Hannah Kahn Dance Company
Description
The Hannah Kahn Dance Company, one of Denver’s finest professional modern dance troupes has been sharing its passion for dance with the Denver community since 1988. The Denver based Hannah Kahn Dance Company was formed in 1992.
The New York based company was established in 1976 and funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. The current Colorado company receives funding from the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District, the Denver Foundation, and the Denver Ballet Guild.
Each year the Company performs its interactive and educational school show How To Build a Dance for thousands of children in Denver, Arapahoe, Jefferson, and Adams counties. We have successfully been offering intensive residencies in public schools for more than a decade. These residencies include workshops during regular schools hours and continue with after school rehearsals for a piece of choreography set on a group of students by a company member. These residencies culminate in a joint performance at the school by the Company and the students. We also perform in day treatment centers for people with disabilities, at nursing homes, and at resident treatment centers for troubled teens.
The Company holds three modern dance technique classes each week on an ongoing basis at its home base, Open Studio, in Denver’s Historic Baker neighborhood. See our classes page for more information.
Hannah Kahn, founder and artistic director of the Hannah Kahn Dance Company, is a master teacher with thirty-five years experience creating over one hundred dances. Some of the strongest influences on her choreography were her childhood classes in Ithaca, New York with Iris Barbura, her studies of the techniques of Jose Limon and Martha Graham, and her performances of dances by Doris Humphrey and Anna Sokolow. The practice of Tai Chi has also influenced her movement style.
After graduating from the Julliard School, Kahn founded the Company in New York, and directed it there for twelve years before moving to Colorado in 1988. Kahn has received two NEA choreography fellowships, a New York State Council on the Arts individual choreographers fellowship and a CoVisions Recognition Award in dance choreography from the Colorado Council on the Arts. In 2009, Hannah was honored as a “Living Legend of Dance” by the Carson Brierly Dance Library. An award that honors those individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to dance in Colorado.
In addition to her own company, her works have been in the repertories of over a dozen other dance companies and she yearly re stages her work on the budding artists of the Denver School of the Arts.