2024 is the 20th anniversary of the Sokolow Theatre Dance Ensemble. Experience the intimate, edgy theater dance of choreographer Anna Sokolow in dynamic dialogue with the rhythm-based psychological dance theater of Bang Group choreographer David Parker!

Close Quarters first premiered in 2023 in the Lower East Side cabaret venue, The Slipper Room, and was the first time Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble designed a program especially for a caberet-sized space. The smaller the space, the more performers are compelled to reach deep inside. Close Quarters II promises to be an intense trip through Sokolow and Parker’s most edgy, sensual, dark, and surreal work.

Anna Sokolow (1910-2000) raised on the Lower East Side of New York City and began her training at the Neighborhood Playhouse with Martha Graham and Louis Horst. In the 1930’s she was a member of the Graham Dance Company and assisted Mr. Horst in his dance composition classes. The first of the Graham dancers to strike out on her own, Sokolow’s collaboration with composer Alex North brought her deeper into socially conscious circles. During this period, her association with the WPA dance made union members her first audiences.

In 1939 Ms. Sokolow began a lifelong association with the dance and theater arts in Mexico. Her work for the Mexican Ministry of Fine Arts grew to become the National Academy of Dance there. In 1953 she was invited by Jerome Robbins to Israel to work with Inbal Dance Company. Following that, she choreographed for the major dance companies in Israel including Batsheva, Kibbutz Dance Company, and Lyric Theatre. She visited Mexico and Israel frequently to teach and to choreograph.

Ms. Sokolow’s interest in humanity led her to create works of dramatic contemporary imagery showing both the lyric and stark aspects of the human experience. Her vast range of repertory includes drama, comedy, and lyricism with her commentaries on humanity and social justice threaded into each of her works. In a 1965 Dance Magazine article she wrote that there were no “final solutions to today’s problems,” but that she “could simply provoke an audience into awareness.”

Ms. Sokolow’s works are performed by the Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble, and are in the repertories of numerous other companies around the world.

Ms. Sokolow also choreographed for the Broadway theater. Her credits include Street Scene, Camino Real, Candide, and the original Hair. In the late 1950’s Ms. Sokolow was the first modern dance choreographer to have her work (Rooms) presented on national television.

She was a longtime faculty member of the Juilliard School in both the dance and drama divisions. She received many honors and awards, including Honorary Doctorate degrees from Ohio State University, Brandeis University and the Boston Conservatory of Music. She received a Fulbright Fellowship to Japan, the Dance Magazine Award, a National Endowment for the Arts’ Choreographic Fellowship, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American/Israel Cultural Foundation, the Samuel H. Scripps Award, and the Encomienda, Aztec Eagle Honor (the highest civilian honor awarded to a foreigner by Mexico).