Victoria Santa Cruz

Victoria Eugenia Santa Cruz Gamarra (27 October 1922 – August 30, 2014) was an Afro-Peruvian choreographer, composer and activist.

Victoria Santa Cruz would go on to be called "the mother of Afro Peruvian dance and theatre."

Santa Cruz founded Cumanana, a theater company, Nicomedes in 1958 and co-managed it until 1961.

Along with her brother, Nicomedes Santa Cruz, she is credited as significant in a revival of Afro-Peruvian culture in the 1960s and 1970s.

They both came from a long-line of artists and intellectuals.

For her part she is said to have had "Afrocentrism" influences in her view of dance trying to discover "ancestral memory" of African forms.

She helped to found the Cumanana company.

Santa Cruz was born eighth of ten children in Lima, Peru.

Her father was Nicomedes Santa Cruz Aparicio and her mother was Victoria Gamarra.

Her mother spoke only Spanish and loved to dance.

Her younger brother Nicomedes Santa Cruz became a famous poet who she often performed with.

At an early age, Victoria Santa Cruz was introduced to the fine arts, having come from a household full of black artists and musicians.

One of her earliest influences were her parents whom she first learned about Afro-Peruvian dance (marinera and other criollo dances) as well as poetry and music.

This early on exposure to the fine arts led Victoria Santa Cruz to create and participate in musicals like Malató, which would later on embody one of her lifelong goals of "self-discovery and recuperation of culture based on internal rhythm and what she called ancestral memory."

Through this goal, Victoria sought to "awaken black consciousness and pride" in the Afro-Peruvian culture.

Her passion for dance and musical composition would continue to influence her throughout her life as she went on to study in Paris.

In an interview with Marcus D. Jones, Santa Cruz describes this moment in her childhood where she first experiences "sufferance."

In this scene, she describes how her friends rejected her because of her African features.

At the age of five when she was with her group of friends, a new blonde and white girl in her neighborhood told them: “If the black girl wants to play with us, I’ll go”.

She makes a direct reference to this in her famous poem, Me gritaron negra.

Out of this experience, the artist begins her long-lived exploration of self and recuperation.

In this same interview, the artist demonstrates some of the internal dialogue that prompts her desire for self-discovery from a very young age, asking "What am I doing? What is to be black? What is to be white?"

In addition to this, Santa Cruz was quoted as saying "obstacles play an important role" in regards to the racism she experienced in her lifetime.

Victoria Santa Cruz first attended the Université du Théâtre des Nations École Supérieur des Études Chorégraphiques at the age of 42 (1961-1965), where she studied theater and choreography "with such distinguished professors as the actor Jean-Louis Barrault, the playwright Eugène Ionesco, and the choreographer Maurice Béjart."

Malato (1961) - Musical/Play

Malato is a three act musical which showcased the relationship between the enslaved and their oppressor that was removed from the Pervian history of slavery.

The play was written, choreographed, and staged by Santa Cruz.

While studying at the university in Paris, Cruz continued to demonstrate her interest to reclaim the loss of her cultural and ancestral memory by visiting Africa for the first time and creating the ballet La muñeca negra (The black doll, 1965)

In 1966, Victoria Santa Cruz founded the group Teatro y Danzas del Perú, which were group performances led by Cruz and other prominent Afro-Peruvian dancers that played a role in reclaiming lost heritages.

Traditional, cultural, music played in the background as the dancers performed their pieces individually and as a group.

The importance of these performances highlights the "recovery, creation, and recreation" of dying rhythms such as "the zamacueca, the landau and the alcatraz".

Her artistic career as a performer, choreographer, and composer took her to new heights like being televised on Peruvian Television and being visited on her international tours.

But the biggest international milestone was perhaps the group's performance at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

Recreations of such lost rhythms earned her a position amongst the Revolutionary Government of the Peruvian Military.

Cruz was "appointed director of the newly established Escuela Nacional de Folklore" in 1969 and director of "the Conjunto Nacional de Folklore" in 1973.

She continued touring with the group through big nations like the United States, Canada, and Western Europe.

Cumanana (1970) - song

Cumanana (Kumanana) [1970] is the name of one of her more prominent songs because it evokes her past in the band with her brother Nicomedes.

The term, as described by Victoria Santa Cruz, means "mix of Spanish and black things," which makes reference to her identity.

Other accomplishments include her publication of the magazine Folklore, in which she describes the Conjunto's goal to "compile, preserve, research, and disseminate national folklore in the form of dance, music, songs, and musical instruments", and her position as a professor at Carnegie Mellon University (1982-1999).