Linda Hodes, a modern dancer and teacher who played an important role in the Martha Graham Dance Company, overseeing its founder’s legacy, and who was also a significant part of two other celebrated troupes, the Paul Taylor Dance Company and the Batsheva Dance Company of Israel, died on Friday in Manhattan. She was 94.
Her death, at a nursing home, was caused by congestive heart failure, her daughter Martha Hodes said.
Inspired by the idea of becoming an ice skater like the Olympic champion and movie star Sonja Henie, Ms. Hodes took up dance when she was 9 — dance lessons, she had heard, were good for skaters. The closest school was run by the modern dancer Martha Graham, considered by many to be one of the greatest artists of her time.
At first, Linda took classes once a week, and then she went more and more often. She was invited to join the Martha Graham Dance Company in 1953, not long after high school. That same year, she married Stuart Hodes, a fellow Graham dancer.
Ms. Graham, who was nearing 60, had recently split from her husband, Erick Hawkins, and was rebuilding her company and career. She gave Ms. Hodes the central role in “Seraphic Dialogue,” a 1955 work about Joan of Arc. Ms. Hodes also danced the roles of Cassandra in Ms. Graham’s epically scaled “Clytemnestra” and Eve in “Embattled Garden” (both 1958). In “Phaedra” (1962), she wore horns and an enormous veil as Pasiphae, the mythical queen who has sex with a bull.
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The post Linda Hodes, Dancer Who Championed Martha Graham’s Vision, Dies at 94 appeared first on New York Times.
