Mimi Kagan (1918–1999;
née
A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...
Miriam Gabrilovna Kagan, and also known as Miriam Odza, Mimi Kagan Kim) was a
Russia-born American modern dancer
Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance which included dance styles such as ballet, folk, ethnic, religious, and social dancing; and primarily arose out of Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th ...
,
choreographer
Choreography is the art or practice of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies (or their depictions) in which motion or form or both are specified. ''Choreography'' may also refer to the design itself. A choreographer is one who cr ...
, educator, and dance journalist. She was the founder of the avant-garde Mimi Kagan Dance Group, and was active and influential in modern dance and choreography in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
; the
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...
;
Princeton
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...
,
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
; and
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
,
.
Early life
Kagan was born in
Samara
Samara ( rus, Сама́ра, p=sɐˈmarə), known from 1935 to 1991 as Kuybyshev (; ), is the largest city and administrative centre of Samara Oblast. The city is located at the confluence of the Volga and the Samara (Volga), Samara rivers, with ...
,
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
and came to the United States as a young child.
Her family was
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
.
Career
New York City
Kagan trained for dance under
Hanya Holm
Hanya Holm (born Johanna Eckert; 3 March 1893 – 3 November 1992) is known as one of the "Big Four" founders of American modern dance. She was a dancer, choreographer, and above all, a dance educator.
Early life, connection with Mary Wigman
Bo ...
, one of the "Big Four" founders of American modern dance.
She later became part of the Hanya Holm Dance Company.
Kagan danced in ''Trend'' (1938), Holm's first United States performance.
Other dancers in the Holm company included
Louise Kloepper
Louise Kloepper (January 10, 1910 – December 15, 1996) was an American dancer and dance educator, chair of the dance program at the University of Wisconsin.
Early life and education
Louise Olga Kloepper was born in Washington, D.C. and raised ...
, and Henrietta Greenhood (later known as
Eve Gentry
Eve Gentry (August 21, 1909 – June 17, 1994; née Henrietta Greenhood, and pseudonym Eve Brooks) was a modern dancer, and later a Pilates master instructor. She was an original disciple of Joseph Pilates, and a master teacher of his techniq ...
).
Kagan served as the dance director at
Henry Street Settlement
The Henry Street Settlement is a not-for-profit social service agency in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City that provides social services, arts programs and health care services to New Yorkers of all ages. It was founde ...
Playhouse (now Abrons Arts Center) in New York City.
San Francisco Bay Area
She later moved to
Berkeley
Berkeley most often refers to:
*Berkeley, California, a city in the United States
**University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California
* George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher
Berkeley may also refer ...
,
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
and worked as a co-director of Dance Associates; and she founded her own company the Mimi Kagan Dance Group; and in 1947 also worked under the name the San Francisco Dance League alongside
Anna Halprin
Anna Halprin (born Hannah Dorothy Schuman; July 13, 1920 – May 24, 2021) was an American choreographer and dancer. She helped redefine dance in postwar America and pioneer the experimental art form known as postmodern dance and referred to hers ...
.
She received an award from the
San Francisco Arts Commission
The San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) is the City agency that champions the arts as essential to daily life by investing in a vibrant arts community, enlivening the urban environment and shaping innovative cultural policy in San Francisco, Cali ...
for dance presentation.
Kagan also taught dance at the
California Labor School
The California Labor School (until 1945 named the Tom Mooney Labor School) was an educational organization in San Francisco from 1942 to 1957. Like the contemporary Jefferson School of Social Science and the New York Workers School, it represent ...
in San Francisco.
In 1957, the Mimi Kagan Dance Group was named as a "Communist group" by
Herbert Philbrick
Herbert Arthur Philbrick (May 11, 1915 – August 16, 1993) was a Boston-area advertising executive who was encouraged by the FBI to infiltrate the Communist Party USA between 1940 and 1949. His autobiography was the basis for the 1950s television ...
. In 1961, the
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...
had targeted and
blacklisted the Mimi Kagan Dance Group as a "subversive organization", which was part of a list published in national newspapers.
Princeton, and later Cambridge
In 1971 and 1972, she collaborated with her second husband composer Earl Kim on the work "Exercises en Route", which toured and featured text by
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...
, and soprano soloist
Benita Valente.
The show contained Kagan dancing and four other dancers from
Boston Ballet
The Boston Ballet is an American professional classical ballet company based in Boston, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1963 by E. Virginia Williams and Sydney Leonard, and was the first professional repertory ballet company in New England. I ...
including Anamarie Sarazin, Eileen O'Reilly, Robert Steele, and Anthony Williams.
In 1970s, Kagan was a dance correspondent for
The Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
daily newspaper.
Kagan died in 1999 in Oakland, California, and is buried at the
Mountain View Cemetery. Her students had included
Murray Louis
Murray Louis (November 4, 1926 – February 1, 2016) was an American modern dancer and choreographer.
Life
Louis was known as one of the most influential American modern dancers and choreographers. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he grew up in Manh ...
, and she designed choreography for Adrienne Hawkins.
File:Group shot, 1940s.jpg, with Ted Odza (c. 1940)
File:Mimi Kagan Dance Group.jpg, Mimi Kagan Dance Group
File:Earl and Mimi, unknown gathering, Princeton, 1966 or 1967.jpg, with Earl Kim (c. 1966)
File:Four dancers.jpg, Dancers in "Exercises en Route" (c. 1970)
Personal life
Kagan was married twice and both ended in divorce; in 1940 to sculptor
Theodore Odza
Theodore "Ted" Odza (1915–1998) was an American artist, curator, and educator, known for his sculptures and abstract paintings. He taught art classes at University of California, Berkeley, and later served as the chair of the art department of L ...
, and in 1958 to composer
Earl Kim
Earl Kim (1920–1998; née Eul Kim) was an American composer, and music pedagogue. He was of Korean–descent.
Early life, education, and training
Kim was born on January 6, 1920 in Dinuba, California, to immigrant Korean parents. He began p ...
.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kagan, Mimi
1918 births
1999 deaths
People from Samara, Russia
Expressionist choreographers
Expressionist dancers
Modern dancers
20th-century American dancers
Soviet emigrants to the United States
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
People from Berkeley, California