Angna Enters

Anita "Angna" Enters (b. April 18, 1897, New York City, New York – d. February 25, 1989, Tenafly, New Jersey) was a dancer, mime, painter, writer, novelist and playwright. [Biographical Note, Angna Enters Papers, Jerome Robbins Dance Division. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts]

Early life

Anita Enters graduated from North Division High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1915. She saw the first Denishawn concert tour the same year, and the following year, the first American tour of Sergei Diaghilev’s Les Ballets Russes. In June 1916, Enters enrolled in Milwaukee State Normal School, a training school for teachers design and drawing. [Biographical Note, Angna Enters Papers, Jerome Robbins Dance Division. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts]

Emergence as a dancer

Enters moved to New York to study at the Art Students League of New York in 1919, and began began to study dance with Michio Ito the following year, eventually performing as Michio's partner in 1923. [Biographical Note, Angna Enters Papers, Jerome Robbins Dance Division. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts] That year she created her first piece, an evocation of a statue of a Gothic Virgin, entitled "Ecclesiastique." The piece later became "Moyen Age." In 1924, she borrowed $25 with which to present her first solo program at the Greenwich Village Theater. [ "New York Times", obituary, "Angna Enters, 82, Dancer, Mime And Artist Known for Characters", by Jennifer Dunning, March 1, 1989] Her solo program,"The Theatre of Angna Enters," toured the United States and Europe until 1939 and was performed, though less often, until 1960. [Biographical Note, Angna Enters Papers, Jerome Robbins Dance Division.The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts] In 1934, Enters was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study Hellenistic art forms in Athens, Greece. [ ‘’TIME Magazine’’, article, “Mime Enters”, December 17, 1934]

Visual artist

Enters created a large body of visual art, including sketches, landscape drawings, archeological studies, costume plates, water colors and oil portraits. Many of her sketches and paintings were exhibited in the United States and Europe. [ ‘’TIME Magazine’’, article, “Mime Enters”, December 17, 1934] Her sketches were often costume designs for characters of her mime performances or set designs for plays. [Biographical Note, Angna Enters Papers, Jerome Robbins Dance Division. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts] The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York holds selected works by Enters, as do other museums.

Relationship with Louis Kalonyme

Enters met journalist Louis Kantor in 1921. The two began dating secretly in 1924, wed quietly in Spain in 1936 but maintained separate households. In 1924, Enters changed her first name to Angna and began using 1907 as her birth year. Kantor also changed his name to Louis Kalonyme in 1924 and began writing art criticism for "Arts and Decoration" magazine. Kalonyme was friends with many notable thinkers of the day: Eugene O’Neill, George Bernard Shaw, and Georgia O’Keefe among them. The couple did not have any children and Kalonyme died in 1961 after a long illness. [Biographical Note, Angna Enters Papers, Jerome Robbins Dance Division. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts]

Writing

Enters wrote three volumes of autobiography - "First Person Plural," (1937) "Silly Girl" (1944) and "Artist's Life" (1958). She also wrote a novel, "Among the Daughters" (1956), and a book on her work, "On Mime" (1966). Her plays, "Love Possessed Juana: A Play of the Inquisition in Spain", co-written with Louis Kalonyme, and "The Unknown Lover," were presented by the Houston Little Theater in 1946 and 1947. [ "New York Times", obituary, "Angna Enters, 82, Dancer, Mime And Artist Known for Characters", by Jennifer Dunning, March 1, 1989] Enters is also credited with having co-written two Hollywood films, "Lost Angel" (1943) and "Tenth Avenue Angel" (1948).

Teaching

Enters’ first teaching work came at the Stella Adler Studio, where she taught from 1957 to 1960. She was artist-in-residence at the [http://www.dallastheatercenter.org Dallas Theatre Center] in 1961-62, and taught mime and Baylor University during that year. She spent the following school year at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. In 1970-71 she was artist-in-residence at Pennsylvania State University, during which time she gave her last known public performance. [Biographical Note, Angna Enters Papers, Jerome Robbins Dance Division. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts]

Footnotes

Enters' Books and Further Reading

* "First Person Plural". New York: Stackpole sons, 1937.
* "Love Possessed Juana" (queen of Castile) a play in 4 acts, New York: Twice a Year Press, 1939.
* "Silly Girl, a portrait of personal remembrance". Cambridge, MA: Houghton Mifflin company, 1944.
* "Among the Daughters, a novel". New York: Coward-McCann, 1955.
* "Artist's Life". New York: Coward-McCann, 1958.
* "On Mime", second edition. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1968 (first edition 1965).
* "Uncommon Eloquence: A Biography of Angna Enters", by Dorothy Mandel, Arden Press, September 1986, ISBN 0912869070.