Christian Holder, longtime star of the Joffrey Ballet, dies at 75

Boston Globe

02-03-2025

Mr. Holder was every bit as varied in his own artistic pursuits. In addition to dancing, he was a choreographer; a costume designer for Tina Turner and other stars, as well as for several ballets; a cabaret singer; a painter; a theater director; and a playwright.
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Still, his legacy was built on his 13-year run with the Joffrey, the mold-shattering company founded by Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino, His time with the company began in 1966, when he was 17. A lithe 6 feet, 4 inches tall, he was 'majestic and pantherlike' onstage, Sappington said in an interview.
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Virginia Johnson, a former principal dancer and artistic director at Dance Theater of Harlem, called him a study in contrasts, capable of 'dancing with power or softness, whatever the role required.' Still, she added, 'his physical presence — height, muscularity — made him terrifying' in one of his most famous roles: as Death in 'The Green Table,' by German dancer and choreographer Kurt Jooss.
Mr. Holder began performing that linchpin role in 1969. Appearing in 'skull-like whiteface,' as Anna Kisselgoff observed in a review in The New York Times, his character claimed a string of personalities caught in the tangle of war.
"Mr. Holder's debut here was impressive, with a proper feel for the changes in attitude required of his role," Kisselgoff wrote. She had quibbles, including that his performance was "almost too nimble at the start," but she added that these were mere details in an "indubitably strong performance."
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His time with the Joffrey coincided with the company's golden era, Mr. Holder wrote in a 2006 retrospective in Dance magazine, particularly his early years, when sweeping social changes were influencing the company's sensibility and direction.
"Women were beginning to reevaluate their possibilities as citizens," he wrote. "There were civil rights marches and boycotts, protests against mind-numbing atrocities committed in response to Black people seeking the right to vote and a higher education."
Mr. Holder also found himself on the cultural vanguard in 1970, when he took over the male role in 'Astarte,' a multimedia erotic duet that he performed with Nancy Robinson. The ballet, with a rock score by the band Crome Syrcus, had been featured on the cover of Time magazine in March 1968.
''Astarte' was immensely taxing, with slow motion, sculptural partnering going against the intense music, followed by an aggressively sexual duet with lifts and contortions of every kind for the woman,' he wrote in Dance magazine. Following performances, the dancers 'would stagger out of the theater, completely drained, aching, yet exhilarated.'
Mr. Holder encountered the same sense of hippie-era abandon in 'Trinity' (1970), a ballet by Arpino that blended rock music and the spirit of youthful rebellion and featured no story but ample loose-limbed improvisation.
Arthur Christian Holder was born June 18, 1949, in Port of Spain, Trinidad. His mother, Sheila (Clarke) Holder, was, like his father, a professional dancer.
He got an early glimpse of the spotlight at age 3, when he appeared with his father's dance company in a performance celebrating the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. He received formal training in dance, as well in theater, as a student at the Corona Academy (now the Corona Theater School) in London.
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At 15, he moved to New York on a scholarship to the Martha Graham School, but he soon transferred to the High School of Performing Arts (now the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts). It was there that Joffrey discovered him and brought him aboard as an apprentice. Mr. Holder went on to work with a number of acclaimed choreographers, including Agnes de Mille, Alvin Ailey, and Jerome Robbins.
Among his many acclaimed performances, he earned raves in José Limón's "The Moor's Pavane," based on Shakespeare's "Othello," which opened at the City Center in New York in 1973. As the Moor, he was "powerful and dominating," Clive Barnes of the Times wrote in a review, "making his eventual spiritual collapse all the more tragic."
After he left the Joffrey in 1979, Mr. Holder was the featured dancer in the San Francisco Opera productions 'La Gioconda' (1979), featuring Luciano Pavarotti and Renata Scotto; 'Samson and Delilah' (1980), with Shirley Verrett and Plácido Domingo; and 'Aida' (1981), starring Pavarotti and Margaret Price. All those productions were choreographed by Sappington.
Later projects included choreographing the American Ballet Theater productions of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" (1993) and "Weren't We Fools?" (2000), featuring songs by Cole Porter.
No immediate family members survive.
Mr. Holder moved back to London in 2009. A year later, his paintings were exhibited at a group gallery show that also featured his father's work. In 2015, he presented an autobiographical one-man show, 'At Home and Abroad,' at Crazy Coqs, a London cabaret. He later wrote and directed the play 'Ida Rubinstein: The Final Act,' about a storied Ballets Russes dancer and actress from the Belle Époque, which opened at the Playground Theater in London in 2021.
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Looking back on his Joffrey years in Dance magazine, he wrote, 'We were a chosen group in the right place at the right time.'
"We championed dance at college campuses," he added. "We danced to rock 'n' roll. Some purists didn't take us seriously, but we made our mark."
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