Nadia Chilkovsky Nahumck
Nadia Chilkovsky Nahumck, 98, founder of the Philadelphia Dance Academy, died April 23, 2006, in Blue Bell, PA. Born in Kiev, Russia, in 1908, she came to Philadelphia as a child.
A pioneer in modern dance, dance pedagogy and Labanotation (a system of dance movement notation employing various symbols to record the points of a dancer's body, direction of a dancer's movement, tempo and dynamics), she danced with the Irma Duncan company from 1921-1931 and was well known as a premier Duncan dancer. She studied with Hanya Holm, Martha Graham and Mary Wigman and was a co-founder of the New Dance Group in New York City. After a serious injury, she returned from New York to Philadelphia to establish a dance school, the Philadelphia Dance Academy, which incorporated modern, folk, ballet, Duncan and other dance traditions, as well as Labanotation.
"Nadia's legacy will live on here at The University of the Arts and throughout the dance world," said Susan Glazer, Director of the UArts School of Dance. "What evolved from her founding of the Philadelphia Dance Academy is truly inspirational."
Nahumck founded the Philadelphia Dance Academy in 1944, organized a college division in 1954 with the Philadelphia Musical Academy (now The University of the Arts [UArts] School of Music) and an accredited K-12 private school, the Performing Arts School of Philadelphia in 1962. She was recognized as a leader in dance notation by the Dance Notation Bureau and the International Council for Kinetography Laban. In 1993, she wrote Dances of Isadora Duncan through a grant from the National Museum of Women in the Arts. She also wrote a series of dance notation workbooks for children, teens, and professional dancers and wrote Labanotation for a wide variety of dances, including some from the television program, American Bandstand.
Nahumck was a founding dance member of the Society for Ethnomusicology and a frequent contributor to conferences and journals. She was an adjunct faculty member of the Curtis Institute of Music, Swarthmore College, Temple University, the Academy of Vocal Arts, the Philadelphia Musical Academy, and received a major grant from the U. S. Department of Education to develop A Comprehensive Curriculum in Dance for Secondary Schools.
"We are all indebted to Nadia Nahumck," said UArts President/CEO Miguel Angel Corzo. "Her wide ranging, influential and dynamic contributions are a unique legacy to the world of dance."