Browse Exhibits (6 total)

Includes materials such as portraits and casual shots of Anna alone and/or with her family as well as images from her resident outdoor Mountain Studio/Dance Deck.

Anna Halprin’s diverse career in dance has spanned more than 75 years. Since her arrival in San Francisco in 1945, Halprin (1920- ) has challenged and expanded popular conceptions of art, developing some of the most groundbreaking and influential performance works of the 20th century. Halprin’s dances have defied obscenity laws, confronted race relations, upended theatrical traditions, and redened dance itself.

As an alternative to set choreography, Halprin has developed unique methods of dance scoring. Her dance scores communicate the essential spatial, temporal, and physical instructions for each performance work. These two-dimensional renderings of her movement ideas and choreographic structures are designed in ways that inspire users to apply their own creative sensibilities to embodying and carrying out their instructions. Halprin’s dance scores are simultaneously structured and fluid. They exist as records of Halprin’s creative activity and serve as the impetus for new productions. Many scores are working documents, and Halprin continues to stage new iterations of her performance works.

The scores display a dynamic range of content, size, medium, and artistic style. This exhibit charts the exceptional breadth and diversity of Halprin’s work with dance scoring since the late 1950s.

ENTER EXHIBITION

This exhibit includes works from the San Francisco Dancers' Workshop (SFDW) and the Tamalpa Institute. Anna founded SFDW in 1959, with dancers Trisha Brown, Simone Forti, and Yvonne Rainer, and artists John Cage and Robert Morris. The Tamalpa Institute was founded in 1978. Works featured include those choreographed and performed by SFDW and Tamalpa Institute members as well as works featuring audience participation.

The sections include images from a selection of works sampled from the Anna Halprin Papers and are listed in alphabetical order with the final section including a smaller sampling of her earlier works.