Tanz als Überlebenskunst: Die Choreografin Hilde Holger und ihr Einfluss auf die britische Tanzkultur

This essay discusses the impact of choreographer Hilde Holger (Vienna 1905–2001 London) on British dance culture. Holger worked in London from 1948 until 2001. As a celebrated soloist she toured internationally until the ‘Anschluss‘ in 1938, following which she succeeded in surviving the Holocaust by escaping to India. There she spent ten years in exile in Bombay, pioneering Modern Dance in India, before settling in London in 1948. Her radical work in her basement studio in Camden, where she worked until her death at the age of 95, was driven by a spirit of experimentation, humanism and political activism. Holger was at the forefront of developments in Dance-Movement Therapy in the UK, and in the 1970s passed on her knowledge in this field to figures now at the forefront of the ‘community dance’ field in the UK – Wolfgang Stange, Carl Campbell and Royston Maldoom. Holger survived as an independent choreographer outside of existing funding structures and influenced hundreds of dance practitioners