Scope and arrangement
This collection documents Williams's career as a dance teacher and choreographer in Haiti from the mid-1950s to the end of her life. Additional materials pertain to her early career in the United States; the world of Caribbean dance; her daughter Sara Yarborough's professional achievements; and Katherine Dunham.
The Lavinia Williams papers are arranged in fourteen series:
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1944-1984
The Personal series includes biographical material, several interviews with Williams, a private 1969 diary, and a detailed index of activities and writings about Williams.
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1952-1989
The Correspondence series consists of incoming letters, arranged chronologically, and individual files for fellow dancers and choreographers Jean-Leon Destiné, Rex Nettleford, and Carmencita Romero. The 1952-1971 file is an informative sample of letters from Haitian government officials, managers of performance spaces in Port-au-Prince, and foreign visitors seeking Williams's mediation or expertise for their research projects.
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1939-1952
Williams's early career is sketchily documented with reviews and promotional material about Eugene von Grona's 1939 festival, "The Dance"; Agnes de Mille's recreation of a West Indian ritual, "Obeah" (1940); and the Broadway productions of Finian's Rainbow (1947) and My Darling Aida (1952). Other memorabilia include a scrapbook and a travel diary of the artist's USO tour in Europe in 1945-1946, and a 1942-1945 notebook containing drawings, sketches, and notes on the Katherine Dunham dance technique.
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1954-1987
The largest in the collection, the Haiti series includes material related to Williams's work as a dance teacher and choreographer at the National School for the Arts (ENARTS) from 1984 to 1989. Earlier materials include a 1954 proposal for a dance studio-theater, and a later proposal for a National Opera House (1972). Williams maintained individual files on the career of her students who later became professional dancers and choreographers, most notably Regine Maximilien, Regine Montrosier, and her own daughter, Sara Yarborough. Williams's work was strongly influenced by Vodou (voodoo) dances and rituals, and there is a fair amount of documentation that she collected on that religion, as well as on Haitian music and folklore.
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1970-1988
The Caribbean dance series documents Williams's contribution to the development of modern dance in Guyana, the Bahamas, and Jamaica. Included are lecture notes; printed matter; reviews of performances choreographed by Williams; research material on the Bahamian festival of Junkanoo and Trinidadian dance; and programs and promotional material of the Jamaica School of Dance and the National Dance Theater of Jamaica.
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1979-1984
The Writing series consists, for the most part, of handwritten notes, a few finished essays, and conference papers on Haitian, Caribbean, and African American dance.
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1940-1973
Ranging from 1940 to 1973, and bearing the title "Née pour la danse" ("Born to Dance"), is a series of scrapbooks elaborately organized by Williams herself. The scrapbooks are arranged chronologically and document Williams's successes in Haiti and her role in the valorization of the island's African-derived folklore as a tourist attraction and as a new vista for the local elite. They consist, for the most part, of newspaper and magazine articles, with occasional photographs, performance programs, and other memorabilia. The focus varies on Haiti to Jamaica and the dates overlap, in some cases, as a result. The 1953-1954 volume includes some memorabilia of Haitian President Paul Eugene Magloire's family. The three scrapbooks from the First World Festival of Negro Arts (Dakar, Senegal, 1966) include several photographs with President Francois Duvalier, including a portrait with Williams, and photographs of performances by the participating Haitian Troupe Nationale Folklorique in Dakar.
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1953-1987
The scrapbook series is complemented by this Clipping file, ranging from 1953 to 1987. Most of the articles are in French. There is also a selection of articles in English after 1972, documenting Williams's contribution to the development of Caribbean dance.
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1942-1979
The Dunham files include a six-page incomplete letter that Williams wrote about Dunham; a carbon copy of Dunham's 1938 master's thesis on Haitian dance; and a prospectus for the Institute for Caribbean Research, a project of the Katherine Dunham School of Arts and Research. Also included are newspaper clippings and promotional material about Dunham's celebrated tourist resort, Habitation Leclerc, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, and an incident involving missing snakes from her zoological garden.
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1963
The Yarborough files include a twenty-page diary letter she wrote to her parents as an early teen in 1963 about her dance studies in New York. Also included are her dance notes from that period, as well as performance reviews in English and in French of her work in Haiti, with the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, and with the Atlanta Ballet.
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The Programs series consists mostly of souvenir programs of performances on the Haitian stage, including Williams's association with the Indian dancing couple Pratap and Priya Pawar, whom she met in Guyana.
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This series contains mostly dance notations and props used in Williams's dance classes and choreography of various ballet productions in Haiti.
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This series features performance programs and essays on the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater; African, African American, and Caribbean dance; and some reference material on Haitian folklore and dance in general. Two flat boxes of oversized documents include certificates, performance posters, promotional material for Haitian tourism, early articles from Ebony and Life magazines, a series of Vèvè drawings annotated by Williams, and another set of Vèvè embroideries.
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This series includes a sampling of such material. The titles in this series are also available in the General Research and Reference Division at the Schomburg Center.