Jeanne Robinson
Jeanne Robinson was an American dancer and choreographer born on March 30, 1948, in Boston, Massachusetts. She showcased her talent from a young age, performing on stage by five and choreographing by ten. Robinson studied at esteemed institutions like the Boston Conservatory and the American Dance Festival, where she honed her craft under prominent figures in modern dance. During the 1960s, she embraced a back-to-the-land movement in Nova Scotia and adopted Zen Buddhism, which influenced her artistic vision, leading her to conceptualize her dance as philosophical expressions in motion.
Alongside her husband, science fiction author Spider Robinson, she co-created the concept of zero-gravity dancing for the novel "Stardance." Despite her uncredited contributions to the original work, their collaboration inspired sequels and captured the imagination of the sci-fi community, even leading to an opportunity for her to dance in space with NASA. However, the tragic Challenger disaster in 1986 thwarted those ambitions. By the late 1980s, Robinson transitioned away from the dance scene due to funding challenges, ultimately closing her dance company in 1987. She and her family then shifted their focus entirely to writing, preserving the legacy of her dance company through fictional representation in their works.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Jeanne Robinson
Author
- Born: March 30, 1948
- Birthplace: Boston, Massachusetts
- Died: May 30, 2010
Biography
Jeanne Robinson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 30, 1948, and began performing on stage at the tender age of five. A child prodigy, she was choreographing at ten and by fifteen she had developed sufficient sophistication and mastery to teach. Just as many people might be becoming satisfied with their accomplishments, she discovered modern dance, and suddenly she saw a completely new way of looking at dance as an art form.
Robinson studied at a number of prestigious academies of dance, including the Boston Conservatory, the Toronto Dance Theatre, and the American Dance Festival. She studied under Beverly Brown, principal dancer of the Erick Hawkins school, and has been privileged to perform in their troupe. During the social upheavals of the 1960’s, she went to Nova Scotia as part of a back-to-the-land movement, and converted to Zen Buddhism. She has described her dance as a series of koans (Zen Buddhist philosophical puzzles) in motion, although only in relatively late works did she permit overt references to Buddhist thought.
As the wife of science fiction writer Spider Robinson, she developed the concept of zero-gravity dancing for the novel Stardance, which they wrote together. However, publishing realities of the time led to her contribution being uncredited, although two sequels appeared under both their names. Their work so captured the imagination of the science-fiction community that in 1980, NASA offered her the opportunity to make her concepts reality and dance in space aboard the Space Shuttle, but those plans came to a fiery end with the 1986 explosion of the Challenger, which led to the cancellation of the Civilians in Space program.
By the close of the 1980’s, she had reached an age at which her professional dance career was coming to a close, and she was weary of continual battles over funding with various government bodies who did not know how to deal with her avant- garde dance troupe. In 1987, she closed the dance company for good. She and Spider then moved to Vancouver with their daughter Terri Luanna and concentrated entirely on writing science fiction. One of her Stardance sequels contained a dance troupe with the name of her former troupe, the Nova Dance Company, so although it may have ceased to exist in life, it lives on in fiction.