Paraso, Raven (Utah Valley University)
Faculty Advisor: Banchero-Kelleher, Angie (Utah Valley University, Dance)
A critical analysis of Dreams by Anna Sokolow from a psychoanalytical perspective, focusing on Freud’s Dream Theory, will demonstrate how the Holocaust played a role on the unconscious of Sokolow and her chorographic choices.
On January 30, 1933 Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. In America around the same time, a Jewish dancer named Anna Sokolow was making a name for herself in the dance community. This research will demonstrate how the Holocaust had an impact on Sokolow’s unconscious and her chorographic choices in her work titled Dreams. The psychoanalytical perspective, specifically Dream Theory invokes the idea that the unconscious can influence and motivate behavior through dreams without the conscious mind being aware. Anna Sokolow’s unconscious could have been affected by the events of the Holocaust, which could have influenced her to create Dreams without her conscious mind knowing what Dreams is truly about. Anna Sokolow’s unconscious mind could have been affected by the Holocaust because she is a Jew living during a time of Genocide to her people. Dreams was choreographed by Anna Sokolow with the original intent of showing the horrors people see in their dreams because she was experiencing terrifying dreams at the time. She was unaware of the underlying meaning of these dreams until later when she realized her dreams were a personal response to the events of the Holocaust.