Limelight dual honors.

Teacher, choreographer, and modern dance pioneer MARY ANTHONY has two big reasons to celebrate this month: She turns 90 and she is receiving the Martha Hill Award, which acknowledges leadership in dance. The award--named for American dance educator Martha Hill, the creator and longtime director of both the Bennington College dance division and the Juilliard School dance program--will be presented by former recipient and longtime Dance Magazine writer Doris Hering.

Inspired by a Martha Graham performance, Anthony moved to New York to study dance, where she began her dance training with Hanya Holm. She joined Holm's company and continued to study Graham technique with Sophie Maslow and Jane Dudley at the New Dance Group (see "NY Notebook," p. 25). In 1954, Anthony opened her own studio (which is still open today) and two years later founded her company, Mary Anthony Dance Theatre.

Anthony was also a pioneer for dance on television. Her choreography, performed by her company as well as by Bertram Ross, Robert Cohan, Jane Dudley, and Paul Taylor, was featured on two religious TV series, Look Up and Live and Lamp Unto My Feet. Her choreography has been performed by the Bat-Dor Dance Company in Israel, the Dublin City Ballet, and the National Institute for the Arts of Taiwan. Also, she is the subject of a documentary entitled Mary Anthony: A Life in Modern Dance, which had its premiere at the Dance on Camera Festival in NYC in January 2004.