Dorothy (Dottie) Duddridge, founder of Orange Coast College’s highly acclaimed Dance department, passed away this week. She would have been 95 years old in June.
Duddridge spent 24 years at OCC, where she coached the women’s tennis team from 1960 to 1975, and founded the school’s dance program in 1962, spending two decades building it into a national model.
Duddridge began her service before women’s sports were considered “official.” During her years at OCC, she helped build and grow the Women’s Athletic Association (WAA), and guided the Pirates to several WAA women’s tennis titles. Along with OCC Hall-of-Famer Sue Brown, Duddridge was a catalyst for restructuring the College’s athletic division as a result of Title IX.
“She was a force of nature, with incredible vitality, warmth, self-deprecating humor, and love for OCC and the Dance Department that she founded 60-plus years ago,” says retired Dance faculty Linda Sohl-Ellison. “Long after her retirement Dottie attended almost every annual OCC Dance Department concert up until the pandemic. She loved dance and was receptive to all styles, especially if the choreography was inventive.
I feel grateful to have been hired at OCC by Dottie in 1978, and to have been mentored by her. She was a kind, caring, intuitive woman, a positive, passionate and encouraging ‘boss,’ and she brought out the best in her faculty and students.”
A savvy “mover and shaker,” Duddridge brought renowned historic dance figures to OCC’s campus to teach and/or perform, including Ruth St. Denis, Charles Weidman, Arthur Mitchell, Alwin Nikolais, Murray Louis, and others. “She booked a Cambodian Dance Company that was such an incredibly rare booking, and advertised nationwide, that she oversold the theatre and had to seat the overflow on both sides of the stage, in the wings and on the stage apron at the Robert B. Moore Theater,” recounts Sohl-Ellison.
“I am so glad that I had a long conversation with Dottie about 3-4 weeks ago. I was able to remind her how much we all appreciate her hard work to set a solid foundation and vision for our OCC dance program, and for her many gestures during her career and lifetime to support dancers, teachers, choreographers, dance companies and all forms of dance in Southern California,” says Sohl-Ellison.
After her retirement in 1984, the Dottie Duddridge Scholarship was created in her honor at OCC, and is still awarded today.