Hanya Holm - Holm As A Dance Educator

Holm As A Dance Educator

Hanya Holm's approach to teaching was to liberate each individual to define a technical style of his or her own that should express their inner personality and give freedom to explore. She would tell her students, "You have a perfect right to branch out, if you have the stuff in you, if you discover your own richness, if you have something to say." Holm's philosophy of teaching was how to find the essence of dance and understand where the movement comes from in the body that way it is a natural response in the dancer's body. She brought weltanschauung to her dance teaching. Holm was strict; she expected greatness from her students which would come from a willingness to work hard. It was her thought that if you worked hard and truly wanted it, you would achieve the desired outcome. Holm had an extremely keen eye, she had the ability to look at something and verbalize what she wanted using elaborate imagery and analogies. She used her technique class as a preparation for her improvisation and composition classes. These classes were where the students could expand and experiment on the skills that were presented in class, making the movement innate in their bodies. A large amount of Holm’s choreography came from the improv and comp classes. Hanya Holm taught anatomy, Dalcroze eurhythmics, improvisation, and Labanotation at her school. She taught at Colorado College, Mills College, University of Wisconsin, Alwin Nikolais School, and was the Head of Dance Department in New York's Musical Theatre Academy. After 1974, she taught at the Juilliard School (Martha Hill, director) in New York. In 1988, a documentary of her life Hanya: Portrait of a Pioneer narrated by Julie Andrews and Alfred Drake, and featuring interviews with Holm, Nikolais, Murray Louis, and others, was released by Dance Horizons.

Her son was Broadway lighting designer Klaus Holm. She and her son are interred in Hanover Township, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Her husband was a German sculptor who, when Hitler came to power, sided with the Reich, effectively ending his marriage to Holm.

Holm has been honored by the National Dance Association, in 1976, with the Heritage Award for her contributions to dance education. She was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 1988.