July 13
Born Today:
Anna Halprin
Dancer and postmodern choreographer Anna Halprin (1920-2021) trained as a modern dancer in NYC and relocated to the West Coast with her architect husband after WWII. He built her an enormous deck on their house, which she used to teach workshops in her iconoclastic movement methods. In the 1950s she founded the San Francisco Dancer's Workshop and The Tamalpa Institute offering training in the Halprin Process, a movement-based healing arts approach to therapeutic dance practice. Several postmodern choreographers who reframed dance as an art that could include all movement, all types of accompaniment, and could be performed by all who chose to dance, trained with Halprin, including Simone Forti (1935-) and Trisha Brown (1930-2017).
Also Born Today: Ballerina Elena Andreianova (1819-1857) studied with Philippe Taglioni (1777-1871) and danced with the Maryinsky Ballet and the Bolshoi Ballet before organizing her own tour of Russian provinces that was interrupted by the Crimean War. Flamenco dancer Cristina Hoyos (1946-) danced with Antonio Gades (1936-2004) for two decades, appeared in the film trilogy Blood Wedding (1981), Carmen (1983), and El Amor Brujo (1986), and she formed the Sueños Flamencos company in 1989. Contemporary dancer/choreographer and pioneer of modern dance in India, Astad Deboo (1947-2020) created a technique combining classical Indian dance with modern dance that was influenced by Alison Becker Chase (1946-) and Pina Bausch (1940-2009). Ballerina Diana Vishneva (1976-) trained at the Vaganova School, joined ABT from 2003-2017, and performs with the Maryinsky Ballet.