Sitting at the Feet of Gurus: The Life and Dance Ethnography of Claire Holt

Deena Burton is well known for her accomplishments as a dancer, choreographer, producer, and scholar of Indonesian Arts. In the course of her research she came across the pioneering work of Claire Holt, who had written about art and culture in New York and Europe, especially the rise of Modern Dance, between the fi rst and second World Wars. During a trip to Indonesia in 1930 Claire Holt became enamored of Javanese dance. She stayed for many years, on and off, and was among the community of artists and anthropologists living in Bali at that time – including Walter Spies, Colin McPhee, Miguel Covarrubias, Margaret Mead and others who were both deeply infl uenced by this ancient culture and obsessive in documenting Indonesia’s emergence into the 20th century. This book, which began as Deena’s PhD dissertation, is a tribute to her own dedication and that of a kindred spirit - Claire Holt – and their love for the arts and peoples of Indonesia. (Pictured above is a young Deena Burton beginning a masked dance).