Jane Dudley

Jane Dudley (1912-2001)

Born in New York to a mother who was a dance teacher, she began studying dance with Ruth Dewing at age six. In 1930, she started training with Hanya Holm at the Mary Wigman School. In 1936, she began training at the Neighbourhood Playhouse with Martha Graham, Anna Sokolow and Louis Horst. In 1937, she joined Graham’s company and danced with it in leading roles until 1944. In 1951, she returned to the company as a solo dancer and participated in many of its performances.

In 1942 she joined the New Dance Group and cofounded the Dudley-Maslow-Bales Trio with Sophie Maslow and William Bales, with which she performed until 1954. Throughout the 1950s and ‘60s she taught at the Neighborhood Playhouse as Graham’s assistant, as a teacher in Graham’s studio, as well as in the New Summer School in London, Columbia University and Bennington College. She began choreographing in London in the 1930s, with dancers selected especially for each performance. She performed with these dancers in London and the US.

In 1968, Dudley accepted Martha’s proposal to become Batsheva’s artistic director. She invited Talley Beattie, Sophie Maslow, Richard Kuch, and José Limón to Israel, and participated in the company’s historic tour in Germany in October 1969. Dudley also danced with Batsheva in Kuch’s The Brood (1968). After two years in Israel, she returned to London and in 1970 began working in London Contemporary Dance School (“The Place”) as a senior teacher, deputy director and head of the Dance Department for 25 years.
In 1991, Dudley received an honorary doctorate in music from the University of Kent. In 1996, a retrospective of her work was staged in London and New York.

Jane Dudley died in London in 2001.