Jeraldyne Blunden

Linden Center

At age 19, Blunden became the director of dance classes at the Linden Center. Blunden made sure her students were able to gain a broad range of experiences, including summer opportunities and scholarships to attend schools such as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center (later Ailey School), Dance Theatre of Harlem, and the American Dance Festival.^[1] Under her leadership, the student population soon outgrew the Linden Center's capacity and the Schwartz School of Dance had to move to the basement of St. Margaret's church on McCall and Home Avenues in Dayton.^{[citation needed]}

Jeraldyne's School of Dance

In 1963, Blunden chartered her own dance school named Jeraldyne's School of Dance, beginning a new era of opportunity.^{[citation needed]}

Blunden's School of Dance was founded on the premise that students should have a place to learn, train, and perform before moving on to bigger city stages. To provide high caliber dance training in Dayton, Blunden continued to train and perform across the country, bringing back knowledge and experience to the Midwest. Her experiences included performances and classes at American Dance Festival, Antioch Summer Theatre, Connecticut Dance Theatre Workshop, Dance Theatre of Harlem, and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center.^{[citation needed]}

Dayton Contemporary Dance Company

In 1968, Blunden founded her own dance company, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, to create more opportunity for her students to perform.^[2][3] While Blunden saw the obstacle of adding a second dance company in a city as small as Dayton, she pursued her dream and began to handpick dancers from her dance school for the company. By 1972, the dance company had twelve female company members, including Blunden's daughter, Debbie Blunden-Diggs.

Blunden's new company provided the opportunity for her to cultivate her choreographic talent through the creation of new works for her company. The performance of her ballet Flite in 1973 earned her company the honor of being the first African-American group to gain membership to the Northeast Regional Ballet Association Festival.

The year 1976 marked the company's first large-scale performance and the first time the dancers were paid for a performance. They performed Black Snow, a collaboration with acclaimed composer Roy Meriwether at Memorial Hall in front of a sold-out audience.^{[citation needed]}

Over the years, Blunden shaped the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company as a repertory company, inviting many guest artists to create pieces for her dancers. Blunden had the foresight to acquire works by young, budding choreographers such as Ulysses Dove.^{[citation needed]}

This also led her to cultivate young talent such as Dwight Rhoden, who founded his own company and became one of the country's most well-known dance artists. Seeing promise in both Kevin Ward, one of her dancers, and Debbie Blunden-Diggs, Blunden primed them to be her successors and created a space for Kevin Ward as director of the company's apprenticeship dance corps, DCDC2, established as the pre-professional wing of her rising touring company. Blunden fell ill in 1990, naming Kevin Ward the Associate Artistic Director of the company and Debbie Blunden-Diggs the new Director of DCDC2.^[1]

Faculty

Blunden taught dance at Ohio State University, Wright State University, the University of Toledo, Wilberforce University, and the Miami University of Ohio.^[2]