Dancer among cultures
Janka Rudzka, who changed her name to Yanka after moving to Brazil, was born in Poland in 1916. She took dance lessons from Ruth Sorel and George Groke, the apprentices of Mary Wigman, the pioneer of expressionist dance. She later attended classes led by Harald Kreutzberg in Switzerland. She also lived in London, Italy, and Argentina. In the early 1950s, she was invited to Brazil. The thirteen years she spent there were crucial for her artistic career. In 1952, she arrived in São Paulo at the invitation of Pietro Maria Bardi in order to launch one of the first contemporary dance courses at the Museum of Art (founded by Bardi). She also taught the dramaturgy of the body to the actors of the Theatre School, which to this day belongs to the exclusive São Paulo University, and also cooperated with other cultural institutions. Lia Robatto, the artist's collaborator and assistant for many years, portrayed Rudzka as follows:
A woman with a strong, noticeable presence. A beauty with unruly tumbling blonde curls, piercing blue eyes, infectious laughter. A person with a hot temper, unpredictable, easily flying into a rage when someone contradicted her, yet always good to people. She was elegant and agile, although her body was not as lean and muscular as those of classical ballet dancers. She was always extremely demanding at work, but at the same time critical of the burdensome, conventional teaching systems and choreographic dogmas. She was against the formal rigidness of classical dance and technical excellence which lacked meaning. In dance, she strived for natural movement of the body. She was economical in stage movement, though her choreographies were exciting and creative.
Yanka Rudzka, photo: Sílvio Robatto / courtesy of the artist's assistant Lia Robatto The dancer was influential to the Brazilian dance scene already at that stage, but her true breakthrough came when she moved to Salvador. During the 1950s, Brazilian arts and culture were blossoming. Edgar Santos, the rector of the Federal University of Bahia at the time, introduced a number of reforms aimed at integrating Salvador into the wider contemporary culture loop. In the 1950s, four new art departments were opened at the university: School of Visual Arts, Music Academy, Theatre School, and, last but not least, Dance School. Artistic development was further enhanced with the foundation of other institutions: Centro de Estudos Afro Orientais (Centre for Afro-Oriental Studies), headed by Professor Agostinho da Silva, and the Museum of Religious Arts, designed and led by Lina Bo Bardi. In no time, these modern institutions gained recognition within the country and abroad. They were conducted by distinguished members of the art and culture world at that time, such as the architect Lina Bobardi, prominent theatre director Eros Martim Gonçalves, or the musician Hans Joachim Koellreutter. The latter convinced the programme board of the University and rector Santos to hire Janka Rudzka as the director of the UFBA's Dance School.
Rudzka spent a little over three years in Salvador, between 1956 and 1959. During that time, she managed to create the foundations of the Dance School at UFBA. She had impact not only on the University's environment, but also on the city's art circles. Rudzka's ideas started spreading to other cultural centres in the country. Today, it could be said that her initiatives in Salvador essentially facilitated the development of professional dance in Brazil.
Author: Maciej Różalski, May 2015, transl. Ania Micińska, June 2015; updated May 2016 (ND).
