Jeanne Ruddy

Jeanne Ruddy is an American dancer, choreographer, artistic director, educator, and writer who has worked across performance, academia, and community arts development. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, she began her dance training in 1966 at the Sacred and Contemporary Dance Guild of Miami under the direction of Diana Avery, performing at arts and holiday festivals, Coconut Grove Happenings, churches, synagogues, and theaters through 1970. She subsequently earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the North Carolina School of the Arts between 1971 and 1973, and later completed a Master of Arts in Dance History and Writing from New York University between 1988 and 1990.

Ruddy joined the Martha Graham Dance Company in 1976 and remained with the company until 1986, rising to the rank of Principal Dancer. During that decade she performed lead roles in numerous Graham works, including Andromache's Lament, Flute of Pan, Diversion of Angels, Deaths and Entrances, Seraphic Dialogue, Clytemnestra, Cortege of Eagles, Embattled Garden, Herodiade, Appalachian Spring, and Cave of the Heart, in which she danced the role of The Chorus. Her performance in Cave of the Heart was reviewed as having been danced with "compellingly troubled warmth and delicacy," while her work in Andromache's Lament drew notice for her poised and glamorous stage presence. As a principal dancer she performed at Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Opera House, and the Paris Opéra, and toured the United States, Europe, Canada, Mexico, and the Middle East. She also appeared in filmed productions for N.E.T. Great Performances and Dance in America.

Her Broadway credits include a 1977 appearance in Primitive Mysteries and a role in The King and I starring Yul Brynner. Ruddy was additionally an original member of Agnes de Mille's Heritage Dance Theatre.

Following her years with the Graham company, Ruddy moved into academic leadership. From 1986 to 1995 she directed the Graham-based modern dance department at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, and from 1987 to 1998 she served on the faculty of the Juilliard School. She has been a guest artist and teacher at institutions including Sarah Lawrence College, Connecticut College, and Florida State University. Internationally, she was invited to the Congress on Dance in Rio de Janeiro, the International Sommerakademie des Tanzes in Cologne, and the American Dance Festival in Moscow, where in 1993 she became the first person to teach the Martha Graham technique to an advanced group of Russian artists following Russia's opening to such exchanges.

Ruddy's choreographic output spans several decades, beginning with Song of Joys in 1974, set to music by Aaron Copland, and continuing through Game Drive in 2012, set to Jennifer Higdon's Zaka. Her works have drawn on music by composers including Philip Glass, Igor Stravinsky, John Adams, Béla Bartók, Claude Debussy, Frédéric Chopin, and Joni Mitchell, among others. Notable pieces include Significant Soil, set to Philip Glass and supported by a 2000 Independence Foundation Fellowship; Harmonium, set to John Adams; and Woa Cholena, set to Stravinsky.

In August 1998, Ruddy received a grant from the Pew Charitable Trust Foundation for a project called Dans Project 4 Philadelphia, which was later renamed Jeanne Ruddy Dance and formally established as a company in 1999. The company presented two world premiere works in April 2006 to mark the opening of the Performance Garage, a Philadelphia venue Ruddy purchased in 2000 and opened after renovations in 2003 as a space for dance classes, rehearsals, workshops, and performances. In 2012 Ruddy closed the dance company in order to concentrate on the continued development of the Performance Garage, which operates as an incubator for new dance work.

Over the course of her career Ruddy has received support from numerous funding bodies, including the National Endowment for the Arts Challenge America Award, multiple grants from the William Penn Foundation and the Pew Foundation Dance Advance program, the Samuel S. Fels Foundation, the William B. Dietrich Foundation, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, among others.