Hilde Boman-Behram (née Hilde Sofer, stage name Hilde Holger; 18 October 1905 – 22 September 2001) was an expressionist dancer, choreographer and dance teacher whose pioneering work in integrated dance transformed modern dance.
Family
Holger came from a liberal Jewish family. She was born in 1905, the daughter of Alfred and Elise Sofer Schreiber. Her father wrote poetry, and had died by 1908. Her grandfather made shoes for the Austrian court.
After Nazi Germany invaded Austria, Holger fled Vienna in 1939, because her entry into England was denied, she went to India. In Mumbai, she met the Parsi homeopath and art loving Dr. Ardershir Kavasji Boman-Behram, they married in 1940. Her mother, step-father, and fourteen other relatives all perished in the Holocaust.
Hilde Holger had two children. The first was born 1946 in India, her daughter Primavera Boman-Behram. In New York, she became a dancer, sculptor and jewelry designer. In 1948, Holger's family emigrated to Britain. Her second child, a son named Darius Boman-Behram, was born in 1949. He had Down syndrome, which inspired Holger to work with physically disabled people.
Work
Hilde Holger started to dance at age six. At that time she was too young to join the Vienna State Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, so she settled for ballroom dancing lessons taken with her sister (Hedi Sofer), until she was accepted to study with radical dancer Gertrud Bodenwieser, then a professor at the Vienna State Academy. They were admirers of the work of Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis, as well as the artists of the Secession. Holger soon rose to be Bodenwieser's principal dancer and friend, and toured with Bodenwieser's company all over Western and Eastern Europe. She toured with her own Hilde Holger Dance Group as well. At age eighteen she had her first solo performance in the Viennese Secession. Later in the Viennese Hagenbund and theaters in Vienna, Paris and Berlin, her much-lauded expressionist dance caused quite a stir. Because of her passion for dance, in 1926 she formed the New School for Movement Arts in Palais Ratibor, right in the heart of Vienna. Her children's performances were danced in parks and in front of monuments there.
On 12 March 1938, Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany sent troops into Austria, and adopted a law to unify the country with Austria, at that time it was forbidden for Jews to perform. She received help to flee Austria from her friend Charles Petrach. She decided to go to India because that country's art was the most compelling to Western people, she said at that time.
In India, she had the opportunity to incorporate new experiences into her work, especially the hand movements of Indian dance. Classical Indian dance has over three hundred of them, used to express life and nature. In 1941, Holger founded a new school of dance in Bombay, she took students of all race, religion and nationality without prejudice. Like when she was in Vienna, Holger again took part in the artistic community. Amongst her friends with whom she collaborated with were the Indian dancers Rukmini Devi Arundale, Ram Gopal, Madame Menaka and Uday Shankar. Gopal also danced in Holger's school in Bombay. In 1948 because of the partition of India and the growing violence between Muslims and Hindus she emigrated again, this time to Britain.
Once in England, her Holger Modern Ballet Group performed in parks, churches and theaters. She again opened a new dance school, The Hilde Holger School of Contemporary Dance and remained faithful to their style of teaching that the body and mind must form one unit in order to be a good dancer. Her breakthrough in London, 1951, celebrated Holger with the premiere of "Under the Sea", inspired by the composition by Camille Saint-Saens.
In 1972, she performed a piece titled "Man against flood", it was based on the book of the same name written by Chinese Communist Party member Rewi Alley. It was performed at the Commonwealth Institute with music by Chinese composer Yin Chengzong, and included dancers forming a human wall against a flood of water.
Her performance "Apsaras" (1983) explored her experiences in India. In the summer of 1983 she went back to India, where she had been last in the year 1948. There she worked as a choreographer for a large dance group directed by Sachin Shankar.
