Eleo Pomare

Eleo Pomare was a Black Colombian American modern dancer, choreographer, teacher, and company director whose politically and emotionally direct works centered Black experience and helped expand the subjects, audiences, and institutions of American concert dance. Born on October 20, 1937, in Santa Marta, Colombia, Pomare spent part of his childhood in Colombia and Panama before moving to New York City in 1947. There he attended the New Lincoln School and the High School of Performing Arts while teaching younger people through the Police Athletic League, establishing early what would become a lifelong commitment to community access alongside rigorous technical training.

Pomare began organizing dancers while still young. The Eleo Pomare Dance Company is dated from 1958 by the Smithsonian, following an earlier group called Corybantes in 1957. A John Hay Whitney fellowship enabled further study in Europe, and by 1960 he had established the Eleo Pomare Modern Dance Company in Amsterdam. That European period brought significant collaborations across disciplines: *Resonance* joined Pomare's company with composer Ton Bruynèl, sculptor Shinkichi Tajiri, and painter Sam Middleton.

After returning to New York in the mid-1960s, Pomare built a repertory that refused decorative or stereotyped expectations of Black performance. Works including *Gin. Woman. Distress.*, *Blues for the Jungle*, and *Las Desenamoradas* used compressed theatrical situations, exacting physicality, and charged musical choices to confront poverty, incarceration, gendered violence, alienation, and urban life. Beyond choreography, Pomare helped form the Association of Black Choreographers and the dance periodical *The Feet*, creating platforms through which Black artists could debate, document, and organize their field.

Pomare's company toured widely throughout the 1970s and 1980s. A 1972 Australian visit proved especially significant: dancer Carole Johnson remained in Australia and became a central teacher and organizer in programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dancers, a meaningful strand of international exchange developed through Johnson and the Indigenous artists and institutions who sustained that work. In recognition of his contributions, Pomare received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972. His company performed at FESTAC '77 in Lagos, marked its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1983, and in 1986 created *Morning Without Sunrise* in honor of Nelson Mandela, set to music by Max Roach. Manhattan Borough President David Dinkins proclaimed January 7, 1987, Eleo Pomare Day.

Pomare remained active as a teacher and choreographer until his death from cancer in Manhattan on August 8, 2008. His photographs and company records are preserved by the New York Public Library's Jerome Robbins Dance Division. The work itself has been carried forward by dancers including Leni Wylliams, Carole Johnson, and Martial Roumain, whose performances and teaching sustain the repertory.