Dancing with Principle: Hanya Holm in Colorado, 1941-1983

In 1941, Hanya Holm, a German-American dancer and educator who would later become a celebrated Broadway choreographer, created a sanctuary for dance in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains at Colorado College. In Dancing With Principle, Claudia Gitelman details Holm’s work during an amazing span of forty-three years. The Hanya Holm/Colorado College Summer School of the Dance in Colorado Springs educated many thousands on both sides of the footlights in the art of modern dance.

With exhortations to understand what they were doing and stick with their principles, Holm helped thousands of students with their craft. As Gitelman notes, many of her students went on to work in regional and national dance companies, and some even achieved international status as choreographers and company directors.

Fascinated by her own work with Hanya Holm in Colorado, both as a student and as one of Holm’s assistants, Gitelman examined archives held by the Holm family and interviewed more than fifty of Holm’s students, associates, and observers of the program. Describing the birth, constant renewal, and lasting legacy of an institution that has been overlooked in studies of American dance culture, Dancing With Principle will appeal to dance lovers and dance specialists, regional historians, and students of American culture and Colorado history.