Tribute to the Hanova Sisters with Karen Kurnaedy

by Shanny Rann

Our Love Affair with Dance, Karen Kurnaedy’s book project completed during the pandemic, pays homage to her teachers, Magda and Gertrud Hanova, two groundbreaking dance artists, now almost forgotten, but who were instrumental in shaping the modern dance history of Vancouver since 1957. In our brief conversation, Kurnaedy vividly recounts her fond memories of the Hanova sisters, whose love for dance and philosophy of dance as an art form synonymous with life, deeply impacted her own life as a human being and an educator.

The top floor where the magic happened

SR: Congratulations Karen on your successful book launch at the Massey Gallery on August 9, 2022. Your book is a great contribution to Vancouver's dance history. In the opening pages of the book, you described your first dance lesson at The Hanova School of Modern Studies in Body Sculpture and the Classical Dance, which in your words, “change[d] my existence forever. And so, my life impacting relationship began that day with Magda and GertrudHahn” (4). What led you to that top floor of the small building in downtown Vancouver on that special day in 1965?

KK: As a young child, I always adored dancing and music and I happily grew up exposed to all of the arts through my mother, Pauline Wenn. At ten, I took drama classes with Lillian Harper, who had shared space with the Hanova sisters at the Academy of the Arts on West Broadway. By this time, the Hanova sisters had moved their studio to the Seymour and Drake location. Lillian discovered my passion for dance and referred me to the sisters’ dance school. I remember wondering in my first lesson, “What are these people doing?” It seemed so strange, the warmup of undulating our spines, shaking our limbs, and the yoga poses but I quickly realized how special the classes were. The sisters lived for the dance and their mission was to assist students in finding their own movement and expression through their bodies.

When the Hanova sisters came to Vancouver in 1957, they were almost 60 but this didn’t hold them back. They opened the first modern dance school in the city and taught something quite unusual for the Vancouver of the late 1950s. They included yoga and Indian dance in their modern dance classes. Their modern dance style was European, inspired by Mary Wigman and Rudolph Laban, and reflected the Weimar German body culture, which mostly stressed a beauty, flow, and naturalness of movement. In the Golden Age of the Weimar Republic during the 1920s, the sisters danced with many famous schools of modern dance and ballet in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Dresden, and Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia.

Our Love Affair with Dance

by Karen Kurnaedy

In those first moments, standing on the precipice of awakening, I was overcome with the beauty of movement and dancing in a whole new way. I had a clear revelation that if I could embody this dancing and make it a part of me, I would be able to satisfy an inner yearning that I’d had my whole life thus far. This yearning was to dance in a way that addressed my need to express my creativity through my body. Of course, I wasn’t able to articulate these feelings then as I can now. I was simply overjoyed in the recognition of discovering the elusive quality that I knew on some profound level I had been missing. (2)

Relationship with her teachers

SR: You have had such a longstanding relationship that evolved over time with the sisters. In many dance traditions, the guru figure is almost a sacred one. How would you describe your relationship with your teachers?

KK: I was in awe of them when I was a child because they were like royalty. I did not question anything they taught as they spoke about everything with such conviction. I learnt so much about modern dance history, music, and art from them. They were my mentors and I had huge respect for them.

Magda, 86, at her West End apartment in 1991

© Karen Kurnaedy

As I got into my teens, I started taking private classes and joined their production group that performed around the city. After I finished high school, I traveled the world for a couple of years, and then was back with the sisters until I moved to Kelowna and Edmonton, for 13 years. When I finally moved back to BC in 1990, I was thrilled to start dancing with the sisters again. As adults, we had a different relationship. We became closer friends. They were still my revered dance teachers, but it wasn't as strict a relationship anymore. We choreographed so many beautiful dances together. It was satisfying for me to be with them because it was a very creative time. We had many performances and small gatherings in their studio. Now in their late eighties, they still loved to teach and share about dance and how we should all be dancing.

SR: It is a big milestone from your dancing years to writing this book. It's clearly a labor of love and a product of the many years of close relationship with your teachers. Why have you decided to write it all down?

KK: I wrote it all down because I feel that the Hanova sisters’ story is unique, but in some ways, represents many dancers of the past, whose stories have been lost. What they accomplished, experienced, and created is part of the story of the modern dance we enjoy today, and these early beginnings need to be remembered.

Karl Toepfer, Emeritus Professor of Theater Arts San Jose State University, who wrote the book Empire of Ecstasy: Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture, 1910-1935, (1997) points out that it was difficult to compile in-depth information about much of the Weimar dance culture and its dancers because there are only fragments left from this period. Much was destroyed when the Nazis came into power. They outlawed nudism and imprisoned artists, gypsies, and Jews. My teachers were Jewish. It was just their very good fortune that in 1932 Gertrud married an Indian man from Bombay and moved there and encouraged her father and sister to follow her, thus escaping being murdered.

Gertrud adjusting Karen's costume at the Creative Space studio in the mid-1990s

© Karen Kurnaedy

Their story is also one of Jewish survival before and during WWII. In the early 1930s, the sisters were forced to flee the Nazi takeover of their homeland, Czechoslovakia. They fled to India and spent sixteen years in Bombay, where they participated and were witness to the revival of Indian classical dance during the 1930s and 1940s. The sisters continued to again build new lives, moving to London, England in 1949. They finally settled in Vancouver, Canada in 1957, where they taught modern physical culture and dance for almost forty years. (ii)

Magda was a lovely woman who liked teaching children. Gertrud wasn’t particularly fond of children, and she had no problem saying what she did not like. They were like the optimist and the pessimist, but they agreed with each other about everything. Sadly, Magda died of a stroke in 1992 at the age of 87. Gertrud outlived her by ten years, until she was 99. I continued dancing with Gertrud for many more years after Magda died and we had a very productive time.

I'm so glad they came into my life. I don't know who I would be now without their influence. I might never have completed a doctorate or written about dance with so much passion and conviction. They will always be my esteemed teachers.

Gertrud at the Hanova Bombay Dance School in the mid-1940s

© Karen Kurnaedy

What I would like to emphasize in my book is that the Hanova sisters celebrated the dance arts joyously their whole lives and dance enabled them to continue to see the beauty in the world despite war and persecution. Having to flee Europe, they turned a terrible situation into something productive and wonderful. When Gertrud moved to India, she took her family heirlooms and memorabilia and trunks full of her costumes. As soon as she got to Bombay, she started making connections and performing. Magda came with her husband about a year later. The sisters had a very successful modern dance school in Bombay for fifteen years and performed with famous Indian dancers of the era. My intention for this book was to “celebrate the sublime and nuanced inner and outer experiences achieved through dancing and leave a significant historical record of two dance artist’s accomplishments” (i).

SR: Is it a dream that you have had for a longtime to write this book?

Gertrud and Karen at the India Gate restaurant in the mid-1990s

© Karen Kurnaedy

KK: Yes. Over the years I have written a few articles about them, and I mentioned them in my doctoral dissertation but on reflection and with all the material I still had, I felt they deserved a much more complete and detailed narrative which would do their story justice. In 1992 before Magda died, I started interviewing them and making copies of their photographs and newspaper articles. They were both enthusiastic about a biography and a record of their lives being left for posterity.

SR: The photo collection in your book is impressive.

KK: Yes, I was always fascinated with the detail they kept of each era of their lives in photographs. As a teen, if I was visiting their apartment, I loved looking through their albums. I still have that feeling of amazement and enjoyment when I look at their pictures today.

SR: Was it common to have access to cameras and to take so many photos back then?

KK: In the early 1910s and 1920s? Definitely. According to Toepfer (1997), photography became the preferred medium for transmitting the new image of dance. In his book, he talks about how dancers did not want to film their work because they did not want someone to see it and steal their choreography. So, dance artists made postcards with photographs and that was how they advertised and publicized their work.

Women as Artists

SR: Through the lives of the Hahn sisters, readers could go on a ride and imagine what life was like from the early 1900s to 2002 as a dancer. In the Vancouver context, your book illuminates the local dance history from 1965 to 2002 as it has never been told before. You also delve into topics like feminism and the life of women as artists. Do you think also because they were women, their stories have largely been obscured?

KK: I think publishers will always focus on the famous so as to sell books. So, the question of their stories being obscured as women is probably not true. Their fame as dance artists was in their younger years in Europe and India. The sisters’ careers as performing artists were long over when they came to Vancouver. Their life in Canada flourished as dance teachers and they were quite low key as time went on. I think the woman as artist in 2022 seems to have a higher profile and more power but as more women speak out, we hear that men are still very much running the media and the arts. I reflect that for thousands of years women were not allowed to be artists of any kind. So, we are making some progress, ha, ha. If you were a dancer in Paris before 1920, you were considered not much more than a prostitute. When the twenties came along, and fashion changed, women's images of themselves changed. The new body culture in Europe enabled women to see themselves differently and to celebrate the body in dance, choreography, and photography in new and innovative ways. It was a huge shift in culture that the sisters were part of.

Through reading the Hahn sisters’ story we may reflect on the many positive changes for women that have occurred throughout the 20th century and especially ponder that the stigma and barriers for women becoming artists of all kinds has diminished. But additionally, the Hahn sisters’ story reminds us that many of the same conflicts, such as misogyny, racism, and continuous warfare still exist in the world today, and still need brave women to stand up and live the lives they desire without feeling they must conform to constrictive social norms. The woman as artist has been a forerunner, a powerful instigator, and catalyst in challenging traditional ideas of how women should live their lives. By emphasizing and acknowledging the personal histories of women as artists, we can appreciate that these stories are key to understanding the past in a fuller and more intimate way and to inspire others to forge their own individual, artistic paths for today and the future. (iii)

The sisters strongly identified with the newera of freedom for women in the 1920s. Their parents were open-minded and liberal and supported their being dancers. The war unfortunately disrupted everything, and the family escaped to India. But this turned out to be an amazing experience for them and the Eastern perspective on dance and exercise was illuminating. They embraced the Indian dance arts and wove this knowledge into their European dance philosophy creating the unique Hanova style and method.

Gertrud and students at Stanley Park. Karen,14, is seated behind Gertrud in 1968

© Karen Kurnaedy

Integrating Dance in the Classroom

“As students, we were always encouraged to create our own movements and choreography and through these movements find within ourselves a confirmation of our inventiveness, a release of emotion, and a mode of expression" (14).

SR: At the Vancouver Hanova Dance Studio, you mentioned students were not there to become professional dancers, but to unlock their creativity and seek inspiration. This is very different from the training in conservatories or universities where if you major in dance, you are geared to become a professional dancer. Of course, not everyone becomes a professional dancer, but there is the pressure to become one. Is it not liberating that at the Hanova school people were celebrated for themselves, including older dancers, up to 85 years old? Such a liberatory space with a pure celebration for dance is still lacking in our modern education.

KK: For most of my working life, I was an elementary school teacher, which I really enjoyed. My mother inspired me and had a preschool near the University of British Columbia for 35 years. She had a very handson pedagogy of celebrating the child in all ways which I emulated. I mostly taught Grade Four and Grade Five. At this age, children are still open to creating and enjoying literature, dancing, and all of the arts without censoring themselves. I incorporated what I learned from the Hanova School into my classroom, which is that you might not become a professional artist, writer, or dancer when you grow up but experiencing these art forms is part of a complete education. As Laban said, “We are all dancers, we all have a dancer within us.” If you are never given the chance to try dancing, you might think dancing is not for you.

Through the Hahn sisters’ deep conviction that dance is a transformative art form, which all people should experience to feel truly alive, the sisters not only trained dancers who went on to professional careers, but most importantly, joyously shared their message with hundreds of dancers who would never be professionals. Nevertheless, these dancers experienced and felt the deep and satisfying merits of creating dance works and dancing as an artistic experience. The Hahn sisters believed that through the art of movement we may experience a profound discovery of ourselves. (i)

Magda and Gertrud during Magda's birthday in December 1991

© Karen Kurnaedy

I also worked with teachers at Simon Fraser University where I was a faculty associate for two years and I taught a course about how to integrate dance and music into the regular classroom for the post-baccalaureate program for three years. I think the public school system needs more dance teachers and teachers who will dance with their students.

SR: It reflects your embodied methodology.

KK: Yes, perhaps more a philosophy in which dancing is seen as an art form for all people to experience and enjoy, not just for the highly trained professional and performer. As I age, I continue to dance and love every minute. Dance has brought much joy to my life.

SR: That is great. It is so evident that your love for dance has carried you through such a rich and fulfilling life.

KK: Thank you Shanny. I appreciate this opportunity to talk about the Hanova sisters and their love affair with dance.

SR: Thank you so much for your generous sharing. I have thoroughly enjoyed our conversation today and I am sure readers will enjoy your book as much as I did.

Note: Page number refers to excerpts from Karen Kurnaedy's book, Our Love Affair with Dance (2022).

A record of the Hanova sisters' lives is one of many important personal narratives to be read in order to understand the history of the modern dance we enjoy today.

Digital and paperback available.

Karen McKinlay Kurnaedy is a second generation settler living on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded occupied territory of the Kwikwetlem First Nation in Port Coquitlam, BC. She is a dancer, writer, and educator. She began her dance training in the 1960s at The Hanova School of Modern Studies in Body Sculpture and the Classical Dance (the first modern dance school in Vancouver) where she was forever imbued with the spirit of Duncan, Dalcroze, Laban, Wigman, and Menaka. Karen’s work as a writer includes publishing several essays, articles, and books about dance and dance education. Karen received her Bachelor of Education with distinction from the University of Alberta and also earned a Master of Arts and a Doctorate in Philosophy from Simon Fraser University. Her teaching experience includes thirty years in the Coquitlam School District, being a Faculty Associate and instructing in the Graduate Diploma program at Simon Fraser University. Her interests lie in promoting and implementing new ideas for the dance arts, dance history, somatic movement practices, and dance education.