This piece first appeared in the Forward and is reprinted with permission.
Anna Halprin, the leading Jewish American dancer and choreographer and educator for generations of experimentalists in dance and theater, died May 24 at her home in Kentfield, in Marin County. She was 100. Her daughter, Daria Halprin Khalighi, cited old age as the cause of death.
Across the 80 years she taught and performed internationally and led workshops on her outdoor dance deck at her home in Marin County, Halprin was a pacesetter for her early disowning of the modern dance world – both its technical approach and its production system, and her abandonment of the proscenium stage. She challenged major dance orthodoxies and her radical dance theater events helped prefigure happenings, performance art and experimental theater works. Located at the boundaries between art and life, healing, ritual and performance, Halprin created participatory site-specific dances, situating art events in the midst of urban life.