Anna Halprin

Anna Halprin attended the University of Wisconsin from 1940-1944 and studied dance with Margaret H’Doubler. She would always say that everything she learned came from this teacher. Her Parades and Changes, a breakthrough work in the sixties, was first performed in 1965 in Stockholm, where the nudity was seen as a “ceremony of trust,” but when it was performed in 1967 in New York City an arrest warrant was issued to her for indecent exposure. The intention of the work, also known as “The Paper Dance,” is to comment on the corporate world, with the business suits as costume, removing them ceremoniously and revealing the naked unarmed nature the whole body. “As the paper rolls out, there is an image of water and the activity for the performer is to slowly tear the paper while being aware of the sound, the shapes and movement of the group, finally bringing it to a closure as an offering to the audience.”

Dance: Anna Halprin’s Parades and Changes; the artist as activist, at the Fredrick March Play Circle theater in the Memorial Union Thursday, June 14th, 5:15 - 6:15PM

made possible by a grant from Jody Gottfried Arnhold