| Overview Early Years Madly in Love with Dancing Martha Graham & Louis Horst Radical Dance Mexico Jewish Dance Broadway & Other Venues Israel Choreographic Innovations Prophet of Doom? Teaching & Rehearsing Recognitions Legacy Timeline
Bibliography
Artifacts Alphabetically Artifacts Sorted by Source | | | Choreographic Innovations | | In 1951, Sokolow staged and performed in a theater-dance production of S. Ansky's play, The Dybbuk. The dramatization represented one of Sokolow's first major attempts to combine dance with mime and the spoken word, a process that had long intrigued her. Following The Dybbuk, Sokolow largely ceased to perform in public, preferring to focus instead on choreography. | | 
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| | Two years later, Sokolow premiered Lyric Suite. Set to a complex, atonal score, the 1953 piece followed neither meter nor melodic line, but rather responded to the music's cumulative effect. Sokolow saw the composition as a personal artistic turning point, commenting that "[i]n working on Lyric Suite I feel as though I began to find...my vocabulary of movement." After viewing the piece, Sokolow's mentor Louis Horst told her, "Now, Anna, you are a choreographer!" It was the highest compliment he could have paid her. | | 
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| | Over the next decades, Sokolow continued to experiment with combinations of music, dance and theater. In such works as Act Without Words (1969), Magritte, Magritte (1970), and From the Diaries of Franz Kafka (1980), she freely mixed mime, acting, dance and music to create a unique and powerful art form. In 1969, she created a new company—called Lyric Theatre, like her short-lived Israeli group—devoted specifically to compositions of this type. As she said, "I prefer to work with people who can dance and act rather than dancers who act or actors who dance." A few years later, the group was reconstituted as The Players' Project. It is now known as the Sokolow Dance Foundation. Sokolow's choice of music for her pieces was also highly innovative. Working with such composers as Teo Macero and Kenyon Hopkins, she was one of the first choreographers to set her compositions to serious, edgy jazz music. One of these works, Opus '65, became the prototype for countless later "rock ballets." |
How to Cite This Page
For a bibliography:
Jewish Women's Archive. "JWA - Anna SokolowChoreographic Innovations." <http://jwa.org/exhibits/wov/sokolow/chor.html>.
For a footnote:
Jewish Women's Archive, "JWA - Anna SokolowChoreographic Innovations," <http://jwa.org/exhibits/wov/sokolow/chor.html>.
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