Her P&O ship from Marseille docked in Bombay on June 21, 1939. And this city has danced differently ever since. Hilde Holger left Vienna—and 25 members of her Austrian Jewish family, including her mother and sister, later gassed to death in Auschwitz—at a day's notice. This is how her daughter Primavera Boman-Behram heard her Expressionist dancer mother escaped. Her troupe, Hilde Holger Tanzgruppe, practised in secret warehouses to dodge Gestapo spies. Despite denouncing their freestyle body moves as degenerate, schizophrenic Nazis appropriated them for the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

"Her cousin Mimi Schwarz was shocked when Hilde came to her saying, I leave tomorrow for Paris and Bombay," writes Primavera from London. Holger's getaway was orchestrated by journalist and theatre director Charles Petras. They ended up working not far from each other. Her School of Art for Modern Movement ran from 1941 in Queen's Mansion on Prescott Road, Fort. Down the lane at Carlton House stood Petras' Institute of Foreign Languages, then shifting next to India Coffee House at Kala Ghoda.