Grethe Barrett Holby

Grethe Holby currently stays in New York City with her husband Arthur Elgort who is a photographer by profession. They have three children: two sons, Ansel Elgort (actor & DJ) and Warren Elgort (filmmaker), and a daughter Sophie Elgort, a photographer.

Grethe Holby was born on 26 April 1948 in New Rochelle in Westchester County, New York, and spent her early years in Larchmont village under Westchester. Her father was Warren Barrett Holby who co-founded and operated a housing development company, Merritt & Holby, and Aase Grethe Hall, her mother, was of Norwegian descent. She went to Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan and completed her high school from Mamaroneck High School in 1966.

She took admission in Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, for her higher studies and later on transferred her credits to Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She earned a bachelor’s degree in ‘Art and Design’ from MIT in 1971, and two years, she received a masters’ degree in architecture from the same university.

While studying architecture at MIT, she also enrolled for a set designing course at Harvard University under the mentorship of Franco Colavecchia.

Grethe Holby commenced her professional career when she joined Laura Dean and Dance Company as a danseuse in 1974, and performed at shows staged in Connecticut, Washington D.C., and New York. Later on, she signed up as a cast member of Robert Wilson’s and Phillip Glass’s ‘Einstein on the Beach’, performing as a dancer, singer, and actor at the annual arts festival held at Avignon City in France.

She accompanied the cast on tours to Hamburg, Rotterdam, Brussels, Venice, Belgrade, Paris, and performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City in November of 1976.

Grethe composed a dancing number, ‘Beta Hookups’ based on ‘Metal Machine Music’ by Lou Reed and followed it up with a rendition at the ‘Merce Cunningham Studio’ that was videotaped by the latter.

She established a dancing group, ‘Grethe Holby and Dancers’ and created choreographic sequences set to music by Glenn Branca, David Byrne, and Brian Eno.

She instructed and rehearsed dancers for the opera, ‘Daughter of the Regiment’ on two occasions.

Grethe Holby debuted on the operatic arena in the US in the 1970s when she was selected to assist (as an assistant designed) Franco Colavecchia who designed sets for the Wexford Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and for the Broadway show, ‘Treemonisha’ composed by Scott Joplin.

Gradually, she moved on to choreographing, directing, and producing operas on behalf of production companies. The year 1976 saw her choreographing operas titled ‘Summer Snow’ and ‘Regina’ for Michigan Opera Theater. Thereafter, she served as a choreographer and assistant director at the Houston Grand Opera.

Holby, during her stint with Houston Grand Opera, also collaborated with Gotz Friedrich (‘Wozzeck’), Jean Pierre Ponelle (‘Pagliacci’), and Nathaniel Merrill (‘The Tales of Hoffman’) as an assistant director and choreographer. She worked for Peter Shifter who directed the premiere of ‘A Quiet Place’ composed by the renowned American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein.

She also directed and choreographed ‘A Quiet Place’ when the piece was staged in its entirety at the ‘La Scala’ opera house in Milan and thereafter at Washington Opera in 1984.

Grethe Holby was responsible for choreographing the 1983 debut staging of ‘A Bride from Pluto’ by Gian Carlo Menotti. The first performance of Michael Kaye’s adaptation of Jacques Offenbach’s ‘Tales of Hoffmann’ in 1988 at Los Angeles Music Center Opera was choreographed and co-directed by her.