Marian Hannah Winter

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Marian Hannah Winter
A young white woman in profile
Marian Hannah Winter, from a 1939 newspaper
BornMarch 20, 1910
New York City
DiedDecember 15, 1981
Paris, France
OccupationDance historian

Marian Hannah Winter (March 20, 1910 – December 15, 1981) was an American musicologist and dance historian. She has been called one of "the [two] foremost names in American dance history."[1]

Early life and education[edit]

Winter was born in New York City, the daughter of Ernest Winter and Rose Rosenbluth Winter. Her father and maternal grandparents were all immigrants from central Europe; her mother was a policewoman[2] who collected theatrical sketches.[3]

She attended Radcliffe College.[4][5]

Career[edit]

In 1939, Winter worked for the Federal Music Project in New York City, and assembled an exhibit on "Art Scores for Music" at the Brooklyn Museum,[6] called "the first international exhibition of scores for cabaret and concert hall music".[7]

In the 1940s, dance historian Lincoln Kirstein solicited Winter to write for Dance Index, a magazine he headed. In contrast to Kirstein's analytical or polemical approach to history, Winter was more of an archivist.[1] One of Winter's most influential works is "Juba and American Minstrelsy", published in 1947.[8] The article sketches the life of Master Juba, a black American dancer active in the mid-19th century. Winter argues that Juba introduced African elements to American dance forms and, in the process, created a new, distinctly American style. The article thus attempts to "[re-appropriate] for black culture what is otherwise generally seen as racist theft."[9]

Winter moved to France in her later years, where she worked as a translator and collected art and ephemera related to fairs and festivals.[3] There, she published The Theater of the Marvels in both English- and French-language editions.[10][11] She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974.[12] Of her 1974 book, The Pre-Romantic Ballet, one reviewer said that "Some historians have an ability to write about the remote past as if they were giving a first-hand account of personal experience. Marian Hannah Winter is one of them."[13]

Publications[edit]

  • "American Theatrical Dancing from 1750 to 1800" (1938)[14]
  • Art Scores for Music (1939)
  • "The Function of Music in Sound Film" (1941)[15]
  • "Augusta Maywood" (1943)[16]
  • "Juba and American Minstrelsy" (1947)[17]
  • The Theater of the Marvels (1964, with a preface by Marcel Marceau)[10]
  • The Pre-Romantic ballet (1974)[18]

Personal life and legacy[edit]

Winter used a wheelchair in her later years, to manage the effects of a progressive neurological condition.[3] She died in Paris.[1] There is a collection of her papers, including correspondence, notebooks, and photographs, at the Houghton Library, Harvard University.[19] The Marian Hannah Winter Professorship in Theatre and Dance Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison was named in her memory. In 1985, items from her collection of fairground memorabilia were displayed at the Pusey Library in Cambridge.[3]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ a b c Kisselgoff, Anna (February 2, 1986). "Dance View; Dance History Is Mostly a European Affair", The New York Times. Accessed March 28, 2008.
  2. ^ "Woman Writer Injured in Crash". Daily News. 1942-08-27. p. 19. Retrieved 2023-03-24 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ^ a b c d Cash, Debra (1985-11-28). "The marvelous world of fairground art". The Boston Globe. p. 158. Retrieved 2023-03-24 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. ^ "In Response to". The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 1939-04-08. p. 18. Retrieved 2023-03-24 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. ^ Radcliffe College, Alumnae Directory (1934): 281, lists Winter as a student from 1927 to 1929, and an ex-member of the class of 1931, but not as a graduate.
  6. ^ "Art and Music". Daily News. 1939-01-24. p. 409. Retrieved 2023-03-24 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ^ "Forgotten Art Revived in Museum Exhibit". The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 1939-01-14. p. 9. Retrieved 2023-03-24 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ^ Sullivan, John Jeremiah (Winter 2019). "Talking Drums". Oxford American. Retrieved 2023-03-24.
  9. ^ Johnson, Stephen (1999). "Past the Documents, to the Dance: The Witness to Juba in 1848", on The Juba Project. Originally published in The Performance Text. Legal Press. Online version accessed March 28, 2008.
  10. ^ a b Winter, Marian Hannah. The Theatre of Marvels. New York: B. Blom, 1964.
  11. ^ Wagner, David F. (1965-10-10). "Wicked Genies, Fantastic Plots Vividly Recalled". The Post-Crescent. p. 84. Retrieved 2023-03-24 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. ^ "Marian Hannah Winter". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 2023-03-24.
  13. ^ Kriegsman, Alan M. (1976-11-25). "Books reflect new interest in the dances". The Honolulu Advertiser. p. 112. Retrieved 2023-03-24 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. ^ Winter, Marian Hannah (1938). "American Theatrical Dancing from 1750 to 1800". The Musical Quarterly. XXIV (1): 58–73. doi:10.1093/mq/xxiv.1.58. ISSN 0027-4631.
  15. ^ Winter, Marian Hannah (1941). "The Function of Music in Sound Film". The Musical Quarterly. 27 (2): 146–164. doi:10.1093/mq/XXVII.2.146. ISSN 0027-4631. JSTOR 739462.
  16. ^ Augusta Maywood. Ballet Society. 1943.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  17. ^ Winter, Marian Hannah. Juba and American Minstrelsy. Dance Index-Ballet Caravan, 1947.
  18. ^ Winter, Marian Hannah (1974). The pre-Romantic ballet. London: Pitman. ISBN 0-273-00334-8. OCLC 1910006.
  19. ^ "Collection: Marian Hannah Winter papers". Houghton Library, Harvard University. Retrieved 2023-03-24.
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