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Franziska Marie Boas (January 8, 1902 – December 22, 1988) was an American dancer. She is best known for her works with percussion, pioneering dance therapy, and using dance as social activism.
- Library of Congress
- Franziska Boas collection, 1920-1988
www.loc.gov · encyclopedia · collectionsFranziska Boas Collection - Performing Arts Encyclopedia ...
Franziska Marie Boas (1902-1988), pioneering choreographer, dancer, percussionist, teacher, ethnologist, and therapist, was born in New York City, the youngest of six children of noted anthropologist Franz Boas (1858-1942) and Marie Krackowizer.
- Boas’s Dancing School as Site of Modernism
- Introducing Franziska Boas
- Dehner and Smith and The Dance World
- Leftist Ideologies and Political Organizations
- Shared Interest in Racial Inequality
- Expanding Boundaries and Building Community in Upstate New York
- Music, concerts, Festivals
- Reverberations of The Spanish Civil War in The Postwar World
- Dehner’s Ongoing Anti-Fascism
- Conclusion
Smith’s 1945 steel sculpture Boaz Dancing School offers a visualization of the overlapping careers of the three artists (fig. 1).8 Made in the second season of Boas’s Bolton Landing program, the work affirms Smith’s interest in the school. More than mere description, Smith’s treatment is a radical experiment in rendering space in three dimensions a...
In contrast to Smith’s status in the art-historical canon, Boas’s wide-ranging career and contributions to American classical modern dance have only recently begun to receive critical attention. Scholarship in dance history mainly notes her contributions to dance therapy as an emerging field and her work as a percussion accompanist, at the expense ...
While Boas’s summer sessions in Bolton Landing brought modern dance to Dehner and Smith’s doorstep, the couple were already familiar with the evolution of early twentieth-century classical modern dance. From childhood, Dehner was involved with dance as a student and appreciative audience member, encountering the foundational figures of classical mo...
Smith’s specific interest in Graham’s conception of the body moving in space as recorded by Morgan’s photographs highlights the modernist orientation of these artists. Their respective formal experiments broke traditional boundaries and embraced new modes of expression, but their parallel commitment to modernism was not limited to stylistic issues:...
In these same years, racial inequality regularly garnered attention from left-leaning individuals and organizations. At a time when racism was deeply entrenched in the national psyche and segregation was the law of the land in the United States, the CPUSA encouraged anti-racist activism throughout the 1930s.67 The 1935 “Call for the American Artist...
Whatever the limitations of Boas’s approach, she had bold ambitions for her intensive residential summer school in Bolton Landing. To provide a transformative experience for students and expose them to professional practices, Boas built an unusual curriculum. Along the way, she engaged members of the local community and raised the profile of the ar...
Boas began her summer school with an ambitious agenda and aimed to elevate it year after year. Music was an especially important element, given its complex relationship with dance. She took advantage of summer visitors and locals to augment her percussion courses and round out the music component of the curriculum. She also sought compositions to i...
In 1946, Boas choreographed a solo concert piece she titled Goya-esque. It debuted that year as part of the Boas Dance Group’s performances in New York City and was performed again at the 1948 Bolton Landing Festival of Music. The title of the work immediately invokes Spain and Spanish culture through its reference to the great romantic artist Fran...
In the late 1940s, Dehner, like Boas and Smith, responded to a worldview shaped by her experiences of the 1930s and early 1940s, but for the first time she turned to dance as a vehicle to convey her visual ideas. The exploration of dance in her art aligned with her friendship with Boas and their shared interests in art and politics. The late 1940s ...
The anti-fascist, anti-imperialist stance Dehner shared with Smith and Boas in the years immediately following World War II was an important marker of the political perspectives of the three artists. As I have explored, modernist formal developments in dance and the visual arts were similarly intertwined in the works of the artists during these yea...
The Franziska Boas collection is an extensive collection of multi-format materials documenting the professional and personal life of Franziska Boas. The collection spans Boas' career, from her academic training at Barnard College through
Franziska Boas collection. 1920. Correspondence, labanotation scores and other choreographic notes, business records, playbills, production material, writings by Franz Boas, artwork, and other papers chiefly documenting the life and career of Franzisca Boas.
Jan 27, 2023 · Franziska Marie Boas (January 8, 1902 – December 22, 1988) Out Takes. January 27, 2023. pher, percussionist, and a pioneer in the field of dance therapy, Franziska was the daughter of the famed German-American anthropologist Franz Boas and Marie Krackowitzer, who worked in the same field.
Sep 13, 2006 · This article investigates Franziska Boas’s pioneering work as part of the arts program at Bellevue Hospital in New York. During late 1930s and early 1940s, a few modern dancers explored dance as a holistic practice.
