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Research Guides

Chamber Dance Company Archive: Hannah Kahn

A unique collection of video documenting the UW Chamber Dance Dance Company's over 25 year history of performing modern dance classics.

Selection from Hannah Kahn's "Ring"

Hannah Kahn

Hannah Kahn

American educator, choreographer and performer

Kahn's choreography, though relatively unchanged over the years in approach and language, is now realizing its greatest potential - pure, gorgeous movement that sings.

                     Janine Gastineau, Dance Magazine

Hannah Kahn is founding artistic director and choreographer for the Hannah Kahn Dance Company, which had its home base in New York for twelve years before moving to Denver in 1988. Kahn graduated with a B.F.A. from the Juilliard School, and danced and toured with several dance companies in New York. She has set her work on many repertory companies including Concert Dance Company of Boston, Maryland Dance Theatre, Pennsylvania Dance Theatre, and Zenon Dance Company of Minneapolis. Kahn’s choreographic interest is in movement invention and creation of abstract structures. She believes that “...dance miraculously evokes a direct response in spectators, not by translating ideas into movement, but on its own terms: its sculptural and musical qualities, its rhythms and shape.” The influence of the Martha Graham and José Limón techniques, choreography by Doris Humphrey and Anna Sokolow, as well as Tai Chi, is evident in her work Ring.

Watch Hannah Kahn's works Debussy Dance and Ring at the Media Arcade in Vol. 23 of the Chamber Dance Company Archive (DVD UWDP 001 v.23).