Erick Hawkins as The Husbandman in the 1944 premiere of Martha Graham's work, Appalachian Spring, with commissioned music by Aaron Copland. (Photograph from the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Collection of the Music Division, Library of Congress.)

A modern dance choreographer with an independent approach to movement based on natural kinesthetic response, Erick Hawkins (1909-1994) was born in Trinidad, Colorado. After receiving his B.A. in classics from Harvard University, he took classes with Harald Kreutzberg, then enrolled at the School of American Ballet, where he studied until 1938. At the same time he danced in George Balanchine's American Ballet and Lincoln Kirstein's Ballet Caravan, for which he choreographed his first work, Showpiece (1937). In 1938 he joined the Martha Graham company, becoming its first male member and the choreographer's partner in numerous works including Appalachian Spring (1944). In his modern dance choreography of the 1940s Hawkins first drew on Native-American motifs; this intensified over the years, as did his interest in Daoist theory and Asian forms. In 1952 he began to collaborate with composer Lucia Dlugoszewski, who contributed scores to many of his works. He celebrated natural phenomena, made frequent use of masks, and developed a free-floating technique that gave his dancing its characteristic lightness arid fluidity.

An undated photograph of Margaret H'Doubler. (Photograph from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives; used by permission.)

A pioneering dance educator who was the first to make dance part of the American college curriculum, Margaret H'Doubler (1889-1982) was born in Beloit, Kansas. A student of biology, chemistry, and philosophy, she began her career in 1910 as a physical education teacher at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In 1917, after a year at Teachers College, Columbia University, she developed a course in dance and formed a student performing group, Orchesis, which inspired institutions throughout the Midwest to incorporate dance into the women's physical education curriculum. H'Doubler developed a sophisticated method and philosophy of dance education based on scientific principles and the belief that each student had potential creativity and abilities that could be developed with careful nurturing. By the time she retired from the University of Wisconsin in 1954, she had taught thousands of students, including many who went on to become professional dancers and choreographers. She was also the author of two influential books, Dance and Its Place in Education (1925) and Dance: A Creative Art Experience (1940).

Gregory Hines in Sophisticated Ladies (1981). (Photograph by Martha Swope; used by permission of TimePix.)

The dancing toddler Gregory Hines (1946-2003) turned professional at five, appearing with his brother Maurice as The Hines Kids. With drummer Maurice Sr., the act became Hines, Hines and Dad. Trained by the venerable tap master Henry Le Tang, Hines toured for more than two decades, polishing an Afro-Cuban technique that emphasizes hard accents and slides. Eventually, he returned to his native New York and was seen on Broadway in Eubie (1978), Comin' Uptown (1979), Sophisticated Ladies (1981), and Jelly's Last Jam (1992), for which he won a Tony award as Best Actor in a Musical. Hines was in the television special "Motown Returns to the Apollo." He hosted Showtime's Dance of the Decade series and was a guest star for "Tap Dance in America" on PBS, as well as for the first of Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories. Credited with revitalizing tap in the 1980s, Hines's dance films include The Cotton Club (1984), White Nights (1985) with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Tap (1988), and Bojangles (2001). As an actor Hines made numerous television appearances and performed in more than a dozen films.

A 1937 photograph of Hanya Holm. (Photograph by Benedict Frenkel; from the Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.)

One of the legendary pioneers of American modern dance in the 1930s, Hanya Holm (1893-1992) was born in Germany and studied at the Dalcroze Institute in Hellerau. She studied in the 1920s with Mary Wigman in Dresden, eventually becoming a member of her company and chief instructor at her school. In 1931 Holm settled in New York to direct the Wigman Institute founded at the behest of Sol Hurok; in 1936, in response to rising antifascist sentiment, it was renamed the Hanya Holm School of Dance. An inspiring teacher, she served on the faculty of the Bennington School of the Dance, which produced her most ambitious choreographic work of the 1930s, Trend; from 1941 to 1984 she taught summer classes at Colorado College. In 1948 she scored a Broadway hit with her dances for Kiss Me, Kate (1948); other Broadway successes followed, including My Fair Lady (1956) and Camelot (1960). Holm's teaching emphasized space, and in choreographing—even for Broadway—she made regular use of improvisation. Her theater work achieved a rare degree of dramatic and choreographic fusion.

Lester Horton often designed his own sets, props, and costumes. In this photograph he is painting a clay mask. (Photograph by Constantine; from the archives of Jacob's Pillow, Becket, Massachusetts)

Not only a pioneer in the modern dance field, Lester Horton (1906-1953) was also a trailblazer in making a home for the nascent art form on the West Coast, basing his choreographic and training endeavors in Los Angeles. Besides early classes in ballet, aesthetic, and Native-American dance, Horton studied at the Denishawn School and with Michio Ito. The Lester Horton Dance Group first appeared in 1932 and became noted over the ensuing two decades for an individual technique and theatrical style that embraced themes of social and political protest as well as satire. Highlights of his repertory include at least six versions of Oscar Wilde's erotic Salome, Le Sacre du Printemps (first produced at the Hollywood Bowl in 1937), To José Clemente Orozco, The Beloved, Conquest, Art Patrons, and Flight from Reality. Horton also choreographed commercial projects and created the dances for nineteen Hollywood films. He excelled as a costume and set designer and opened Dance Theater in 1948, a teaching academy that was converted into an evening performance arena. Founded by soloists associated with Horton, the companies of Alvin Ailey, Bella Lewitzky, and Joyce Trisler have perpetuated his technique, as have such dancers as James Truitte and Carmen de Lavallade.