Jeanne M. Rubbicco Robinson (March 30, 1948 – May 30, 2010) was an American-born Canadian

choreographer Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies (or their depictions) in which Motion (physics), motion or Visual appearance, form or both are specified. ''Choreography'' may also refer to the design itself. A chor ...

who co-wrote three

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

novels, ''The Stardance Saga'', with her husband

Spider Robinson Spider Robinson (born November 24, 1948) is an American-Canadian science fiction author. He has won a number of awards for his hard science fiction and humorous stories, including the Hugo Award 1977 and 1983, and another Hugo with his co-author ...

. ''Stardance'' won the Hugo Award and Nebula award for Best Novella in 1978 and 1977 respectively.

Biography

Jeanne Robinson was born in

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

to Dorothy and Peter Rubbicco. She studied dance at the

Boston Conservatory Boston Conservatory at Berklee (formerly The Boston Conservatory) is a private performing arts conservatory in Boston, Massachusetts. It grants undergraduate and graduate degrees in dance, music, and theater. Boston Conservatory was founded o ...

, and at the

Martha Graham Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991) was an American modern dancer, teacher and choreographer, whose style, the Graham technique, reshaped the dance world and is still taught in academies worldwide. Graham danced and taught for over s ...

Alvin Ailey Alvin Ailey Jr. (January 5, 1931 – December 1, 1989) was an American dancer, director, choreographer, and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT). He created AAADT and its affiliated Alvin Ailey American Dance Cent ...

, and

Erick Hawkins Frederick "Erick" Hawkins (April 23, 1909November 23, 1994) was an American modern-dance choreographer and dancer. Early life Frederick Hawkins was born in Trinidad, Colorado, on April 23, 1909. He majored in Greek civilization at Harvard Univ ...

schools. She performed with the Beverly Brown Dance Ensemble in New York City. Robinson was briefly married to Daniel Corrigan with whom she joined the

back-to-the-land movement A back-to-the-land movement is any of various agrarianism, agrarian movements across different historical periods. The common thread is a call for people to take up smallholding and to grow food from the land with an emphasis on a greater degree o ...

and began to practice Buddhism. She married fellow science-fiction writer

in 1975 and they had one daughter, Terri Luanna who died in 2014. She moved to Nova Scotia, serving as the artistic director of the Nova Dance Theatre in

Halifax, Nova Scotia Halifax is the capital and most populous municipality of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Nova Scotia, and the most populous municipality in Atlantic Canada. As of 2024, it is estimated that the population of the H ...

, where she choreographed more than thirty original works. In 1985 the

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is the Canadian Public broadcasting, public broadcaster for both radio and television. It is a Crown corporation that serves as the national public broadcaster, with its E ...

's hour-long coverage of the Dance in Canada Gala spent twenty minutes showing the performance of Robinson’s work, FICTION. Her plans to establish the art form of free-fall dance, outlined in the Stardance trilogy, were cut short by the loss of

space shuttle Challenger Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' (OV-099) was a Space Shuttle orbiter manufactured by Rockwell International and operated by NASA. Named after HMS Challenger (1858), the commanding ship of a Challenger expedition, nineteenth-century scientific exp ...

and cancellation of the Teacher in Space Project in 1986, although footage of her dancing on a

parabolic flight A reduced-gravity aircraft is a type of fixed-wing aircraft that provides brief near-weightless environments for training astronauts, conducting research, and making gravity-free movie shots. Versions of such airplanes were operated by the NA ...

in 2007 survives. In 1987 she closed her dance company due to trouble obtaining grants and moved to British Columbia with her family. In 2006 she and her husband were invited by the First Lady to speak at the National Book Festival in Washington, DC. In addition to her dance and writing careers, Robinson was an active practitioner of Sōtō Zen Buddhism, a lay-ordained Buddhist monk. She spoke of her work as involving "moving koans, visual parables" but did not overtly mention Buddhism in her work until her work Zenki-zu which she created for Vancouver's Women in View festival in 1992. Along with her husband, she was awarded the

Inkpot Award The Inkpot Award is an honor bestowed annually since 1974 by Comic-Con International. It is given to professionals in the fields of comic books, comic strips, animation, science fiction, and related areas of popular culture, at Comic-Con Internati ...

in 2001. She was diagnosed with biliary tract cancer in February 2009 and began undergoing numerous treatments. She died, age 62, on May 30, 2010 and is buried in Saint Peters Cemetery in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

References

External links

*
Stardance official movie website (archived 13 January 2016)

Stardance movie blog
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Robinson, Jeanne Place of death missing 1948 births 2010 deaths 20th-century Canadian novelists 20th-century American educators 20th-century Canadian women writers 21st-century Canadian novelists 21st-century Canadian women writers 21st-century Canadian educators American expatriate writers in Canada Canadian artistic directors Boston Conservatory at Berklee alumni Canadian choreographers Canadian educators Canadian female dancers Canadian science fiction writers Canadian women novelists Deaths from cancer in Nova Scotia American dance teachers Deaths from bladder cancer in Canada Educators from Massachusetts Educators from New York City Hugo Award–winning writers Nebula Award winners Canadian women science fiction and fantasy writers Writers from Boston Writers from New York City Writers from Halifax, Nova Scotia 20th-century American women educators 21st-century American women educators 21st-century American educators Canadian women choreographers Inkpot Award winners 21st-century Canadian women educators 20th-century Canadian women educators 20th-century Canadian educators Novelists from Nova Scotia

Biography

See also

References

External links