Eleo Pomare, 70

"The international dance community mourns the death of Master Choreographer Eleo Pomare who passed on Friday, August 8, 2008 after an extended illness. Mr. Pomare was 70 years old.

"Mr. Pomare’s choreographic works were a reflection of his international experiences, a broad humanistic perspective, and a commitment to social change. In a review written in The New York Times on August 4, 1991, Jennifer Dunning wrote that Mr. Pomare “carved a niche for himself over his 30 years in modern dance as a choreographer and performer with a singular gift for taut, intensely focused work.”

"In March 1996 Mr. Pomare’s Raft, a work featuring three female figures symbolizing the rape of Haiti’s refugees, was performed at the Museum of Modern Art—the first time dance was shown there. Also in the nineties, Mr. Pomare choreographed Post Card From Soweto after a trip to South Africa.

"Three of Mr. Pomare’s outstanding works were reconstructed to document them as classics of “The Black Tradition in American Modern Dance,” a project of the American Dance Festival. These pieces are: Las Desenamoradas, a work inspired by Garcia Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba; Blues for the Jungle, Mr. Pomare’s classic exploration of the black rebellions in the sixties; and Missa Luba, a dance pageant set to a Congolese version of the Catholic Mass. All three works were performed at the American Dance Festival at Duke University—Blues for the Jungle in 1989 and Missa Luba in 1990. Las Desenamoradas was performed in 1988 and most recently in June 2008 when the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company performed this powerful work to critical acclaim.

"In addition to maintaining his own company, the Eleo Pomare Dance Company, Mr. Pomare choreographed works for the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble, the Maryland Ballet Company, the Cleo Parker-Robinson Dance Company (Denver), the Alpha and Omega Dance Company, the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, the Cincinnati Ballet, Philadanco, the National Ballet of Holland, Balletinstituttet (Oslo, Norway), the Australian Contemporary Dance Company, the Ballet Palacio das Artes (Belo Horizonte, Brazil), and the Grace Hsiao Dance Theatre of Taipei, Taiwan.

"Mr. Pomare was invited to Adelaide, Australia as guest choreographer for the 1994 spring term at Adelaide’s Centre for the Performing Arts. There he choreographed a major work entitled A Horse Named Dancer. He returned to Australia in the fall of 1995 as the featured teacher and choreographer at the Mirramu Dance Festival near Canberra.

"In the fall of 2004 Mr. Pomare was commissioned to create a work honoring Taiwan’s national hero, Nylon Cheng, on the Grace Hsiao Dance Theatre. The company then toured Taiwan presenting the new work as well as other Pomare works. In 2005 Mr. Pomare worked with young dancers at Dance Immersion of Toronto, Canada on a new work about Carribbean immigration to North American cities.

"Mr. Pomare was a frequent lecturer on modern dance, black artists and their artistic heritage, presenting at the Tisch School for the Arts (New York University), the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Brooklyn Museum, the International Conference of Blacks in Dance and at numerous colleges and universities. He was invited to lecture at a symposium sponsored by the French Ministry of Culture in Paris in 2008. He has also been invited to present and tour two of his solo works, Hex and Roots throughout France.

"Mr. Pomare’s life and works have been written about in numerous publications including: Black Dance from 1619 to Today by Lynne Fauley Emery, Caribbean Dance from Abakua to Zouk edited by Susanna Sloat, African-American Concert Dance by John O. Perpener, III, and Masters of Movement: Portraits of America’s Great Choreographers by Rose Eichenbaum. In addition, Mr. Pomare’s artistry was featured on the three-part PBS Dance in America documentary film, Free to Dance.

"His numerous awards included the Kennedy Center Masters of African-American Choreography (2005), the James Baldwin Award (2004), the New Voices of Harlem Award for Artistic Achievement (1988), the International Conference of Blacks in Dance Outstanding Achievements in Dance Award (1994), and the Key to the City of Messina, Italy (1986). David Dinkins declared January 7, 1987 “Eleo Pomare Day” for New York City in honor of Mr. Pomare’s contributions to the cultural life of New York City. In 2007, Mr. Pomare was added to the archives of The History Makers.

"Mr. Pomare was born in Colombia, South America on October 20, 1937 and arrived in New York at the age of 10. After graduating from New York City’s High School of the Performing Arts in 1953, he formed his first dance company. A John Hay Whitney Fellowship took him to Europe in 1962 where he studied, danced, choreographed and formed a second company which toured Germany, Holland, Sweden and Norway. In 1964 he returned to the United States, revived and expanded his original American dance company which has since toured throughout the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, the West Indies, Australia, Spain, and Italy. His company performed at numerous venues including: Broadway’s ANTA Theatre, Washington’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, New York’s City Center, Florence Gould Hall, and the Joyce Theater, Montreal’s Theatre Maisonneuve, the Adelaide Festival of Arts in Australia.

"The Board of Directors of the Eleo Pomare Dance Company requests that donations be made to the Eleo Pomare Dance Company, Inc. at 325 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011 to support the documentation of the on-going legacy of Mr. Pomare’s artistic achievement."