Four dancers - Olga Szentpal Dance Group - Modern Dance School performance 1930s Hungarian vintage photograph

Four dancers - Olga Szentpal Dance Group - Modern Dance School performance is a 1930s Hungarian vintage photograph by Erzsebet Leichtner. With the photographer’s vignette at lower right corner.

A scene from a dance play of the Szentpal Dance Group, played by three women. Erzsébet Leichtner was a Hungarian woman photographer, mostly known for her dance photographs and the documentation of the Szentpal Dance Group’s performances. Her master in photography was the Angelo (Pál Funk, 1894–1974) the Italian-born, Hungarian photographer who was the collaborator of the book published about the Szentpal Dance Group (Tánc. A Mozgásművészet könyve; 1928).

Olga Szentpal (1895–1968) was a Hungarian pioneer of modern dance, choreographer, teacher and theoretician of dance. After her studies at the Hungarian Academy of Music she gained her diploma at Émile Jacque-Dalcroze’s (the founder of eurhythmics) school in Hellerau. She became involved into the modernist art scene through her husband Marius Rabinovszky (1895–1953; Hungarian art historian, art critic), and into modernist theatre as a teacher of Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest. She opened her own school in 1919 and established the Szentpal Dance Group in 1926.