Anna Sokolow

Training

Sokolow began studying dance and performing with instructors at the Emanuel Sisterhood Settlement House; in early adolescence, she left school to train full-time. She began studying in earnest at what became the Neighborhood Playhouse, where her teachers included Blanche Talmud, Bird Larson, Martha Graham and Louis Horst.

Career

She started her professional career in 1929 as a member of Martha Graham's company. Beginning in the 1930s, she affiliated herself with the politicized "radical dance" movement, out of which developed her work Anti-War Trilogy (1933). By 1936, she had organized her first company, Dance Unit. Sokolow was also associated with the socially conscious collective the New Dance Group and the larger Workers Dance League. According to dance historian Ellen Graff, Sokolow's work with these groups was instrumental in transforming the "agitprop style" associated with early political dance by melding it with "emerging professional and artistic standards in 'new' dance." Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, she performed and choreographed both solo and ensemble works, which tackled subject matter that included the exploitation of workers and growing troubles of Jews in Germany. Several works from this period, including Anti-War Trilogy, were set to music by the composer Alex North.

In 1939, Sokolow began a lifelong association with the dance in Mexico and Israel. Her work for the Secretariat of Public Education facilitated the establishment of the National Academy of Dance. In Israel, she choreographed for major dance companies, including Batsheva, Inbal, and the Lyric Theatre.

Sokolow created works full of dramatic contemporary imagery, revealing the full spectrum of human experience and reflecting the tension and alienation of her time. Rooms (1955), featuring music composed by Kenyon Hopkins for a jazz ensemble, dealt with urban alienation, while Dreams (1961) grew from the horrors of the Holocaust. Other major modern dance works included Lyric Suite (1954), Odes (1965), and Opus 65 (1965). In 1991, Anna Kisselgoff summed up Sokolow's aesthetic as "American Expressionism," and commented that "Stillness is a large part of her choreography, and Miss Sokolow can sum up a state of being -- an entire society -- in an arrested pose."

In addition to her work as a choreographer, Sokolow was also an influential teacher of both dance and movement for actors. At Juilliard, she taught what she called "method dancing" from 1958 to 1993. She also taught movement for actors at The Actors Studio (where she was a founding member), the Lincoln Center Repertory Theatre School, and the HB Studio.

Sokolow was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 1998.

Repertory

Since the dispersal of Anna Sokolow's company—Players' Project—in 2004, its former co-artistic directors have formed separate institutions to maintain Sokolow's Legacy.

The Sokolow Theatre Dance Ensemble performs Sokolow's repertory plus contemporary choreographies under the direction of Jim May. The Sokolow Theatre Dance Ensemble offers educational programs, professional workshops, coaching, and actively licenses and reconstructs Sokolow's works.

Sokolow Now!, the archival dance company of the Sokolow Dance Foundation, performs Sokolow's repertory exclusively and is under the direction of Lorry May. The foundation also offers unique educational programs and actively licenses and reconstructs Sokolow's works.

Many of Sokolow's works were filmed and are held at the New York Public Library in its Dance Division.

Works for Broadway