Anna Sokolow, Choreographer

Modern dance choreographer Anna Sokolow is the subject of this brief, but nevertheless aimless, mini-biography shot over a decade ago by filmmakers Lucille Rhodes and Margaret Murphy. The film opens with Sokolow training a student for Rooms, Sokolow's dance study of "urban alienation." Sokolow, who grew up in a tenement apartment near the railway in New York's Lower East Side, certainly knew about urban alienation, and also had to deal with her Jewish heritage. Warned by her mother that "Jews just don't dance professionally," Anna pursued her interest in dance and was kicked out of the house. Drawn by social and political themes, Sokolow would eventually travel the world and work with artists as various as Tennessee Williams, Kurt Weill, and Leonard Bernstein. After retiring, Sokolow went on to teach at Ohio State University (and the film includes a scene of her teaching her class), and later at the Juilliard School. Although her life does indeed sound interesting, the filmmakers have only rendered Sokolow's life in outline-we do not get a strong flesh and blood sense of the woman or her achievements. Not a necessary purchase. (Available from: Princeton Book Company, P.O. Box 57, Pennington, NJ 085340057.)