Carola Goya and Matteo papers

1944-2000 [bulk 1954-1994]

Carola Goya was born Carola Goya Weller in New York City in 1906. A daughter of Samuel Weller, a personal representative of several New York actors, she studied ballet with Michel Fokine at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School. By 1924, she was receiving excellent notices for her dance recitals in New York City. One of her grandmothers was Spanish, and in the 1920s, she went to Seville, Spain, to learn Spanish dancing from the renowned teacher Manuel de Castillo Otero. Her training as a classical ballet dancer enabled her to learn the many regional dances relatively quickly, and she became an acknowledged authority on Spanish dance. Goya made her debut as a Spanish dancer in New York City in 1927, and performed at the White House in 1936, one of the first dancers to do so. Together with her sister, the harpist Beatrice Burford, she travelled throughout the United States, Canada and South America. She was renowned for her ability to choreograph traditional Spanish dances to music by Spanish composers such as Isaac Albeniz and Enrique Granados. She joined the Jose Greco Company after World War II as a principal dancer, and performed with them from 1947 to 1951. She worked with Matteo, giving concerts on the castanets, beginning in 1953. They formed their dance partnership in 1954 with "A World of Dance," which was performed worldwide until the 1970s; Goya frequently designed her own costumes to ensure their authenticity. They married in 1974. With Matteo, she taught at Jacob's Pillow, and established the Foundation for Ethnic Dance, a not-for-profit corporation based in New York City. Carola Goya died May 13, 1994.

Matteo was born Matteo Marcellus Vittucci in Utica, New York, in 1919. The youngest of four sons of Italian immigrant parents, he was a posthumous child; his father, also named Matteo, died three months before his birth. He followed his older brothers to Cornell University, received his B.S. in anthropology, and then received his M.S. from Springfield College. He joined the Metropolitan Opera ballet as a soloist in 1947, and danced with the Opera until 1951. He became interested in ethnic dance as a professional in 1949, studied with La Meri until 1952, made his solo debut as an ethnic dancer in 1953, and formed his dance partnership with Carola Goya the following year. He studied Spanish dance, made four trips to India to study Indian dance, and altogether studied the dances of sixty countries. He taught at the New York City High School of the Performing Arts (now Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and the Performing Arts), Jacob's Pillow, Utah State University and Connecticut College. With Carola Goya, he toured worldwide in "A World of Dance," and later, with the Matteo Ethno-American Dance Theatre. He made documentary films on dance, and wrote and lectured extensively on the subject of ethnic dance. In 1990, he wrote The Language of Spanish Dance, which is currently in its second edition and still in print. With Goya, he founded the Foundation for Ethnic Dance, a not-for-profit foundation based in New York City, devoted to the study of ethnic dance worldwide. Matteo died on March 24, 2011.