to this day, Halprin herself was a guest lecturer there. Tamalpa Germany has existed since 2011, a German branch which, according to its own information, cooperates with and is supported by the US institute.

Halprin began developing various concepts of ritual community dances , including an annual spring ritual called Circle the Earth: A Planetary Dance for Peace .

From the late 1970s onwards, Halprin began to focus more and more on (self-) healing aspects of dancing. She is considered one of the pioneers of the expressive arts healing movement . She worked in dance programs together with terminally ill patients and tried to convey the conviction that one's own dance movement can release healing powers. In two ongoing workshops, each for men and women only, Halprin worked extensively with AIDS sufferers, while other projects were carried out with people suffering from cancer. Increasingly, aging and the search for beauty in old age also became an issue in her work.

Halprin has written several books on her dance concepts and approach to dance. For many of her pieces and dance projects, documentaries were published on video and later also on DVD. Most recently, in 2010, a documentary about Halprin by Ruedi Gerber called Breath Made Visible was released about her and her work.

Awards and other honors

Over the course of her career, Halprin has received numerous honors and grants, including a Guggenheim grant and several grants from the National Endowment for the Arts . The University of Madison, where she obtained her BA, awarded Halprin an honorary doctorate in 1994. In 1995, Halprin was invited by Mikhail Gorbachev to address the State of the World Forum in California . The American Dance Festival first awarded Halprin a professorship in 1996 for her work as a teacher, followed in 1997 by receiving the highly endowed Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for her life's work as a choreographer . The Dance Heritage Coalition , a US association of dance libraries and collections, counts Anna Halprin among America's 100 Irreplaceable Dance Treasures . In 2017 she took part in documenta 14 .

Publications (selection)

  • Movement ritual . 1975 (english)
    • Movement ritual. Dance meditation exercises . Antonia Fäh in Romanian. Sphinx, Basel 1987, ISBN 978-3-85914-635-8
  • Moving Toward Life. Five Decades of Transformational Dance . Edited by Rachel Kaplan. Wesleyan University Press, Middletown (Connecticut) 1995, ISBN 978-0-8195-6286-9 .
  • Dance as a Healing Art. Returning to Health with Movement and Imagery . Mendocino (California) 2000
    • Dance, expression and healing. Paths to health through movement, pictorial life and creative handling of emotions . Synthesis, Essen 2000, ISBN 978-3-922026-49-5 .

literature

  • Janice Ross: Anna Halprin. Experience as Dance . University of California Press, Berkeley 2009, ISBN 978-0-520-26005-4 .
  • Gabriele Wittmann, Ursula Schorn, Ronit Land: Anna Halprin. Dance - Processes - Design. Kieser, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-935456-24-1 .
  • Libby Worth, Helen Paynor: Anna Halprin . Routledge, London 2004, ISBN 978-0-415-27330-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Le dernier souffle d'Anna Halprin on toutelaculture.com from May 25, 2021
  2. ↑ a b See entry in the Jewish Women's Archive
  3. ↑ a b Anna Halprin receives lifetime achievement award in modern dance. In: Jewish Women's Archive. June 23, 1997 .;
  4. ↑ a b Tamalpa Institute: Guest Faculty - Anna Halprin ( Memento from January 30, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ See the website of the Institute
  6. ^ University of Wisconsin-Madison: Honorary Degrees - Past Recipients ( Memento from September 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ American Dance Festival: American Dance Festival Award, 1981— ( Memento of March 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ See information from the Library of Congress
personal data
SURNAME Halprin, Anna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American dancer and choreographer
DATE OF BIRTH July 13, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Wilmette , Illinois , United States
DATE OF DEATH May 25, 2021
PLACE OF DEATH Winnetka , Illinois, United States