La Meri and the World of Dance

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This essay focuses on the dancer, professor and writer, Russell Meriwether Hughes (1898- 1988), better known as La Meri. Throughout her career, she practiced dance from a wide variety of cultures long before such cultural plurality was embraced by the dance community or before critics gave their attention to concepts and problems stemming from the multiculturalism of dance. La Meri presented her international repertoire at scenarios in the United States, Latin America, Europe and Asia. She also gave classes and published texts on her concepts, methodology and proposals with regard to multi-regional dance. Her work exhibits the progressive inter-culturalism that characterized Western dance for several centuries. In the first part of this work, the author offers a succinct panorama of the historical-cultural context in which La Meri worked, later examining the biography and work of this outstanding dancer. In the third section, she discusses the theory and pedagogic principles established in the work, Total Education in Ethnic Dance (1977). Finally, in the last part, she evaluates the work of La Meri in relation to its importance for modern dance theory.