Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon

For more advanced searches and combinations please use the Språkbanken tool Karp.
This is particularly relevant for researchers seeking to analyse the information contained in SKBL (Biographical Dictionary of Swedish Women).

Anna Charlotta Behle

1876-08-09 — 1966-10-02

Dancer, dance instructor, school founder

Anna Behle was a Swedish pioneer in the world of dance and the founder of a school which came to influence the development of modern free dance.

Anna Behle was born in Stockholm in 1876. Her parents never married and Anna Behle and her older brother August were adopted by a crofter family named Granbäck. Despite coming from a simple background, Anna Behle received a proper education. At an early age she began studying music and singing in Uppsala and in 1896 she graduated in organ performance in Stockholm. Shecontinued her musical studies and in 1898 she enrolled in Musikkonservatoriet’s piano and solo singing classes. She studied there for five terms. Anna Behle also benefited from the opportunity to study in Paris with the singing instructors Eugène Crosti and Emile Wartel. It was during her time in Paris that Anna changed her surname from Granbäck to Behle.

In May 1906 Anna Behle saw the American dancer Isadora Duncan perform on a visiting tour at the Östermalm theatre in Stockholm. Anna Behle describes in her unpublished memoir “Att dansa Behle” how this experience changed her life and choice of profession, and made her determined to become a dancer. With her friend Louise Wikström (1857-1943), who was a certified gymnastics instructor at Gymnastiska Centralinstitutet, she travelled to Berlin that summer