Holm, Hanya (redirected from Hanya Holm)

Holm, Hanya

 orig. Johanna Eckert

Hanya Holm, 1929.

(credit: Courtesy of the Dance Collection, the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, Hanya Holm Collection)

(born March 3, 1893, Worms-am-Rhein, Ger.—died Nov. 3, 1992, New York, N.Y., U.S.) German-born U.S. choreographer of modern dance and Broadway musicals. After training in Germany, she worked at Mary Wigman's Central Institute in Dresden as a dancer and teacher and later codirector. In 1931 she opened a Wigman school in New York City, which became the Hanya Holm Studio in 1936. In addition to works for her own company, she choreographed musicals such as My Fair Lady (1956) and Camelot (1960). She promoted the use of dance notation, and her choreography for Kiss Me, Kate (1948) was the first to be copyrighted.

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Holm, Hanya (b. Johanna Eckert) (1893–1992) modern dancer, choreographer; born in Worms, Germany. After studying with Mary Wigman in Dresden, she came on tour to New York in 1931, where she opened the Wigman studio, renamed the Hanya Holm Studio in 1936. Forming her own company, she performed her most famous work Trend (1937), later establishing a dance center in Colorado Springs. In the late 1940s she began choreographing on Broadway, most notably Kiss Me Kate (1948), going on to create dances for 13 musicals. She also directed and choreographed operas such as The Ballad of Baby Doe (1956). She was still teaching in her nineties.