• DOI:10.1080/01472520008569371
• Corpus ID: 194038177

Finding a place for Hanya Holm

@article{Gitelman2000FindingAP,
  title={Finding a place for Hanya Holm},
  author={Claudia Gitelman},
  journal={Dance Chronicle},
  year={2000},
  volume={23},
  pages={49 - 71}
}

• Claudia Gitelman
• Published 1 January 2000
• Art
• Dance Chronicle

Standard histories of modern dance have tended to regard Hanya Holm as an extraneous figure, crediting her with having adapted German methods of dance training for American educational consumption and for influencing an array of students who became famous. History texts, which group Holm with other artists who taught at the Bennington School of the Dance (1934-1942), marginalize her for the fluid scenario of her career after Bennington. Holm's complex career is intriguing for what it suggests about issues of nationalism, regionalism, elitism, and popular culture in modern dance historical orthodoxy. Holm can be seen as having had four choreographic careers. From 1935 to 1944, while she maintained a company, first under Mary Wigman's name and then her own, she presented seasons in New York and undertook five national tours, winning the New York Times Award for best Group Choreography in 1937 with Trend and the Dance Magazine Award for Best Group Choreography in 1939 with Tragic Exodus. In Holm's second choreographic career, which began in 1941, she made