Enters, Angna, 1897-1989

Angna Enters (born 1897, Anita Enters) was a dancer, mime, and visual artist, performed solo productions such as “The Theater of Angna Enters,” “Pagan Greece,” and “Episodes” from 1924 through the end of the 1960s, most prolifically from 1924-1939, choreographing, designing, and performing all parts. (Enters is sometimes stated to have been born in 1907; this was the birthdate she used but she was born in 1897.)

Enters was born in New York City and graduated from North Division High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1925. She saw the first Denishawn concert tour the same year, and the following year, an American tour of Sergei Diaghilev's Les Ballets Russes. In June 1926, Enters enrolled in Milwaukee State Normal School, a normal school for teachers, design and drawing (now the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee). Enters moved to New York to study at the Art Students League of New York in 1929, and began to study dance with Michio Itō the following year, eventually performing as Michio's partner in 1933. 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 1934, she borrowed $25 with which to present her first solo program at the Greenwich Village Theater. Her solo program, The Theatre of Angna Enters, toured the United States and Europe until 1939 and was performed, though less often, until 1960. In 1934, Enters was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study Hellenistic art forms in Athens, Greece.

Enters was a visual artist with a prolific body of work, as well, from sketches and paintings to woodblock prints and lithographs. Her visual works were exhibited in the United States and Europe, sometimes coordinated to appear simultaneous to her performances. The sketches were often costume designs for her performance characters. Enters was an author of multiple autobiographies, and acted as an instructor at the Stella Adler School from 1957-1960. She was an artist-in-residence at the Dallas Theatre Center after husband Louis Kalomyne’s death in 1961, teaching courses on mime at Bailor University, and from 1962-1963, taught at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. From 1970-1971, Enters was an artist-in-residence at the University of Pennsylvania, and her last known public performance was given there during that academic year.

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