Anna Sokolow, the “rebellious spirit” of modern dance, was a member of the Martha Graham Company (1937–1940), on the faculty of the Juilliard School of Music, Dance Division (1958–1988), founder and director of La Paloma Azul Company (Mexico, 1940), the Lyric Theater (Israel, 1962), the Anna Sokolow Dance Company (1967), and the Players Project (1971), adviser to Inbal (1953), and choreographer of hundreds of dance works, plays, operas, Broadway musicals, and festivals. Her partners included musician Alex North, painter Ignacio Aguirre, and actor John Silvester White. In celebration of her 85th birthday in 1995, the dance world joined in tribute to her accomplishments and service, her pioneer work in Mexico and Israel, and, above all, her “blazing force and integrity.”

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Sokolow became a pioneering teacher and choreographer when she was invited to Mexico in 1939 by Carlos Mérida. Mexico was then a land fighting an artistic and social revolution. Rita Morgenthau helped get Sokolow’s company to Mexico. Mexico City audiences accepted her dancing, although the work was neither ballet nor folk dance. Away from New York, with a different tempo and culture, her work turned toward lyricism. Her company, “La Paloma Azul” [The blue dove], received acclaim, as did her production of the “Antigone Symphony” by Carlos Chavez.

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Theater, and in Israel, “The Treasure”(1962), a play based on a story by Isaac Leib Peretz. She staged vast festivals and fund-raising events after World War II on behalf of the Jewish National Fund and Bonds for Israel. These included the 1952 Purim Festival (with Sholom Secunda) at Madison Square Garden, the 1953 Fund-Raising for Israel Bonds: 3000th Anniversary of Jerusalem, and the 1954 Hanukkah Festival pageant (with Kim Stanley and Joseph Schildkraut). She staged opera at the New York City Center in 1956, including “Orpheus,” "La Traviata,” “The Tempest,” “L’Histoire du Soldat,” and “Carmen.”

“Rooms” (1955), Sokolow’s best-known late work,  grew from sessions at the Actors Studio. It depicts the isolation of the urban dweller. Each dancer sits in a chair, reaching into space, close to one another, yet out of touch. The theme of the withdrawn sufferer appeared again in “Session ’58,” “Opus ’50,” “Opus Jazz 1958” in Israel, “Opus ’60,” and, finally, “Opus ’65” in the Joffrey Ballet Company’s repertory to Teo Macero’s jazz score.

Two works are worth special note. “Lyric Suite” (1953), choreographed to Alban Berg’s score, was premiered in Mexico and then performed at the YMHA in 1954 with such notables as Donald McKayle, Jeff Duncan, Ethel Winter, and Mary Antony. The use of Berg’s music and the emotive yet non-narrative choreography made this a landmark in modern dance work. Louis Horst said, “Anna, now you are a choreographer.” “Dreams” (1961), an “allegory of time and helplessness,” used concentration camp images. In Holland, audiences responded with the silence of recognition. On the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation, “Dreams” still had enormous impact.

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