Pearl Lang

Pearl Lang (May 29, 1921 – February 24, 2009) was an American dancer, choreographer and teacher renowned as an interpreter and propagator of the choreography style of Martha Graham, and also for her own longtime dance company, the Pearl Lang Dance Theater.

A native of Chicago, Lang began her dance training as a child and studied acting at the Goodman Theatre Her dance teacher was Frances Allis who taught movement for actors as well as her own modern dance technique which has many similarities to Graham's. Lang studied Allis technique and performed with her company in Chicago. In 1938, at the age of 17, she enrolled in a program for gifted students at the University of Chicago, where she remained until 1941, the year of her move to New York. Born Pearl Lack, she adopted the stage name, "Pearl Lang", she studied with Martha Graham and Louis Horst and joined the Martha Graham Dance Company where she remained as a soloist from 1942 to 1952, and as a guest artist from 1954 through the late 1970s. She was the first woman to dance Martha Graham's roles in seven dances of Graham repertoire which she performed intermittently for thirty years to critical and audience acclaim. She was an original cast member in Deaths and Entrances, Punch and the Judy, Land Be Bright, Imagined Wing, Diversion of Angels, Canticle for Innocent Comedians, Ardent Song, Dark Meadow, Night Journey, Eye of Anguish, and Appalachian Spring. She was also a featured dancer in Broadway productions of Carousel (1945–47), Finian's Rainbow, and Peer Gynt.

In 1952, she founded her own company, Pearl Lang Dance Theater, for which she choreographed sixty-three works, thirty-six of which were based on Jewish themes. She choreographed for film, opera, and television and her works have been performed by the Dutch National Ballet, Boston Ballet, and the Batsheva Dance Company of Israel. In 1970, she invited Alvin Ailey and his company to share a three-story building with her dance company at 229 East 59th Street in Manhattan where, together, they co-directed the American Dance Center as a joint school. Pearl Lang Dance Theater's last New York season was held at the Danny Kaye Playhouse in 2001.

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