Christian Holder

Arthur Christian Holder, born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, on 18 June 1949, was a British-Trinidadian dancer, choreographer, costume designer, painter, cabaret singer, theater director, and playwright. He died at his home in London on 18 February 2025, at the age of 75. His father, Boscoe Holder, was a professional dancer who later became a renowned painter and led a company called Boscoe Holder and his Caribbean Dancers; his mother, Sheila Clarke Holder, was also a professional dancer. His maternal grandmother, Kathleen Davis, known as "Aunty Kay," worked as an actress and radio personality, and his uncle was the actor Geoffrey Holder. The family relocated from Trinidad to London when Christian was an infant.

From childhood, Holder performed with his father's dance company, appeared on British television, and took part in repertory theatre. At four years old he danced with his father's company at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. He began ballet training at age seven and at eleven enrolled at the Corona Academy Stage School. In an unfinished 1955 production of Moby Dick directed by Orson Welles, he played the role of Pip the Cabin Boy.

In 1963, Martha Graham offered Holder a scholarship to study at her school in New York City, intending for him to return to London as one of the charter members of what would become London Contemporary Dance Theatre. He departed for the United States the following year. Enrolling at the High School of Performing Arts in New York City, he came to the attention of Robert Joffrey and subsequently joined the Joffrey Ballet, with which he remained from 1966 to 1979. During those years he became one of the company's most acclaimed principal dancers, working as a soloist under choreographers including Kurt Jooss, who personally trained him for the lead role of Death in a revival of Jooss's 1932 anti-war ballet The Green Table, as well as Leonid Massine, Jerome Robbins, Alvin Ailey, and Agnes De Mille. Choreographer Margo Sappington described him onstage as "majestic and pantherlike," and a 1971 New York Magazine review noted that Holder, standing six feet four inches tall, "dominates the stage whenever he is given solo work to do." He has been described as one of the most iconic dancers in the Joffrey company's history.

In 1979, Holder appeared on Broadway in Homage to Diaghilev. That same year he began a two-year engagement as a guest solo dancer with San Francisco Opera, performing in productions featuring Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo. He later returned to choreograph the company's productions of The Merry Widow with Dame Joan Sutherland and Aida in 2001.

Holder's work extended into costume design across several decades. In 1973 he anonymously left a dress of his own making in Tina Turner's dressing room following a concert at New York's Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center; Turner was wearing the garment when he attended her show in 1974. After he wrote to her, Turner invited him to her recording studio complex, Bolic Sound, in Inglewood, and the two became friends. He designed stage costumes for Turner from that point until 1984. He also created costumes for Ann Reinking, Peter Allen, and Bette Midler, and designed costumes for ballets including Margo Sappington's Toulouse-Lautrec, produced in 2000 for the Ballet du Capitole in Toulouse, France.

As a choreographer, Holder created works including Weren't We Fools? for American Ballet Theatre and Transcendence for Atlanta Ballet. In 2006 he returned to the Joffrey Ballet to perform in the company's production of Sir Frederick Ashton's Cinderella, playing one of the ugly stepsisters alongside Gary Chryst in roles that Robert Joffrey, who died in 1988, had always intended for them. Archive footage of Holder appears in the 2012 documentary Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance, written and directed by Bob Hercules. He also taught ballet at Steps on Broadway, the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Kaatsbaan International Dance Center, PeriDance, and Cedar Lake Dance.

On 7 April 1991, Holder, his father Boscoe Holder, and his uncle Geoffrey Holder jointly received the first Drexel University Award for International Excellence in Philadelphia. In 1995, Philadanco presented him with an award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts.

Holder returned to England in 2009. In 2010, his paintings and designs were exhibited in London alongside work by his father and by master designer Oliver Messel, a family friend. In April 2015 he made his debut as a cabaret singer in a one-man show entitled At Home and Abroad at The Crazy Coqs in London's Piccadilly, performing his own compositions alongside songs by Cole Porter, Noël Coward, Stephen Sondheim, Peter Allen, and Rodgers and Hart, with music direction by Philip Foster. A follow-up show, SUITE 60, was presented at the same venue in May 2016. In August 2016 he appeared at the Victoria and Albert Museum in a special event titled Christian Holder: A life in performance, New York and London, in conversation with Greta Chaffer.

In 2021, Holder wrote and directed the play Ida Rubinstein: The Final Act, staged at the Playground Theatre with ballerina Naomi Sorkin in the title role. He also wrote the book and lyrics for a theatre piece called Verse of Fortune, created in collaboration with Noa Ain and inspired by the life and work of the French poet Baudelaire. The 2020 exhibition Père et Fils, hosted by Campbell's of London in South Kensington, featured recent work by Holder alongside previously unseen pieces by his father. In 2024 he published a limited-edition fine art book about his father entitled Boscoe Holder: Travels in Rhythm, A Life of Art and Dance. The week before his death he had announced plans for a show called Christian Holder: Songs and Stories, scheduled to be held in New York in April 2025.