Rona Bailey (née Stephenson; 24 December 1914 – 7 September 2005) was a New Zealand drama and dance practitioner, educationalist and activist. Bailey was influential in emerging contemporary dance and professional theatre in New Zealand. She was an activist in the anti-apartheid movement in the 1970s and 1980s, and part of Treaty of Waitangi anti-racist education that started in the mid-1980s. Background and education Rona Bailey was born in Whanganui, New Zealand, on 24 December 1914. Her family moved to Gisborne where her family ran a shoe shop. She trained as a teacher in Auckland and Christchurch and afterwards she travelled to the United States in 1937 to study modern dance initially at the University of California at Berkeley and in 1938 she transferred to Columbia University in New York. While she was in the USA she was taught by Doris Humphry, Charles Weidman, Louis Horst and Lucille Czarnowski amongst others and saw many works of innovative choreographer Martha Graham. Bailey's second marriage was to Chip Bailey, they were married in 1945 and were active in supporting the waterside workers’ union during the 1951 New Zealand waterfront dispute. Rona and Chip Bailey were part of creating pro-union leaflets that were illegal under the National government's emergency regulations. Bailey's husband died young at age 42 from a brain tumour in 1963. Career When Rona Bailey returned to New Zealand after studying in the USA an early job of hers was as Physical Welfare Officer with the Department of Internal Affairs. This included incorporating modern dance techniques into the curriculum at Wellington Teachers’ Training College, which was influential in the physical education movement in New Zealand. In 1945 Bailey along with Philip and Olive Smithells founded the New Dance Group that ran for two years. The New Dance Group was modelled after the New York-based company of the same name and in the short time of operating introduced radical ideas of dance and art to many dancers and audiences. Their dance was described in an article by Marianne Schultz as 'modern, political and expressive'. Nola Millar was a long time colleague of Baileys, they were both part of Unity Theatre. In 1964 along with Anne Flannery they started the New Theatre School of Drama where Bailey taught movement. Following on from that was the birth of national drama training in New Zealand in 1970 when Nola Millar along with Bailey and others