Jean Erdman (February 20, 1916 – May 4, 2020) was an American dancer and choreographer of modern dance as well as an avant-garde theater director, and the wife of Joseph Campbell.
Biography Early years and background
Erdman was born in Honolulu. Erdman's father, John Piney Erdman, a doctor of divinity and missionary from New England, settled in Honolulu as a minister at the non-denominational Protestant Church of the Crossroads where he preached, in both English and Japanese, to a multi-ethnic congregation. Her mother, Marion Dillingham Erdman, was a member of one of the founding industrialist families of Hawaii.
Erdman's earliest dance experience was the hula. She attended the Punahou School in Honolulu where she learned, as a form of physical education, Isadora Duncan interpretive dance. Reflecting on her early dance training Erdman said these two influences taught her that dancing is an "expression of something meaningful to the dancer, not a mere series of lively steps."Jean Erdman. "Young Dancers State Their Views: As Told to Joseph Campbell", Dance Observer (April 1948): pg. 40
From Hawaii, Erdman went to Miss Hall's School for Girls in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, from which she graduated in 1934. She was troubled by the attitude towards dancing that caused her to be disciplined for teaching the hula to her classmates. Later, at Sarah Lawrence College, which she attended from 1934 to 1937, she was able to explore more freely her multiple interests in theater, dance, and aesthetic philosophy.
At Sarah Lawrence she encountered her two greatest influences: Joseph Campbell and Martha Graham. Campbell, a professor of comparative literature who later became an authority on mythology, was her tutorial advisor. This began a dialogue about the process of individual psycho-spiritual transformation and the nature of art that was to continue throughout their lives. Erdman was also interested in the modern dance technique she learned in Martha Graham's classes at Sarah Lawrence and at the Bennington College Summer School of Dance that she attended during the summers of 1935–1944.
In 1937 Erdman joined her parents and younger sister on a trip around the world during which she saw the traditional dance and theater of many countries including Bali, Java and India. Speaking of her experiences on this trip and of her later study of world dance cultures inspired by it Erdman said, "by studying and analyzing the traditional dance styles of the world, I discovered that the particular dance of each culture is the perfect expression of that culture's world view and is achieved by deliberate choices drawn from the unlimited possibilities of movement".Dance and Myth: The World of Jean Erdman Part 2: The Group Dances, Choreographer and Artistic Director Jean Erdman, Directors Nancy Allison and Dan Berkowitz, Producer Dan Berkowitz, Executive Producer Nancy Allison, (New York: Foundation for The Open Eye 1991) Shortly after Erdman returned to New York, she married Campbell on May 5, 1938, and following a brief honeymoon began rehearsal as a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company.
Career Erdman distinguished herself as a principal dancer in Graham's company in solo roles such as the Ideal Spectator in Every Soul is a Circus, the Speaking Fate in Punch and the Judy and the One Who Speaks in Letter to the World, Graham's ode to the American poet, Emily Dickinson. Dance critic Margaret Lloyd of The Christian Science Monitor praised the "felicitous humor" Erdman brought to her role as the Speaking Fate and called her "irreplaceable" in the 1941 revival of Letter to the World.Kyle Shepard, "Jean Erdman" in "Dancing Rebels" (unpublished manuscript, American Dance Legacy Institute, 2005): pp. 49-52
Working with Graham, Erdman had re-shaped the role, originally played by actress Margaret Meredith, from that of a static seated figure to a moving, integrated element in the groundbreaking dance-theater work. In The Complete Guide to Modern Dance, historian Don McDonagh writes of the "profound effect" that these speaking roles had on Erdman. He attributes her many explorations of the dynamic between word and movement to these early experiences.Don McDonagh, The Complete Guide to Modern Dance (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1976): pp. 207-11
As all female Graham dancers of the period Erdman was required to study choreography with Louis Horst, Graham's musical director. Horst presented lecture-demonstrations on his principles in pre-classic dance forms, and his students demonstrated his ideas through their own compositions. Her first solo, The Transformations of Medusa, which premiered at the Bennington College's Summer Festival of the Arts in 1942, began as an assignment for his class. The final version, with a commissioned score by Horst, remained in her repertory through the 1990s. Erdman's performance of this dance was the subject of Maya Deren's unfinished 1949 film, Medusa.Medusa on IMDB
Originally an exploration of primitive style or archaic style, The Transformations of Medusa developed from a short study of the two-dimensional form into a complete dance of three sections. Erdman described the year long evolution of the piece as the process through which she came to understand that every posture contains "a whole state of being or attitude toward life."Isabel Ferguson, "American Dance Makers", Christian Science Monitor (March 15, 1962) The dance evolved as she attuned herself to the physical sensations of the stylized positions and followed where they led her. It was Campbell, informed by his deep well of mythological imagery, who identified the dance character in the first short study as Medusa, the beautiful Greek priestess of Athena who became the hideous snake-headed gorgon. Erdman developed the second and third sections following the development of the mythological archetype.
In 1943, at the urging of Campbell and composer, John Cage, Erdman and fellow Graham Company member, Merce Cunningham, presented a joint concert sponsored by the Arts Club of Chicago. Cunningham's solos included "Totem Ancestor", "In the Name of the Holocaust", and "Shimmera", all with scores by Cage.Vaughn, David, Merce Cunningham: Fifty Years (New York: Aperture 1996)
The two collaborative duets were, "Credo in US", a dramatic dance with a text by Cunningham and a commissioned score by Cage, and "Ad Lib" with a commissioned score by Gregory Tucker. According to Erdman, Ad Lib "was considered rather shocking because it incorporated improvisations. At that time it was not considered acceptable to perform improvs in public. That was for the privacy of your studio."Dance and Myth: The World of Jean Erdman, Part 1 The Early Dances, Videocassette (New York: Foundation for The Open Eye, 1990).
Erdman's other important works of the 1940s were Daughters of the Lonesome Isle (1945) and Ophelia (1946) with commissioned scores by John Cage on prepared and standard piano respectively, Passage (1946), Hamadryad (1948) to Debussy's "Syrinx", The Perilous Chapel (1949), and Solstice (1950), both with commissioned scores by Lou Harrison. Of The Perilous Chapel which featured a moving sculptural set by Carlus Dyer and was selected as one of the Best New Works of the Season by Dance Magazine, Doris Hering wrote, "When the dance was over one realized that by means of purely physical and visual elements, Miss Erdman had succeeded in giving a moving picture of the experience of an artist through phases of isolation and realization."Hering, Doris, "Out of the Cradle", Charm magazine, (October 1950): pp. 75-129
Other dance critics of the time noted her unique approach to dance making. New York Times dance critic John Martin remarked, "that Erdman's movement is perhaps as near to being non-associative as movement can be, yet it is freely creative. The method of composition, though naturally without story content, avoids any connotation of being merely decorative, much as non-objective painting avoids it, and manages to be just as strongly evocative."Martin, John, The New York Times, 1946, Quoted in Erdman, Jean, Jean Erdman Papers, 1925-2001, New York Library for the Performing Arts, Jerome Robbins Dance Research Collection, New York, New York, Box 48, Folder 10, Call#: MGZMD 170
Reporting on a group concert at the 92nd St YM/YWHA in which Erdman participated Edwin Denby wrote in the New York Herald Tribune, "Miss Erdman's (approach) is a more original and refreshing one to encounter. There was a lightness in the rhythm, a quality of generosity and spaciousness in the movement that struck me as a dance should, as a poetic presence."Denby, Edwin, "Debut Dance Recital", New York Herald Tribune (February 11, 1945) Walter Terry also writing for the Tribune commented, "(Her dance) attracts through rare beauty of pattern, through gently shaded dynamics and through that intangible essence we call quality. It does not appeal directly to the intellect nor to the emotions, but rather it seems to carry its message on its own short-wave system to the senses themselves."Terry, Walter, New York Herald Tribune, December 31, 1945, Quoted in Erdman, Jean, Jean Erdman Papers, 1925-2001, New York Library for the Performing Arts, Jerome Robbins Dance Research Collection, New York, New York, Box 65, Folder 2, Call #: MGZMD 170
From 1950 to 1954, she toured the US annually with her company. From 1954 to 1955 she toured India and Japan as a solo artist, the first dancer to do so since World War II. The report she filed with U.S. State Department helped initiate cultural exchange programs with India and many countries in the Far East.Moritz, Charles, Editor, Current Biography, September 1971, Volume 32 Number 8, (New York: H. W. Wilson Company 1971): pp. 14-17.
From 1955 to 1960, she toured extensively as a solo artist throughout the U.S. Notable works from her repertory of that period include Portrait of a Lady created to jazz recordings that were layered by John Cage into his eight-track commissioned score, Dawn Song, a lyrical solo with commissioned score by Alan Hovhaness, Fearful Symmetry (1956; an allegory in six visions inspired by William Blake's poem, "The Tyger") to Ezra Laderman's Sonata for Violoncello, in which Erdman emerged from and interacted with a metal sculpture by Carlus Dyer, and Four Portraits from Duke Ellington's "Shakespeare Album" (1958), a suite of comic portrayals of Shakespearean heroines.
In 1960, Erdman reorganized and renamed her dance company to reflect her explorations of the inter-relationship of movement, music, visual arts and spoken text. As noted above this interest began much earlier for Erdman. As early as 1946, John Martin noted, "She is keenly alert to modern experiments in the other arts music, poetry, visual design and employs them freely."Martin, John, "The Dance: Majority Young Artists of Ability Coming of Age With Honors in Spite of Obstacles", The New York Times (December 15, 1946)
Her musical collaborations with composer Ezra Laderman which had begun in 1956 with Duet for Flute and Dancer, inspired by Erdman's interpretation of Debussy's solo flute composition Syrinx in her 1948 solo Hamadryad and culminating in the 1957 group work Harlequinade, featuring dancer Donald McKayle, were the subject of a feature story in Time magazine in April 1957.—————, "Scoring for Dancer", Time Magazine, (April 1, 1957): 80