Lavinia Williams (1916–July 19,1989), who sometimes went by the married name Lavinia Williams Yarborough, was an African-American dancer and dance educator who founded national schools of dance in several Caribbean countries.
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Biography
Lavinia Williams was born in Philadelphia, grew up in Virginia, and studied in New York City after high school, where she joined the American Negro Ballet, beginning her career in a number of dance companies and stage productions. Her work included classical ballet, folk, modern, musicals, and, most importantly, Caribbean dance, which she mastered in the 1940s while working with Katherine Dunham. She spent nearly the entirety of the years from 1953 through the late 1980s teaching dance and founding and developing national schools of dance in Haiti, Guyana, and the Bahamas. She spent the last years of her life teaching in New York City, but finally died of a heart attack in Port-au-Prince, although Beryl Campbell reported it as "some kind of food poisoning".[1]
Marriages and children
Williams married Léon Theremin in the middle 1930s. In 1938, Theremin suddenly returned to the Soviet Union, where he was imprisoned and later sent to a labor camp.[1] Williams never saw him again. She married Shannon Yarborough in the late 1940s. Their daughter, Sara Yarborough-Smith, followed in her mother's footsteps as a professional dancer.
Featured in
- Aschenbrenner, Joyce. Katherine Dunham: reflections on the social and political contexts of Afro-American dance. New York: CORD: 1981.
Notes
- ^ a b Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey, written, directed and produced by Steven M. Martin. Orion/MGM, 1994: 26mins Beryl Campbell reports Lavinia's call; 50mins Lydia Kavina reports Stalin's award; 51mins Beryl reports Lavinia's food poisoning
References
- Allen, Zita. Thirteen WNET New York. "Lavinia Williams." Dance In America: Free To Dance web companion. Online.
- The New York Times. "Lavinia Williams Service." November 8, 1989. Online.
- Kisselgoff, Anna. The New York Times. "Dance: For Alvin Ailey, 25th Anniversary Gala." December 2, 1983. Online.
- Glinsky, Albert (2000). Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-02582-2.
