Born Today:
Ann Hutchinson Guest

Eminent authority on Labanotation, Ann Hutchinson Guest (1918-2022) is a co-founder of the Dance Notation Bureau in 1940 and wrote several books on the subject. She helped to preserve classic ballet, modern, and contemporary dances through the use of notation and motion-capture software and she assisted in the reconstruction of many old ballets, including Vaslav Nijinsky’s Afternoon of a Faun (1912).

Also Born Today: Tap dancer Jim Hepburn (1907-1995), whose life outside of dance was even more fascinating. After performing with his brother in the 1930s, he flew and navigated bombers in WWII and assisted with the Berlin Airlift, taking supplies to stranded citizens between 1948-1949. His notoriety led to the revival of his mother, Anna Wickham’s, poetry. Russian ballerina Violetta Elvin (1923-2021) danced with the Bolshoi Ballet before joining the Royal Ballet in 1945, becoming the first Soviet ballerina to do so. Mexican actor/dancer Otilia Larrañaga (1931-2021) made a name for herself as a dancer before moving to acting, appearing in films during the Golden Age of Mexican cinema (1936–1956).