Anna
Halprin

Anna Halprin was born in 1920 in Illinois and died in 2021 in California (United Sates). She was an American dancer and choreographer who, during the 1950s, played a major role in the birth of postmodern dance in the United States. Her work involved everyday gestures and paid special attention to the collective, as well as to rituals that favour the emergence of a common language, one that seeks a physical connection to reality and spirituality. Influenced by the philosophy of John Dewey, but also by those of composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham, her method of improvisation based on “organic choreography”, her use of scores that could be reactivated by others and the involvement of the audience in her choreographies were radical innovations. In 1955 on the West Coast, she created the San Francisco Dancers Workshop, where she began a form of “community work” that was also marked by strong political activism, especially against the Vietnam War and racial segregation in the United States.