Louise Kloepper

Louise Olga Kloepper (January 10, 1910 – December 15, 1996) was an American dancer and dance educator, chair of the dance program at the University of Wisconsin.

Early life and education Louise Olga Kloepper was born in Washington, D.C. and raised in Tacoma, Washington, the daughter of Henry August Kloepper and Louise Nigel Kloepper. Kloepper attended high school in Tacoma and performed in recitals there with her sister Millie. She trained as a dancer in Seattle and in New York City.

In 1929, Kloepper traveled to Germany to pursue further dance studies with Margarete Wallmann and Mary Wigman in Berlin and Dresden. She was the first American student to earn a diploma from the Wigman school. "I was teaching courses I was supposed to be taking and that was a little confusing to the deans," she later recalled.

Career Kloepper was a dancer and teacher with the Hanya Holm School and Dance Company in New York, from 1932 to 1942. She also taught at Columbia University and New York University during those years, and toured with Holm's company. In 1938 she was a fellow at the Bennington summer dance school, where she created three dances. John Martin, dance critic from the New York Times, raved that "Here is a young dancer of remarkable gifts with an inherent beauty of movement," adding that "There is apparently no limitation to her command of her medium, and she is possessed particularly of that rarest of endowments, a controlled legato."

Kloepper taught with Holm and Marian van Tuyl at Mills College in the summers of 1939 and 1940. She joined the faculty of the Department of Physical Education for Women at the University of Wisconsin in 1946. She became chair of the dance division in 1963, and a full professor in 1969. She retired from the university in 1975. In 1976, 1978, and 1979, she gave a series of oral history interviews to the UW-Madison Oral History Program. In 1984, she was the first recipient of the Wisconsin Dance Council Award. In 1985, her work appeared in a documentary film, Hanya: Portrait of a Pioneer. The University of Wisconsin offered a Louise O. Kloepper Dance Scholarship,