Person
Biography
Erna Lindner-Gilbert was born in New York City, where she began her dance career as Erna Caplow. After receiving degrees from both Brooklyn College and Smith College, she began teaching dance at Brown University in 1950. She later taught at Rutgers University and for the New York City Board of Education before beginning a tenure of more than twenty years at Nassau Community College, where she was named professor emeritus in 1992. She was active throughout her career with the American Dance Guild (including a stint as president), which established a competitive scholarship named in her honor in 2007 for dancers to attend The School at Jacob’s Pillow. She was the author of several books on dance therapy, and she donated much of her dance education library to the Pillow. More than twenty years after the death of her first husband, she married Seymour Gilbert in 2003, and they were both frequent audience members at the Pillow until his death in 2017. Lindner-Gilbert died in March 2018, just two months before her 90th birthday.
Source of Biography
Written by Norton Owen for Jacob's Pillow Remembers.