Dancer, Choreographer. From childhood she was interested in dance, despite opposition from her family and no formal training. She first received the opportunity to pursue this dream at the age of nine, when she was allowed to attend a girls' summer dance camp. At the age of fifteen, she choreographed her first dance, with the music from Saint-Säen's 'Danse Macabre,' and performed it in her family's kitchen with her sister as her only audience. Although she was Jewish, she was attending a Catholic school, where she excelled in all art-related subjects. As a teenager, she secretly took ballet lessons, but found she preferred modern dance, which she then began to study for several months. She finally persuaded her parents to let her study dance at the age of seventeen, after locking herself in her room for three days. However, she was allowed to pursue dance studies only on the promise that she never dance in public but instead to just be a dance teacher. Nirenska attended the prestigious Mary Wigman dance school in Dresden, Germany; although she excelled in her dance studies, her teachers felt she had even more of an aptitude for music. Mary Wigman, the school's founder, felt she should switch her focus to music, but Nirenska was committed to dance. In 1931 she graduated first in her class. Nirenska toured Germany and the United States in 1932 and 1933 with Wigman's company, to much success, though when they returned to Germany, they found the school guarded by Nazis, and all of the Jewish pupils were expelled. Nirenska continued to dance, however, and in 1934 was awarded the first prize for choreography and second prize for solo dance by the International Dance Congress in Vienna. This enabled her to continue touring Europe, this time as a solo dancer. She also received a dance scholarship from the Polish government, studied for a time under Rosalia Chladek in Austria, and found work at the opera in Florence. Nirenska relocated to London in 1935, where she married Royal Air Force pilot and actor Count John Ledesma. In the United Kingdom, she choreographed stage shows, danced for the Royal Air Force, modeled for sculptors, artists, and fashion designers, founded her own studio, and worked for the Arts Council of Great Britain. She divorced her husband and moved to the United States in 1949, having been invited by Ted Shawn to dance in the ninth season of the Jacob's Pillow Festival. While studying in New York with such modern dance pioneers as Gertrude Shurr, Doris Humphrey, Louis Horst, and Charles Weidman, she taught at Adelphia College and Carnegie Hall to support herself. In 1950 she made her dancing debut at the Boston Conservatory. Her performance was acclaimed by the critics, who called her "the Ruth Draper of the dance." Nirenska also continued to teach dance, and belonged to the Berkshire Playhouse Drama School in Stockbridge. The next year she received an invitation to join Evelyn de la Tour at her modern dance school in the District of Columbia, as well as serving as guest artist and head of the children's department in the Bar Harbor Summer Dance School in Maine. In 1956 she founded her own dance company in Washington, D.C., and in 1960 opened her own studio in a specially-constructed house. Before long she had over 400 pupils. Nirenska was invited to teach at numerous dance schools, among them the Madiera School in Virginia, where she was the head of the dance department, the Washington School of Ballet, and Glen Echo Dance Theatre in Maryland, where she served as a choreographer. Nirenska married for the second time in 1969, to Jan Karski, who had first sent her a fan letter in 1963. Karski was a Polish diplomat and World War II resistance fighter who had tried to warn the West about the Nazi atrocities going on in Poland. While Karski was giving an international speaking tour in 1967, Nirenska joined him, giving dance classes and workshops in places such as Beirut, Athena, Istanbul, and Thessaloniki. She retired in 1968, saying she was too worn out from running her studio and doing so much teaching. During her retirement years she won many awards for her photography, eventually becoming a professional photographer. Nirenska came out of retirement in 1980 at the urging of a number of leading dancers in Washington, D.C. She reworked some of her old dances and choreographed them for many leading dancers of the time, taught and choreographed at the Glen Echo Dance Theater, taught at the Dance Exchange, and won the Metropolitan Dance Award. In 1982 the Washington Performing Arts Society presented a concert featuring her choreography as performed by dancers such as Rima Faber, Diane Floyd, Liz Lerman, Colette Yglesias, Cathy Paine, and Sue Hannen. Hannen went on to have a long successful collaboration with Nirenska and eventually became her rehearsal director. A farewell concert of her work was presented in July 1990. This was a Holocaust tetralogy, reflecting the profound and lasting impact the loss of her seventy-four of her family members had on her. Three days before she would have been eighty-two, Nirenska fell eleven stories from the balcony of her apartment in an aparent suicide. In 1993 her widower established the Pola Nerinska Award Committee in her memory. The awards are given annually to two people who have shown devoted service, outstanding contributions, or artistic excellence or potential in the field of dance.