Christian Holder—dancer, costumer designer, and artist—died on Feb. 18. He was 75. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, the son of delightfully named dancer Boscoe Holder, Christian danced at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953, and was already an accomplished, well-trained dancer before he hit his teens. He was spotted by Robert Joffrey and was a principal dancer in that ballet company from 1966 to 1979 (he also danced for Leonid Massine, Jerome Robbins, Alvin Ailey, and Agnes De Mille). He later became a dance teacher, a singer (his one-man show At Home and Abroad was a hit), a costume designer, and a fine artist. Holder’s friend Jane Klain, of the Paley Center, calls Holder “a Renaissance man, who danced, created costumes for Tina Turner, transformed himself into a cabaret artist and a painter.” Holder said in 2022 that his years with Joffrey “were my salad days. I was finding out who I was at that time and what I could do. I was always very confident. I knew I had something personal to offer. I knew that obviously there’s always a path to pursue and the pursuit is that of excellence, which you never really attain, but it’s about the journey.”
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