Introduction
The Introduction establishes Anna Sokolow’s choreography among revolutionary spectatorial currents of the 1930s international Left as it aligned with Jewish peoplehood and shows how these values remained present through Sokolow’s career. It positions Sokolow’s choreography within leftist transnationalism; it methodologically renders her dancing body from archival evidence through discourse analysis to ground the book’s discussion; and it defines Jewish cultural and aesthetic elements in Sokolow’s work to explain how her dances’ Jewish signifiers engendered their meaning-making processes. Arguing that Ashkenazi Jewishness undergirds Sokolow’s choreography, the Introduction shows how communism, revolutionary modernism, gender presentation, and social action in Sokolow’s dances were part of Sokolow’s milieu as a member of the “second generation” of American Ashkenazi Jews. Sokolow’s professional arc from Martha Graham dancer and proletarian choreographer to established midcentury modernist dancemaker reflects the assimilation of her generation from the marginalized working class to the American mainstream.