Rosalie Mae Jones

Rosalie Mae Jones, known professionally as Daystar, is a dancer, choreographer, educator and founder and artistic director of DAYSTAR: Contemporary Dance-Drama of Indian America.

Early life and education

Rosalie Mae (in some sources May) Jones was born on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana in 1941. She was raised off the reserve in the town of Cut Bank, studied ballet and piano as a child, and was encouraged by her parents to pursue higher education. She attended Fort Wright College, where she studied piano, and a class in Modern Dance led by Hanya Holm, which changed the course of her studies. She would later complete a master's degree in dance from the University of Utah. While at Utah, she studied under Joan Woodbury and Shirley Ririe, and met her life-long mentor, Barry Lynn. In 1969, she attended Juilliard under a scholarship for young Native American artists and studied under José Limón, Bertram Ross, Alfredo Corvino, and Reid Gilbert.

Career

While studying for her master's degree at the University of Utah, Jones was hired by the Institute of American Indian Arts to produce what would become "Sipapu: A Drama of Authentic Dance and Chants of Indian America" which featured thirty Modern dancers and two hundred traditional dancers from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Later, at Juilliard, her studies involved working with fellow student Cordell Morsette and members of the Flandreau Indian High School in South Dakota to produce "The Gift of the Pipe" a re-telling of the story of White Buffalo Calf Woman. Jones founded the dance company Daystar: Contemporary Dance-Drama of Indian America in 1982.