Internationally known dancer to speak

Mary Anthony, long recognized in the modern dance movement as an exceptional dancer and choreographer, will speak on “My Life in Modern Dance” at the Friends of the UW–Madison Libraries annual lecture at 5:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 9, in the Fluno Center, 601 University Ave.

Anthony will speak about the moment in history that allowed various schools of modern dance to emerge, her relationship with some of the major dance figures of her time, the influence of universities on today’s dance scene and what being an artist has meant to her.

As part of a four-day residency, she’ll teach a master class for university dance students at 1:20 p.m., Wednesday, April 9, at Lathrop Hall. She will speak and answer questions at a brown-bag lunch at noon, Thursday, April 10, in the atrium of Canterbury Booksellers.

Anthony recently received the Ann Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching at the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina. She performed in Hanya Holm’s Company in the 1940s before forming her own company in 1956 and was recently featured in an article by Jennifer Dunning in The New York Times lauding three early teachers of modern dance.

The repertoire of the Mary Anthony Dance Theatre has included works by Anna Sokolow, Lester Horton and Charles Weidman. Anthony’s own works have been added to the repertoires of the Pennsylvania Ballet, the Bat-Dor Company of Israel, the Dublin City Balllet and the National Institute for the Arts of Taiwan.

Anthony credits as her mentor Louise Kloepper, a fellow dancer with the Holm Company and one of the seminal figures in the early years of the Department of Dance at the University of Wisconsin.

Of her most famous work, “Threnody,” based on Synge’s “Riders to the Sea,” noted critic and Graham collaborator Louis Horst wrote, “Here is the most beautiful and complete dance composition this observer has seen … this is something approaching perfection.”