Dreams 1961

Anna Sokolow choreographed Dreams in 1961 and based the piece on horrors from the Holocaust and concentration camps in WWII. Like Martha Graham, Sokolow was not afraid to enter the darker side of dance often portraying the struggles and injustices of human life. When I watched Dreams I had goosebumps and was captivated by the honest movement. In the beginning, a woman opens her mouth wide as if she was screaming, but she doesn’t make a sound. Sokolow’s use of stillness and silence in this dance is superb and gives the piece a raw, human quality. There are percussive sounds and rhythms in the piece with breath, stomps, and sticks. The quality that seemed the most prominent to me about this piece was how believable and realistic it is. I did not see dancers acting, I saw humans suffering.

I admire Anna Sokolow's ability to dig into the social injustices of our world and formulate powerful dances that the audience can experience and relate to. I also love her movement in “Dreams.” She brilliantly balances stillness and chaos as well as fluid and tense movements. In a newspaper from 1965, Allen Hughes writes,

“One of Miss Sokolow’s greatest gifts is that of being able to incorporate “found”

movements in her choreography as contemporary painters and sculptors use “found” objects in their works.” Her work has meaning and purpose in the choreography and acting and even audiences who are not educated in dance can relate to the experiences. From the book Anna Sokolow: The Rebelious Spirit, William Baled states, “Anna Sokolow has been called the rebel of the contemporary dance world throughout her career because she has rebelled against any dictum that prevented the individual artist from developing a personal vision of the content and form of his or her art.”