Jeanne Ruddy | |
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| Born | Miami, Florida, United States |
| Occupation(s) | Choreographer, artistic director, dancer, educator, and founder |
Jeanne Ruddy is an American dancer, choreographer, artistic director, educator, writer and founder and collaborator of multiple dance projects. She danced with the Martha Graham Dance Company in New York City and later began the Jeanne Ruddy Dance Company in Philadelphia, PA.
Jeanne Ruddy was born and raised in Miami, Florida. Her dance education began at the Sacred and Contemporary Dance Guild of Miami under the direction of Diana Avery in Miami, Florida 1966–1970, performing in Arts and Holiday Festivals, Coconut Grove Happenings, churches and synagogues, and theaters. Jeanne Ruddy went on to earn her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from North Carolina School of the Arts. [1] (1971–1973) She went on to dance with the Martha Graham Dance Company (1979–1985). [2] She earned her Masters in Arts from New York University, with a concentration in Dance History and Writing (1988–1990).
Jeanne Ruddy was a Principal Dancer with the Martha Graham Company. She performed lead roles in Graham works. In Andromache's Lament [3] her performance was reviewed "Jeanne Ruddy and Jean-Louis Morin made Andromache and Hector attractive young people in Andromache's Lament. Miss Ruddy even looked as poised and glamorous as a fashion model at the start of the piece." Flute of Pan, [4] Diversion of Angels, [5] Deaths and Entrances, Seraphic Dialogue, Clyemnestra, Cortege of Eagles, [6] Embattled Garden, [7] Herodiade [8] and Appalachian Spring. [9] In the Cave of the Heart Ruddy danced in the role of The Chorus, which was reviewed as having been "danced with compellingly troubled warmth and delicacy by Jeanne Ruddy." [10]
In a letter to the editor Ruddy described what it was to dance for Martha Graham, "To live as a dancer in her company was to suspend oneself from an everyday reality – she demanded total commitment, complete discipline." [11]
As a Principal Dancer Ruddy performed on Broadway, at Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan and Paris Opéra houses; toured the US, Europe, Canada, Mexico, the Mid-East. Filmed N.E.T. Great Performances and Dance in America. She also danced on Broadway in The King and I, [12] starring Yul Brynner, and was an original member of Agnes de Mille's Heritage Dance Theatre.
Jeanne Ruddy directed the Graham-based modern department at The Alvin Ailey American Dance Center from 1986 to 1995. She was a faculty member at The Juilliard School from 1987 to 1998. [13] In addition to her work in New York, Jeanne Ruddy has been invited to numerous international symposiums: the Congress of the Dance in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the International Sommerakademie des Tanzes in Cologne, Germany; and the American Dance Festival [14] in Moscow, Russia, where she was the first to teach the Martha Graham technique to an advanced group of Russian artists after Russia opened in 1993. She has been a guest artist where she taught and choreographed in many of the U.S. leading colleges and universities of dance, [15] such as Sarah Lawrence College, Connecticut College, [16] and Florida State University. Jeanne Ruddy's diverse opportunities inform her as an artist, and contributed to her work as a creator of dance pieces. Her experiences inspired her to find ways of sharing dance with broader communities.
In August 1998, Jeanne Ruddy received a grant from the Pew Charitable Trust Foundation for a project called Dans Project 4 [29] Philadelphia (later renamed Jeanne Ruddy Dance). The dance company was formally founded in 1999 [13] as a company of highly trained professional dancers providing audiences in Philadelphia world-class performances [30]
In April 2006 the Jeanne Ruddy Dance company presented two world premiere dances to inaugurate the opening of the Performance Garage. The performance was lauded by the Philadelphia Inquirer, noting that "This is a company of gorgeous, talented, pedigreed dancers that probably not enough Philadelphians know about." [31] In 2012 Ruddy made the decision to close the dance company and focus her attention on the continued development of the Performance Garage. [32] [33]
The building for the Performance Garage, [34] in Philadelphia, was purchased in 2000, and after renovations [35] it opened in 2003 as a space for dance classes, rehearsals, workshops, and performances. It is a space for choreographers and dance companies to practice and perform. [36] It continues to operate as an incubator for new dance.
Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer, whose style, the Graham technique, reshaped American dance and is still taught worldwide.
Alvin Ailey Jr. was an American dancer, director, choreographer, and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT). He created AAADT and its affiliated Alvin Ailey American Dance Center as havens for nurturing Black artists and expressing the universality of the African-American experience through dance.
Jean Erdman was an American dancer and choreographer of modern dance as well as an avant-garde theater director.
Anna Sokolow was an American dancer and choreographer. Sokolow's work is known for its social justice focus and theatricality. Throughout her career, Sokolow supported of the development of modern dance around the world, including in Mexico and Israel.
Carlos Lundi Wrokona was a Spanish-born composer and conductor.
Terese Capucilli is an American modern dancer, interpreter of the roles originally performed by Martha Graham. She is one of the last generation of dancers to be coached and directed by Graham herself. A principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company for twenty-six years, she became associate artistic director in 1997 and from 2002 to 2005 served as artistic director, with Christine Dakin, seeing the organization and its dancers through the rebirth of the company. A driving force of Graham's work for nearly three decades, she is now Artistic Director Laureate.
Yuriko Kikuchi, known to audiences by her stage name Yuriko, was an American dancer and choreographer who was best known for her work with the Martha Graham Dance Company.
Laura Dean is an American dancer, choreographer and composer. She is known for her collaborations with Steve Reich, a number of commissioned works for the Joffrey Ballet, and works for her own dance companies. Dean's earliest works were marked by a minimalist approach and an affinity for spinning; her later work saw more use of traditional dance methods.
Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance which includes dance styles such as ballet, folk, ethnic, religious, and social dancing; and primarily arose out of Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was considered to have been developed as a rejection of, or rebellion against, classical ballet, and also a way to express social concerns like socioeconomic and cultural factors.
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The Martha Graham Dance Company, founded by Martha Graham in 1926, is both the oldest dance company in the United States and the oldest integrated dance company. The company is critically acclaimed in the artistic world and has been recognized as "one of the great dance companies of the world" by the New York Times and as "one of the seven wonders of the artistic universe" by the Washington Post.
La hija de Cólquide is a ballet score composed by Carlos Chávez in 1943–44 on commission from the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation for Martha Graham. The title refers to the mythological character Medea, daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, in the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece. The ballet spawned several subsidiary works in Chávez's catalog including his Third String Quartet. When Graham eventually choreographed it, she wrote a new scenario and gave it the title Dark Meadow.
Salem Shore is a solo modern dance work choreographed by Martha Graham to original music by Paul Nordoff. The piece premiered on December 26, 1943 at the 46th Street Theater in New York City. The ballet featured costumes by Edythe Gilfond and a set by Arch Lauterer. Program notes accompanying the first performance described the dance as "a ballad of a woman's longing for her beloved's return from the sea."
Maple Leaf Rag is a storyless Martha Graham ballet set to ragtime compositions by Scott Joplin. The work premiered on October 2, 1990 at New York City Center with costumes by Calvin Klein and lighting by David Finley. Chris Landriau arranged the music and played piano at the debut. The dance is a jubilant self-parody and an homage, of sorts, to Graham's mentor and musical director, Louis Horst, who would play the rag for her whenever she fell into a creative slump. Graham was 96 when she created Maple Leaf Rag; it is her last completed dance. In 1991, she began another work, The Eyes of the Goddess, but it was unfinished at the time of her death.
Deep Song, a solo modern dance by Martha Graham, premiered on December 19, 1937, at the Guild Theatre in New York City. Performed to music by Henry Cowell, the piece was the second work created by Graham in response to the Spanish Civil War. The first, Immediate Tragedy, was introduced in 1937.
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Marie Marchowsky (1916–1977) was an American modern dancer and choreographer who was one of the youngest dancers to train with modern pioneer, Martha Graham.
Yuriko Kimura (木村百合子) is a modern dancer, and was a primary dancer for the Martha Graham Dance Company from 1967 to 1985. Various dance critics, such as Anna Kisselgoff and Clive Barnes from the New York Times, who often reviewed Yuriko's performances, referred to her dancing as "incandescent", and to Kimura as one of the "most outstanding performers in modern dance today" and "a brilliant technician for whom no movement seems impossible". She was born in Kanzawa, Japan.
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