Post-Modern Dancer Anna Halprin to Perform "The Courtesan and the Crone"

Anna Halprin, the post-modern dance legend who lives in Kentfield, will perform at AgeSong at Lake Merritt in Oakland on Saturday, March 24, from 3:30 p.m to 5:00 p.m.

She first performed this dance for AgeSong to a standing ovation crowd at the Poetics of Aging Conference, November, 2011. The upcoming free performance is open to the public, and will followed be by a discussion led by AgeSong CEO Nader Shabahangi. 

AgeSong Senior Communities provide residential care including independent living, assisted living and secure memory care services.

Attendees are welcome to get together with friends earlier for Saturday brunch and join Lake Merritt residents for the 3:30 performance. RSVP at 510-903-3600

Anna Halprin currently does research in connection with the Tamalpa Institute, based in Marin County, California, which she founded with her daughter Daria. Following is a chronological history of her work over the past 40+ years.

Breath Made Visible by Ruedi Gerber (April 02, 2010). As she approaches her 92nd birthday, Marin County-based dance pioneer Anna Halprin is honored with a documentary that reflects her wide influence and eternally questing spirit: “Breath Made Visible.” The interviews with colleagues are revealing, and the moments that Halprin shares with her famed landscape architect husband, Lawrence (who died in October), glow with a deep mutual affection.

Anna Halprin Experience As Dance (2007) 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. 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, mother, grandmother and great mother.

The Planetary Dance Manual (2006) An art work of the Planetary Dance Score as exhibited in “Origin of Performance” 2006 in Lyon, France at the Contemporary Museum of Modern Art and at the Yerva Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco 2008. Created by Anna Halprin, James Nixon and Russell Bass. Graphic Design by Stephen Grosberg.

My Lunch With Anna (2005) When French choreographer Alain Buffard set out to create a film about the legendary American dance artist Anna Halprin, the pair staged a series of lunches on sites that were used for her performances in San Francisco, her famous dance deck in Marin County, the Berkeley Art Museum, and Stinson Beach.

Festival d’Automne a Paris (2004) Shown in this video of the performance: Parades and Changes (1965), Intensive Care; Reflection on Death and Dying (2000) and an impromptu site-specific promenade performance En Route (2004). The international company of musicians, composers, dancers, and designers created especially for the occasion testify both to her range of artists who have worked with her and their loyalty to her continuing creative interrogation of dance.

Seniors Rocking Seniors Rocking was a performance created with over 50 local seniors from different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Halprin chose a meadow by a lagoon for the performance site. The use of rocking chairs enabled everyone to participate. This simple tool evolved to symbolize the ongoing force or life force. The culminating moment in the film occurs when dancers leave their rocking chairs and walk hand in hand to the lagoon to send their legacies with the birds to carry out to the world.

Anna Halprin (2004) An extensive guide to Anna Halprin’s work written by certified practitioners. The work includes an overview of Halprin’s life and the evolution of her work as well as an investigation of her methodology including the Life/Art Process, RSVP Cycles for collective creativity, and the five stages of healing. Worth and Poynor also analyze Anna’s community performance rituals Circle the Earth and The Planetary Dance and her approach to work through movement explorations and scores.

Returning Home (2003) Returning Home is a breathtaking and groundbreaking dance documentary in which 80-something Anna Halprin, pioneer of postmodern dance, uses movement as a means of connecting the individual to nature, and art to real life. In collaboration with performance artist Eeo Stubblefield, Halprin moves along thresholds of earth, wind, water and fire, discovering lessons in loss and liberation.

Planetary Dance 2003 Planetary Dance. A dance ritual on Mount Tamalpais. A prayer for peace among people and peace the earth.

Returning To Health With Dance Movement And Imagery (2000) Anna offers the wisdom of her life experience as a dancer, teacher, and facilitator for healing. She tells her own story as a cancer survivor and the stories of many others with deep compassion and clarity, from her own uplifting perspective. This book serves as a guide to understanding the emotional processes of a health crisis, as well as giving clear guidlines in the form of 10 different lessons plans for how to work with these insights.

Among career highlights in the 20^th century:

Right On/Ceremony of US (1968) In 1968 Ann Halprin simultaneously developed two companies, one in San Francisco of all white dancers, and another in Watts of all black dancers. In a rehearsal process that was, in the words of Janice Ross “not so much a dance as a lived experiment” Halprin guided the two groups of dancers into experiences that both elicited and challenged racial stereotypes, creating a space where political and personal anger and despair could be expressed, and where reconciliation could be envisioned.

Circle The Earth, Dancing With Life On The Line (1989) A documentary of the 1989 healing dance by Anna Halprin and by people living with AIDS, ARC and HIV+ status along with their caregivers, supports and friends. Additional AIDS, ARC, and HIV + themes: Dance For Your Life/Ritual of Life and Death/Tree Dance, Positive Motion: Challenging Aids Through Dance And Ritual (1988), Positive Motion is an exploratory dance group for men with HIV/AIDS, Steps Theatre Company For People Challenging AIDS (1986)

Inner Landscapes (1991) Documentary that tracks the parallel histories of Anna Halprin’s work as a dancer/choreographer and Lawrence Halprin’s work as a landscape architect.

Moving Toward Life: Five Decades Of Transformational Dance (1995) Moving Towards Life brings together for the first time Anna’s essays, interviews, manifestos, and teaching materials, along with over 100 illustrations, providing a rich account of the work that radicalized an entire generation of performers.

Embracing The Earth Dances With Nature (1995) Embracing the Earth shows dancers under the artistic direction of acclaimed dance artist, Anna Halprin, moving with the shapes, rhythms, and textures of nature. Intimate and meditative imagery transports us to a place where self and environment merges, to a point of understanding that the human body and the body of the earth are one and the same.

Grandfather Dances (1996) Powerful solo work in which Anna Halprin recounts a childhood story of watching her grandfather dance and sing the rituals of Hasidic Judaism.  In Halprin’s own words: “I’ve searched my whole life to find a dance that means as much to me as my grandfather’s dance meant to him.”