Anna Halprin

Posted January 16, 2015

Greenbrae, CA


Anna Halprin has had a varied and important career as a dancer and teacher since the late 1930s. After performing in New York, she became disenchanted with the modern dance world, which she felt was too restrictive, and moved to the Bay Area in 1955. There she conducted influential movement workshops on her outdoor dance deck, which were attended by artists such as Trisha Brown, Meredith Monk, and Yvonne Rainer. After surviving cancer in the early 1970s, Halprin founded the Tamalpa Institute in 1975 to use movement as therapy for cancer and other illnesses. At the age of eighty-seven she continues to make and perform in work about the beauty of the aging body and its relationship to nature. 

 Parades and Changes, 2005; photo courtesy John Kokoska

Parades and Changes, 2005; photo courtesy John Kokoska