Arts4All, Ltd.

She has been dancing since she was four years old, in the Upper New York State town of Delmar, near the state capital in Albany. Her father was director of health and physical education for the state's public schools. Her mother had wanted to be a dancer, but it was too unladylike a choice for a woman of her time. Providing their daughter with dance lessons was something they were happy to do.

As a teenager Betty Jones's interest in becoming a dancer increased. With her parents' encouragement she attended summer dance workshops at Jacob's Pillow while she was still in high school. At the audition for her first Jacob's Pillow summer, she danced on point. They said to her, "good knees," she recalls, chuckling. On scholarship, she did odd jobs, a favorite of hers being plumbing repairs.

Those summers provided her with a lot more than just plumbing-repair skills. One year the program was run by Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin, Jones says. Jones was one of three students staying in the Main House "to be protected - Walter Terry the critic was there playing around with all the dancers - there were so many there - Nora Kaye, Hugh Lamb, Irina Baronova, …."

One summer, when she was about seventeen, she was chosen to do a Ted Shawn solo - Barcarole, she thinks - on the same program as Chaconne, danced by José Limón. They stood in the wings together - it was the only time she soloed on the same stage as José Limón - as they watched a performance of Giselle. When the coffin did not open in Giselle, they clutched each other - "an intimate moment," she says, with the man in whose work she would immerse herself, a few years later. One of the first members of the José Limón Dance Company, Betty Jones would originate many now-classic roles in the Company's permanent repertoire, including The Moor's Pavane.

Betty Jones as Desdemona in The Moor's Pavane. Photographer: Patricia Jean Moore.
Image courtesy the Limón Institute, New York City.

She completed her last year of high school early, and that spring she went to New York City. Before deciding to attend college elsewhere, with her friends from Delmar, Jones thought she would "try out" the city, to see if she wanted to become a dancer. She had thought she might get a role in the chorus of a Broadway show and attend Columbia University, to combine the college education her family wanted for her with a career in dance as well. She was not interested in the colleges offering dance programs then - Bennington and the University of Wisconsin at Madison - both were "too modern" for her, she felt at the time.

Instead, her education took a different turn. She got a role in the touring USO show of Oklahoma, entertaining the troops in the Pacific during World War II. The show traveled the South Pacific - the Philippines, New Guinea - playing for tens of thousands of men at each performance. Jones stayed with the show.

By the time she came home, the war was over. She went out on the road in Bloomer Girl, another Broadway export choreographed by Agnes de Mille. But the work felt too lightweight - not serious enough. (Now, she says she's not sure how she knew back then that "serious" was something she wanted.) Betty Jones just "didn't want to be in the boondocks anymore," so she left the show to return to New York. She knew, then, that she had come to New York at a special time. Looking back now, she says, "You are just led to it, one step at a time."

Back in New York, she studied with some of her Jacob's Pillow teachers, including Thalia Mara, Arthur Mahony and Angiola Sartorio. Although she had begun her dance training with ballet, she found herself drawn to modern dance, she says: modern "allows you more chance for individuality." For a time, she ushered at Broadway's Shubert Theater, where she saw Paul Robeson in Othello for eight performances a week. This prepared her for The Moor's Pavane, she says with a mixture of humor and appreciation.

During her five summers at Jacob's Pillow - four before the war and one after - she came to know José and Pauline Lawrence Limón. They approached her there to explore her interest in "concert work." Jones wasn't sure what that meant, at the time. Later, in New York, she studied with José Limón, and when auditions were held for his new dance company in 1947, she auditioned and was accepted. Once that happened, she says, she "had no doubt" about what she wanted - "then I knew I was in the right place."

It was clear by now she would not be attending college - that dancing would be her life. It wasn't hard to explain her choice to her family. She only had her mother by that time - a drunk driver had killed her sister and father in a car crash while Jones was with the USO in the Philippines. She knew her father was proud of her - he had been interested in Jacob's Pillow - and her mother had recalled her own desire to dance. So both her parents had some connection to the language of the body. "Yes, I wouldn't say they were artists, but…my mother was an artist in some ways."

Her mother came to New York City, where she lived six blocks away from Jones. Later she moved with Betty and her husband Fritz Ludin to Hawaii, and for the rest of her life was involved in the dance world. She made costumes and dresses for Jones's dancing and eventually also did all the concert booking for Ludin and Jones. In Europe at their performances people would come up to Jones and tell her how much they wanted to meet her mother - "they all said she was fabulous," Jones recalls.

In the early 1950's Betty Jones began going each summer to the American Dance Festival (ADF). A principal Limón dancer, she nonetheless took ADF classes from Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham and Alwin Nikolais. There was "never a peep from José or Doris" about taking those classes, she says. It's been helpful to her as a teacher, because she can understand and talk with other kinds of dancers in a way that a dancer versed only in one method could not. In the decades since, Jones has taught around the world, as the ADF program has expanded its reach, sending her to students in India, China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia and Russia. This year, 2001, marked her forty-seventh summer at ADF.

José Limón's company, with his artistic director Doris Humphrey, had existed for about a year when Jones joined. Humphrey, Limón's longtime teacher, was a former Denishawn dancer and teacher, who in 1928 had co-founded, with Charles Weidman, the Humphrey-Weidman Dance School (with Denishawn, very influential in establishing modern dance in the United States). Humphrey and Limón had complementary skills. When working with dancers, Limón had to find it in his own body, Jones says, while Humphrey could choreograph with words, from her chair. She articulated with her arms, Jones recalls. Humphrey rehearsed dancers in repertory class until they really got it - suspending and falling over and over for twenty minutes, for example. There probably isn't time for that kind of practice now, Jones expects.

By 1947, Doris Humphrey was no longer dancing - she choreographed for the Limón Company and taught at Juilliard. She was tiny, Jones remembers, and limped and walked with a cane. Even though she had difficulty moving, Humphrey was independent - she wouldn't let Limón carry her up the stairs to their second-floor Dance Players Studio rehearsal space on West 56 Street. She would go all over New York City to see dances - she could critique, and make substantive suggestions, after seeing a dance one time. Everyone asked her to come. She would just get in a taxi and go, Jones recalls with amazement and admiration.

Jones has helped to formulate what is now known as "Limón technique." At this point, she has internalized Humphrey and Limón so greatly, she says she can't tell now what is hers and what she learned from them. It works together well, regardless. At the Limón Institute in New York City one evening this spring, Jones tells her assembled students, "the body is not some kind of a stick - it has to be articulate, and should lead you wherever you want it to go." Jones says using the hands and body in a functional way is much "more than just making a line - that has no substance or guts." Guts matter: Limón once called her "viscera." "I'm kind of proud of that," Jones admits. "For me, that's a compliment." She advises young dancers, "Don't hold back from having viscera to find it - it is there."

Of one thing she is sure: "Limón technique gives you a basis for anything," she says. Following her own instinct, she teaches to many kinds of music. One year in New York, she wanted to teach to ragtime music. "This shocked some," Jones says. Other times, she would bring in Thelonius Monk music to class and "have a great time." She doesn't believe anything should stop her from teaching "Limón jazz" - "it's just putting a different quality to it. José wouldn't mind, I don't think… If you're up there…," she gestures skyward.

Does she notice a difference in students these days compared to when she started? Yes - she's been doing a lot of reconstructing of old pieces. "Naturally that will lead to talk about the time they come from." Jones has an old playbill from 1935 of Humphrey-Weidman - "what vitality!" she remarks. "It's crude, there was no turnout, etc., but you see that in children sometimes - such exhilaration."

"Kids have such freedom in their legs now - they can hit their ear. You have to tell them, 'That's out of style. You can't do that.' You need to retain some of that [earlier] quality. I'm a bit of a purist I guess." She tells of a girl who did a backbend - arabesque in a Limón piece. It looked weird, Jones says, when the dancer kept her back straight. "It loses something wonderful," Jones told that student. "You need the quality of longing - it's not there if the back is straight." The student understood, and changed, Jones is happy to report.

One of the biggest things she does for students, Jones believes, is to emphasize the hands, in keeping with Doris Humphrey's and Limón's work. Limón was after her for ten years about her hands, she says, telling her that her hands weren't beautiful. Nowadays, Jones finds, "the girls' hands are limp posies and the men are stiffish." She includes the hands now, when she notates dance.

 

How had Jones become a teacher? It began early on, in 1947 or 1948, when Limón asked Jones to teach the Limón beginning class. (She notes that he enjoyed teaching advanced - and that beginning is harder to teach.) Then Doris Humphrey asked Jones to assist her in repertory class. Jones began teaching at Juilliard and found that at the juried exams, it was hard to put into words what they wanted to ask a dancer to do. Unlike ballet and Graham technique, which are very codified, there was no Limón vocabulary at hand. So Jones and a colleague worked on language phrases to be used in exams for various levels of Limón technique.

Limón was comfortable with this up to a point, but he said no when Jones was asked to go to Rotterdam to teach Limón technique and establish a Limón syllabus for a dance school there. He told her, "It needs to develop. Don't codify it." As Jones puts it, "All of José's teaching was aimed at helping us find our own way of moving, to unearth or discover our uniqueness."

She's been spreading the word. A quick search of the Internet turns up Jones's name on many dancers' résumés. She seems to have students everywhere. "I suppose so," she agrees. All over the world they come up to her and say "I studied with you at so and so."

Does she feel a responsibility to distribute the Limón heritage? She answers at once, "I do. First Doris was gone, then José, then Charles - I realized the mantle had fallen on my back." If she had had two siblings who shared the mantle would her life have gone differently? She isn't sure how to answer that. She is clear, though, of the reasons for her next big career decision. "I didn't take over the Limón Company when José passed over (in 1972) - it was too much - so much fundraising, etc. And we had other things going on."

They certainly did. Fritz Ludin, also a Limón dancer, had met and married Jones. After leaving the Limón Company they toured as a duo in the 1970's in Europe and the US. They began teaching dance as well, through their organization Dances We Dance. Repertory included Limón dances and other choreographers' work - eighty different pieces in all, over more than 25 years. But "my home and my heart are in this direction [Limón]," Jones says. For a time, their signature work was Vivaldi, from the Limón repertoire. Jones had known it since 1947, shortly after joining the Limón Company - she learned the part in three days, to fill in for an injured dancer.

In the mid-1970's Jones, Ludin and Jones's mother moved to Hawaii. Why Hawaii? Her husband says "the ship stopped there," Jones laughs, but in truth the move was a bit more gradual. Invited to teach there by a colleague, in 1976 they began spending half of the year on faculty at the University of Hawaii. By 1979 they were living there full-time and opened a studio, which they ran for the next seven years.

"Hawaii is a different world," Jones says. "We had to start a reputation all over again. In New York City, we got every grant we asked for - NYSCA (the New York State Council on the Arts) was great." But not in Hawaii. In fact, she says, there was an 82 percent cut in funding for arts organizations recently.

Hawaii may not have a generous budget for funding culture, but Jones feels they have benefited Hawaii, in any case: Dances We Dance has presented up to eleven other dance companies per year in addition to their own programming. To cover their overhead costs when they had the large studio, they invited other performers: Hawaiian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Philippine and other dancers. Ludin organized an Island Dance Festival for about eight years, Jones says. And Dances We Dance has worked repeatedly in artists-in-the-school programs as well. In addition, Jones has taught children and adults for many years. This year, she has enjoyed teaching an early-morning fundamentals of movement class for seniors - a great way to start the day, she says, her smile audible over the phone. Now she spends "only" four days a week teaching when in Hawaii (it had been six days a week until recently).

She seems like a perpetual motion machine, someone remarks. "I've influenced my husband" that way, Jones says. They had five months at home recently, and she took time off for one visit to the beach, while he made it there only twice. "He loves the sun, but he's been busy," is her explanation. A colleague told them, when they announced their plans to move there, "it's a copout to go to Hawaii," Jones says, but "this hasn't been copping out."

The fundraising Jones resisted in New York turned out to be necessary in Hawaii, although on a smaller scale. In 1979 when they opened their studio and expanded the company, they applied for and got a CETA grant. They were running Dances We Dance, and the studio, and still teaching at the university as well. Even for Jones, who seems nearly inexhaustible, that was an unduly stressful time. It resulted in some good memories as well, though, including her first time improvising on-stage. "I said, 'put me in a costume and get me some clouds,' and off I went," she remembers.

Another time, Ludin choreographed a dance, in connection with an exhibition of artwork by Stanley William Hayter - "an artist of the stature of Doris Humphrey" she was told - at the Honolulu Academy of the Arts. Images of water, clouds and earth from Hayter's lithographic prints were projected from multiple slide projectors all over a small theater. "It was a beautiful production, surrounded by these lithographs," Jones says. Unfortunately for the production, a critic complained in his review that he couldn't see over the heads in front of him at the Clare Booth Luce Theater. "It hurt the show - schoolchildren weren't bused in because of that article," she still recalls with sorrow.

Is there any record of this production? Jones thinks for a moment before she says, "No. It was in 1979 - probably no video was available at that time." She's been thorough at cataloguing their work. It is an old habit. She has recorded all the work she and Ludin have done at Dances We Dance - by year and alphabetized, Jones reports proudly. In fact, she started to save everything right at the beginning of her career. "Your name's in it - you did something - and you won't remember in ten years," if you don't keep a record, she explains. She says José Limón would call and ask her if she had something in the scrapbook about a time from the Limón Company's past. He didn't keep anything, Jones says, so he learned to rely on her.

Betty Jones. Photographer: Zachary Freyman.
Image courtesy the Limón Institute, New York City.

Now Jones has turned her archival attentions to Dances We Dance: a DVD project, now in post-production, covers much of its own nearly thirty-year history. Included in the DVD are their artist-in-schools programs, their guest soloists from around the world, the music, the studio work, specific performances of Dances We Dance in the studio, and footage of Jones teaching in the studio.

Jones has snapshots of all these times. Is she putting together a memoir? She demurs, but says her husband and she are talking about maybe taping some oral history this year after he finishes their retrospective on Dances We Dance. As of late May, Jones reported, he was preparing to add music, narration and credits to the completed footage. They are funding this retrospective with grants obtained, with some difficulty, over several years.

After ADF, Jones and Ludin traveled this summer to Europe, teaching at four locations in Lyon and Paris, and then vacationing in Switzerland before returning home to Hawaii. They have been teaching in Europe for quite a few years now, certifying teachers. In the early 1970's Jones and Ludin taught a lot in France. Now they are teaching students of those first students from the 70's. It's a nice, rich, sense of continuity, Jones says.

As eloquent as her own speaking and writing about dance can be, it's clear she is acutely sensitive to the nonverbal language of the body. "You dance because you don't speak, I suppose," she says at one point - "it's expressive." Learning, like dancing, must draw from words, from imitation, and from the dancer's own interior. "It's important to understand - you can't always just imitate. You imitate till buds start bursting of your own creativity." "You see the movement and [there's] no need to talk about muscles, hamstrings, etc. I still don't know many names of muscles." You learn "through the doing." "The love of the movement is certainly the main thing" - the reason she has stayed with this work for such an enduring and fruitful career.

Limón Company principal dancer Nina Watt remarks with admiration to Jones, "You seem to do what will be best for you," to which Jones replies, "I know that I'm being guided, as we all are …. It takes a lot of personal anguish out of yourself to realize that, to allow yourself to listen and be guided." Trying to sum it up, Jones stresses the importance of "retain[ing] integrity and quiet in yourself" - even when it's hard to do.

Jones recalls that José Limón would say to a group of student dancers, "One of you is going to be great." She says when she would hear Limón say that, she thought "José, you shouldn't do that - each of us can be great - we all have what we need to fulfill." We won't all be dancers, she says. "I like to do plumbing," for instance, she points out, remembering that she was "the toilet person" when she was a teenager on scholarship at Jacob's Pillow. There's no plan afoot for her to change her day job now, however.

Someone comments that Jones has been multitasking all along, ever since, still in high school, she went to New York City to make her fortune. "I never thought of myself as being ambitious, but it's true I must have been," she says. She started early with dance, and just kept going. "I never said, 'I want to be a star, I want to be great'. I just want to evolve - being a star is not the point. It's the joy of doing. And it has been a joy."

---

About the Authors:

Nancy K. Ford is a regular contributor to the Newsletter. Anne M Carley is its editor. They can both be contacted in care of the editor at mailto:editor@arts4all.com

---

Resources:

The authors wish to thank Betty Jones for agreeing to be interviewed, and the Limón Dance Company for their kind assistance with this article and for inviting Anne to attend Betty Jones's talk with Nina Watt at the Limón Institute on the evening of Tuesday 22 May 2001.

A companion piece by Norton Owen, Movable Parts - Betty Jones and Limón Technique, appears elsewhere in this issue of the Newsletter.

Newsletter readers with a high-speed Internet connection are invited to view an excerpt from a 1955 performance of The Moor's Pavane featuring Betty Jones and José Limón.

A DVD project about Jones, Ludin and Dances We Dance is forthcoming. It will be distributed commercially, Jones says, and will be available from the Library of the Performing Arts in New York City.

Betty Jones contributed a chapter, "Voices of the Body," to the book, edited by June Dunbar, José Limón: The Artist Re-Viewed, from Harwood Academic Publishers, Amsterdam, 2000.

For more on Jones and Ludin and their life in Hawaii, see Paula Durbin, "Keeper of the Flame," in Dance Teacher magazine, January 2001.

A videotape about Betty Jones's career as a dancer and teacher is available from American Dance Festival Video: Videotape #ADFV-8 Betty Jones,1993, VHS, color, sound, 60 minutes. Available from http://www.adfvideo.com/

A videocassette of three classic Limón dances, filmed in the 1950's for the Canadian Broadcasting Company is available from retail outlets and the Limón website: José Limón: Three Modern Dance Classics The Moor's Pavane, The Traitor, The Emperor Jones. Video Artists International, released 3/30/1999. UPC: 89948694175 Betty Jones is featured with José Limón in The Moor's Pavane.

José Limón : An Unfinished Memoir by José Limón, with introduction by Deborah Jowitt, foreword by Carla Maxwell, edited by Lynn Garafola, afterword by Norton Owen, is a compilation of Limón's unpublished writings. ISBN: 0819563749 University Press of New England 12/01/1998.

Born in Culiacan, Mexico in 1908, José Limón grew up in Arizona and California. He moved to New York City in 1928, as an art student but was taken with the possibilities of modern dance, studying with Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, and performing most of their works as well. After performing in concert work and on Broadway, in 1947 Limón formed his own company, which continues to this day. He taught at Juilliard's Dance Division for many years. He died in 1972.

Born in 1895 near Chicago, Doris Humphrey danced in New York City with Vernon and Irene Castle, and with Denishawn in Los Angeles and around the world. Later, she founded, with Charles Weidman, the American Modern Dance movement. She taught dance at Bennington College and in 1951 helped establish the dance department at the Juilliard School in New York City. She died in 1958.

The site for the American Dance Festival is http://www.americandancefestival.org