to take lessons at Isadora Duncan’s school. The two friends then travelled on to Geneva and continued their studies with composer and music teacher Émile Jacques-Dalcroze (1865-1950), famous for having developed the so-called rhythmic gymnastics. His method of learning music through movement has been developed further and is, for example, taught at Kungl. Musikhögskolan (the Royal College of Music). Anna Behle returned to Jacques-Dalcroze’s school from 1910 to 1911 and received a teaching certificate.

In the autumn of 1907 Anna Behle and Louise Wikström opened Anna Behle’s Plastikinstitut (Anna Behle’s Institute for Theatrical Movement) in an apartment on Brahegatan in Stockholm. They taught Duncan-inspired dance, gymnastics and Dalcroze-based exercises to children and adults. The courses were described as part of a new body-centred education for the modern human, ratherthan training for budding professional dancers. Despite this, several of the students would go on to become professional dancers. The Falk sisters, Gabo (1899–1975) and Jeanna (1901–1980), both came to have a significant impact on the development of modern dance instruction. Another of Anna Behle’s students was the Finn Maggie Gripenberg (1881-1976), who studied with Anna Behle in 1909 and contributed to the development of the free dance movement in Finland.

Further to working at her own institute, Anna Behle also worked as a movement instructor at the opera school of Kungl. Teatern (the Royal Theatre) and as an instructor in rhythmic gymnastics and solfège, a particular training method in singing, at Musikkonservatoriet. In 1933 she was awarded the royal medal Litteris et Artibus. In the years from 1935