
Anna Halprin
Experience as Dance
Janice Ross(Author)
University of California Press
1st Edition
Published on 12. February 2007
Book
Hardback
462 pages
978-0-520-24757-4 (ISBN)
Description
Anna Halprin pioneered what became known as 'postmodern dance,' creating work that was key to unlocking the door to experimentation in theater, music, Happenings, and performance art. This first comprehensive biography examines Halprin's fascinating life in the context of American culture - in particular popular culture and the West Coast as a center of artistic experimentation from the Beats through the Hippies. Janice Ross chronicles Halprin's long, remarkable career, beginning with the dancer's grandparents - who escaped Eastern European pogroms and came to the United States at the turn of the last century - and ending with the present day, when Halprin continues to defy boundaries between artistic genres as well as between participants and observers. As she follows Halprin's development from youth into old age, Ross describes in engrossing detail the artist's roles as dancer, choreographer, performance theorist, community leader, cancer survivor, healer, wife, and mother. Halprin's friends and acquaintances include a number of artists who charted the course of postmodern performance.
Among her students were Trisha Brown, Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, Meredith Monk, and Robert Morris. Ross brings to life the vital sense of experimentation during this period. She also illuminates the work of Anna Halprin's husband, the important landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, in the context of his wife's environmental dance work. Using Halprin's dance practices and works as her focus, Ross explores the effects of danced stories on the bodies who perform them. The result is an innovative consideration of how experience becomes performance as well as a masterful account of an extraordinary life.
Among her students were Trisha Brown, Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, Meredith Monk, and Robert Morris. Ross brings to life the vital sense of experimentation during this period. She also illuminates the work of Anna Halprin's husband, the important landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, in the context of his wife's environmental dance work. Using Halprin's dance practices and works as her focus, Ross explores the effects of danced stories on the bodies who perform them. The result is an innovative consideration of how experience becomes performance as well as a masterful account of an extraordinary life.
Reviews / Votes
"Beautifully researched. . . with a tone of persuasive poise, Ross builds a strong case for Anna Halprin as one of the most potent if underrecognized catalysts in dance since the '50s." * Dance Magazine * "An indispensable critical biography of this modern dance pioneer. . . . Remarkable. . . . Intelligent." * Financial Times * "Superb biography . . . Rich with fascinating material." * Metro Newspapers * "Fastidiously researched. . . . A masterful job of capturing the life of Anna Halprin." * Jewish Book World *More details
Edition
First Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Berkerley
United States
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
60 b-w photographs
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
862 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-520-24757-4 (9780520247574)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
02/2007
1st Edition
Naval Institute Press
€34.49
Available for download
Persons
Janice Ross is Associate Professor of Drama at Stanford University and the author of Moving Lessons: Margaret H'Doubler and the Beginning of Dance in American Education. Richard Schechner is University Professor and one of the founders of the Performance Studies Department at New York University.
Content
Foreword by Richard Schechner Introduction 1. Why She Danced (1920-1938) 2. The Secret Garden of American Dance (1938-1942) 3. The Bauhaus and the Settlement House (1941-1945) 4. Western Spaces (1945-1955) 5. Instantaneous Experience and Beat Culture (1955-1960) 6. Urban Rituals (1961-1966) 7. Spectatorship and Embodiment (1967-1968) 8. Ceremony of Memory (1968-1971) 9. Illness as Performance (1972-1990) 10. Flesh Made Metaphor: Dances of Aging (1991-2005) Chronology of Works, Videos, and Films by Anna Halprin Notes Bibliography Index