DANIEL NAGRIN FACT SHEET



Date/Place of Birth
  • Born May 22, 1917 in New York City
Background/Training
  • Trained at New Dance Group
Performing Highlights
  • Performed with Helen Tamiris at Unity House, the Rainbow Room, and in numerous Broadway musicals
  • Won Donaldson Award (precursor to the Tony Award) for performance in Pain and Fancy (1955)
  • Noted for a distinguished solo career
Choreographic Highlights
  • Main choreographic achievements include Strange Hero (1948), Spanish Dance (1948), Man of Action (1951), Not Me, But Him (1965), and Peloponnesian Wars (1968)
  • Published several books including How to Dance Forever: Surviving Against the Odds (1988), Dance and the Specific Image: Improvisation (1994), The Six Questions: Acting Technique for Dance Performance (1997), and Choreography and the Specific Image (2001)
  • Also completed a fifteen-hour Nagrin Videotape Library of Dance (1985)
Teaching/Directing/Personal Company Highlights
  • Taught movement classes for New York's experimental Open Theatre (1969)
  • Taught at the American Dance Festival
  • Served as a Professor of Dance at the Arizona State University
  • Formed the Tamiris-Nagrin Dance company with wife Helen Tamiris (1960)
  • Formed The Workgroup (1971), a performing company who explored and employed improvisational techniques