Anna Sokolow 1910-2000.

IN BOTH her personal and professional life, Anna Sokolow was a compassionate woman whose concern extended to the political underdog, the outsider and the persecuted. The modern dancer and choreographer died March 29 in her New York City home. She was 90.

Sokolow's earliest works reflect leftist activism (Inquisition 1936), while her concern for the lonely and the disadvantaged was expressed most effectively in the masterly Rooms (1955). Her passionate feelings for the persecuted emerged poignantly in Dreams, a reflection on the Holocaust.

Her observations on the isolation of city dwellers were often accompanied by that most urban music, jazz. In Rooms, Kenyon Hopkins's score lent ironic rhythmic urgency to individual searchings that all ended in disappointment. Sokolow was a realist who never gave up trying to make reality bearable.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1910, Sokolow grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where she pursued courses in various settlement houses. At one, the Neighborhood Playhouse, she encountered the two people who most influenced her artistic career. She studied dance with Martha Graham and became a member of her company from 1930 to 1938, and she took composition with Louis Horst, becoming his demonstrator/assistant.

After leaving the Graham company she formed her own group; while on tour in Mexico, she was invited to establish a company there. It became the first indigenous modern dance company in Mexican cultural life. For the next nine years, she spent half of each year in Mexico City teaching and choreographing and the other half in the United States. In 1953, she was invited to work with the newly formed Inbal Theater Dance Company in Israel. She was enormously impressed by a talented Yemeni student, Ze'eva Cohen, whom she brought back to the United States to study at the Juilliard School, where she taught. In 1964, Sokolow included her in Session for Six, which was prepared for Juilliard students, including Martha Clarke, Paula Kelley, Dennis Nahat, John Parks and Michael Uthoff, all of whom went on to make their marks as performers in and later as artistic directors of companies.

Teaching and choreographing concert dance formed the core of Sokolow's artistic life, although she also had a strong interest in popular theater. She choreographed Kurt Weill's Street Scene, Marc Blitzstein's Regina and Leonard Bernstein's Candide, as well as accepting a variety of off-Broadway assignments, such as the original Public Theater production of Hair. She taught movement for actors, and the dramatic orientation of her own Players Group reflected this interest. For it she choreographed pieces such as Act Without Words, based on the work of Samuel Beckett, and Magritte, Magritte, a suite of eight movements based on the images of the surrealist painter, with several of the episodes accompanied by poetry. She choreographed a delightfully humorous dance in 1952, A Short Lecture and Demonstration on the Evolution of Ragtime as Presented by Jelly Roll Morton, that incorporated dance, recitation and music of the period that saw the birth of jazz.

She outlined her view of the artists' place in society in an essay in The Modern Dance: Seven Statements of Belief: "The artist should belong to his society, yet without feeling that he has to conform to it. He must see life fully, and then say what he feels about it. Then, although he belongs to his society, he changes it, presenting it with fresh feelings, fresh ideas. Art should be a reflection and a comment on contemporary life."

ANNA TAUGHT me to invest myself totally, physically and mentally, in the work. She could not tolerate an apologetic approach to dancing. Each gesture must be weighted and physically committed. Anna taught me to take the time to listen to what was truly personal and unique in my way of moving and feeling.

--Ze'eva Cohen

Every day that I worked with Anna I went to rehearsals with clammy hands and shaky knees. At night I had nightmares. Still, I wouldn't trade what I learned from her for anything.

--Martha Clarke

Anna taught me how to believe in myself as a performer. She also taught me what it means to love the art of dance beyond just myself doing it. She took the "I" out of it.

--Lance Westergard

Each year I would think, this will be my last with Players' Project. Yet each year for thirty-five years Anna would find a new aspect of herself and then find still-unearthed potential within me--whether it was tap dancing in Evolution of Ragtime (1966), finding lyricism in Magritte, Magritte (1970), expressing my love in September Sonnet (1995) or speaking/dancing in Kafka (1998). Because of my eternal traveling, it was an unexpected gift to be here in New York City with her in the final months.

--Jim May

When our daughter Jessica became old enough to dance the child role in Dreams (1961), Anna taught her the part with patience and respect. She worked with images as she did with her company, and never spoke in a condescending manner. Five years later our second daughter, Loren, danced the role. The children have long since grown, but she always asked about their lives. "Just keeping in touch with my grandchildren," she'd say.

--Lorry May

There was a section [in Rooms] where I had to bang my head repeatedly, just a hair short of striking the floor, and then roll my body upward, balancing on the crown of my head. Anna would work on this passage for three-quarters of an hour without letup. It was draining, exhausting and terribly exciting. I will always feel close to Anna. When you work with an artist of her caliber there is something that remains with you forever.

--Donald McKayle

The remembrances of Cohen, Clarke and McKayle have been adapted from the book Anna Sokolow: The Rebellious Spirit by Larry Warren. A new paperback edition of this biography is available by calling 1-800/326-8917 or visiting the Web site www.gbhap.com. The ISBN number is 90-5702-185-4.

Don McDonagh, a noted dance researcher and critic, is a contributing editor to Dance Magazine, authoring the Jazz Dance column and other features.