AUTOGRAPH LETTER TO EDUCATOR HAROLD RUGG SIGNED BY MODERN DANCE CHOREOGRAPHER AND AVANT-GARDE THEATER DIRECTOR JEAN ERDMAN.

Erdman writes regretting that she is unable to attend Rugg's Wednesday Luncheon Forums at Teachers College of Columbia University. "I wish that I could manage to control my activities so that I would be free to participate in such interesting-sounding gatherings. When I talked with Mr. [Nik] Krevitsky a few weeks ago, I thought that my schedule would allow me to come, but since then I have discovered that Wednesdays must needs be used up in rehearsals with my dance company...."

The two greatest influences on dancer and choreographer Jean Erdman [b. 1916] were Joseph Campbell and Martha Graham. She married Campbell in 1938 and became a principal dancer in Martha Graham's company. She later toured the U.S. with her own company, and as a solo artist toured India and Japan, the first dancer to do so since World War II. In 1962 she began what was to become her best-known work, "The Coach with Six Insides", an adaptation of James Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake'".

Harold Rugg [1886-1960] was a professor of education at Teachers College of Columbia University. A civil engineer, he became interested in how students learn and pursued a doctorate in education. He was responsible for producing the first series of school textbooks from 1929 until the 1940s.