Honouring Jane Dudley
By Mary Clarke

As Phoenix Dance Company sets out on its first tour under the direction of Javier De Frutos, starting in Buxton on April 17, the choreographer takes the opportunity to pay homage to his teacher, the late Jane Dudley, by adding to the company’s repertoire her great solo of 1940, Harmonica Breakdown

During her time at London Contemporary Dance School, where she played a vital role in planting the principles of Graham technique into dance training in this country, Dudley taught this short, utterly compelling work first to Siobhan Davies of London Contemporary Dance Theatre, finding in that artist a tall dancer who could emulate her own powerful style. Later, the work was danced by Kate Coyne and Lauren Potter and then, most significantly, by Sheron Wray who was repeatedly coached and rehearsed by Dudley when she was performing the dance. It was, in fact, bequeathed to Sheron by Tom Howitt, Jane Dudley’s son, after his mother’s death, who said simply it was “what Jane would like”. He had documented a film of Sheron Wray in the dance, working with Darshan Singh Bhuller as co-director, and his only concern about her teaching it to others was the straight question “Are they good enough?” The experience of teaching Harmonica to two very different, but equally capable, dancers in Munich a few years ago convinced Wray that it was possible to hand on the legacy so, when Javier De Frutos invited her to revive it for Phoenix, she felt capable of the task and when she began work with his dancers she knew that they would indeed be good enough.
As in Munich, it was decided to teach Harmonica to two dancers, Kialea-Nadine Williams and Lisa Welham. The essential requirement is that they have sound grounding in Graham technique. Jane Dudley not only studied with Hanya Holm, Graham, and Louis Horst but also was a member of Martha Graham’s company from 1937-1944, creating major roles in Letter to the World and Deaths and Entrances. She was a charter member of the New London Summer School, along with Graham, Doris Humphrey, José Limón, and Sophie Maslow. She was teaching assistant to Graham at the Neighborhood Playhouse 1938-1946 and with Maslow and William Bales was Dance Trio, 1942-54. Hence she was steeped in the early, formative years of what was to become American Modern Dance. What characterised the dances made by those people at that time was not only a revolt against traditional schools but also a passionate commitment to social issues. As John Martin, their champion, explained in his seminal essay for The Dance Encyclopaedia (1967), their creations were “directed solely to the publishing of the artist’s immediate revelation of some aspect of his relation to the universe, a flash of insight which he is unable to rationalise or reduce to direct factual statement”. Harmonica Breakdown may reflect Dudley’s knowledge of America and the Depression and the upheavals of migration, but what Sheron insists cannot be underplayed is the music.
As she explained in an interview with Lucy Teed, “Everything that the dancers have been reading about Jane is that the piece was inspired when she heard Sonny Terry play live in Carnegie Hall. This was a very important moment in the development of the audience for blues music in New York at that time, because Carnegie Hall is a hall for classical music and at this point in time there was something programmed, Sonny Terry a blind blues musician and his accompanying player on the washboard. [The full title was Harmonica Breakdown and Washboard Breakdown.] This was a mammoth occasion and the spirit and the whole magnitude of it made Jane want to find his recordings and make a dance… without the music Harmonica Breakdown would never have been an idea, would never have manifested. Of course all those things that she gathered together and put into the piece were also very tangible in her life… but the music was what assembled the idea and made it into something real for her”.
“The other themes within the piece” Sheron continues “are really clearly about having dignity, keeping going, having a future and being concerned with each moment and the struggle that is sometimes in those moments, so I think there are many universal themes… It’s about antagonism at times, and inferior and superior – those notions come into all of our lives at times and I think many of those things can be extrapolated and we can relate to them here and now, and I think that is why Harmonica still speaks”.
The costume for the Phoenix dancers will be the same as the one Jane wore. The lighting was reconstructed by her for the Munich performances and Phoenix also have the help of Tom Johnson who lit the piece for LCDT. “So” Sheron says, “it should be as good as perfect I think”.

Sheron Wray is a choreographer, dancer and researcher who takes an exceptional interest in jazz as a fuelling agent in developing her work and philosophy. For over ten years she danced with Rambert and LCDT, while beginning to create her own work, and in the summer of 1992 formed JazzXchange Music and Dance Company. Her Kaleidoscope Approach, a methodology for the practice of integrated dance and music improvisation, received the Gerry Fuller prize for academic excellence when presented for her Masters thesis.

Captions:
Jane
Dudley in Harmonica Breakdown. Photograph by Gerda Peterich, courtesy of Syracuse University Archives.

Jane Dudley teaching at LCDS. Photograph by Anthony Crickmay.
Sheron Wray rehearsing Harmonica Breakdown with Kialea-Nadine Williams. Photograph by Gavin Joynt.