DANZ QUARTERLY No 2 December 2005

Memorial Celebration for the Life of Rona Bailey

An edited address by Jan Bolwell
Te Whaea New Zealand School of Dance, Wellington
31 October 2006

A TRIBUTE TO RONA
24 December 1914 – 7 September 2005

I am very honoured to have been asked by Meg Bailey to speak to you today about our darling Rona. I met her twenty years ago when she was seventy, and I remember her saying to me “at this stage of my life I am not really that interested in making new close friends, but I can perhaps make an exception with you.” I am extraordinarily grateful for Rona’s generosity, as my life has been enriched immeasurably by knowing, and loving dearly, this truly exceptional woman.

Rona, Sunny (Amey) and I had many wonderful adventures together none of which I can recount today, because my brief is to talk about Rona’s contribution to the world of New Zealand dance. Ten years ago I interviewed Rona for the Oral Archives. The planned one-hour session turned into four, and then I was asked to come back because she wasn’t happy with the way she had communicated some of the material. The table was strewn with papers from Rona’s extensive personal archives, and miraculously to me, she could just pluck out the appropriate piece of information. Over the years I constantly accessed Rona’s archives – she could always find what I needed. It would arrive in the post the next day with the accompanying note –‘Dear Jan please be sure to return these papers as soon as you have finished with them.’ Firm messages like this one are probably the reason Rona’s archives are still so intact.

As I listened to those tapes this last week I realised it is not really possible to compartmentalise Rona’s work. Her social and political beliefs fed into every area of her life, including dance. Rona belonged to that breed of humankind, whether on the left or the right of the political spectrum, for whom a privileged upbringing – and Rona certainly had that - was accompanied by a strong social conscience. Her aunt, a teacher, was a huge influence on the young Rona, who taught her to observe nature closely, and socially, to see that things are not always as they first appear. Other mentors were some outstanding physical educationists at school, and at Auckland and Christchurch training colleges, all of whom helped lay the groundwork for the gifted movement educator that Rona was to become. Of course she was a terrific sportswoman too, playing basketball for Poverty Bay, and had she not decided to study modern dance in America, Rona would probably have made the New Zealand team.

Instead, in 1937, she got on a ship and headed off to the University of California, where, at Berkeley, the whole new exciting world of American modern dance was opened up to her. Even in her eighties, Rona could give a blow-by-blow description of those first modern dance classes she experienced at Berkeley. As she said “I was hooked!” But the political awareness was present too. She saw the democratisation of dance where students of all shapes and sizes filled the classes, where any movement idea was permissible so long as it had integrity. She took workshops with those great dance icons, Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, and the narrow diet of English country folk dance she had experienced back home was broadened to include international folk dance, which she taught throughout New Zealand on her return home a few years later. As well as dance she studied community recreation which stood her in good stead for her later important work as an officer for the Physical Welfare and Recreation branch of Internal Affairs in the 1940s, where she developed adult keep fit and recreation programmes.

Rona always felt lucky to have been in the States in the 1930s. It was a time of great social and political ferment, and she relished being a witness to it all. At Berkeley she went to a huge demonstration for the long shoreman Harry Bridges, she heard James Bertram and Ian Milner talking about China, travelling with a black friend on a bus she experienced the wall of hatred that was part and parcel of race relations at that time, and later travelling with friends in the south, she witnessed a truly frightening Klu Klux Klan gathering with white hooded figures and burning crosses.

In 1938 Rona transferred to Columbia University to further her dance studies. In New York she saw Martha Graham’s early great works – Deep Song, Frontier, American Document, Hanya Holm’s Trend, and a whole raft of other theatre and dance that was deeply political and reflected contemporary American life.

In 1939 when Rona returned to New Zealand, she met up with Philip Smithells, newly appointed as Superintendent of Physical Education by Beeby. This was hugely important for both of them. Philip was a very cultured man who knew what was happening in the American modern dance scene. He was having a hard time in New Zealand, regarded as a ‘poofter’ by the male physical education fraternity because of his interest in dance and the arts.

In Rona he found a kindred spirit, and soon he had her teaching workshops around the country in American modern dance. Not only that, his new wife Olive was a dancer, and so in 1945, Olive and Philip, Rona and Edith Lennart who Rona knew through Unity theatre, set up the New Dance Group. Others joined them and Saturday morning classes at the Training College in Kelburn led to a series of significant dance concerts which Rona has described as ‘revolutionary’, both in form and content.

The four instigators held left wing views and many of the dances were infused with socio-political commentary, Rona of course having been influenced by what she had seen in America. At one stage Bruce Mason was a group member, and the intelligentsia of Wellington turned up to see their work, with perceptive reviews being written by the likes of Anton Vogt.

I don’t think one can underestimate the importance of this relatively short-lived experimental dance group, and Rona’s influence upon it, for in 1948 when Philip Smithells went on to found the School of Physical Education at Otago University, dance was an intrinsic part of the programme right from the beginning. Generations of students, myself included, have come through that school, and many of us are still actively involved in the field of New Zealand dance. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to people like Philip and Rona.
 
With her work as a movement tutor at the New Zealand Drama School, Rona influenced generations of actors. It was at the 1964 Drama Council’s Summer School that Nola Miller, that doyenne of the theatre, pushed Rona into exploring the teaching of movement for theatre. Some years later when a national drama school was established, Rona became one of the core movement tutors with Jackie Burt. When George Webby took over the Drama School in 1974 he asked Rona to work as movement tutor with Erica Stephenson. She continued to work in this capacity for the school right up to 1988, retiring at the age of 73.

I want to finish with Rona’s other great contribution which brings together her work in the arts and politics. In 1987 at a conference in Wellington Rona introduced the New Zealand dance community to the basics of biculturalism. I will never forget the sight of this feisty 73 year old socking it to the dancers about race relations in New Zealand. Courageous, passionate, brilliantly articulate and teaching superbly, it seemed to me on that day, it was the culmination of all that Rona had worked for in her life as she brought together her twin passions - the arts and politics.

In the 1990s when Sunny, Keri Kaa and I mounted our three dance theatre works – Wahine Toa, Takitoru and Sing Whale - Rona was, in equal measure, our greatest support and our sternest critic. We valued both. In 1990 when Keri and I co-directed the Australia-New Zealand dance course on Raukawa marae at Otaki, Rona was again our rock, caring magnificently for our Aboriginal guests with such empathy and understanding.

What a woman she was! We shall not look upon her like again.
           

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