Eleo Pomare; good Guardian obit (choreographer and dancer)
Hyfler/Rosner
Choreographer and dancer fired by a sense of social
injustice
Terry Monaghan
The Guardian, Wednesday November 12 2008
Eleo Pomare, who has died in Manhattan aged 70, was widely
regarded as the angriest, but also the most underrated, of
the leading African-American contemporary
choreographer-dancers of the 1960s-90s. Best known in
Britain for his stunning solo extract from Blues for the
Jungle, as broadcast in DA Pennebaker's 1985 TV documentary
Dance Black America, his work nevertheless covered a broad
spectrum of themes. Rising to prominence in the Martin
Luther King civil rights era, he addressed directly the
racist legacy in the United States, while indirectly
challenging the same negativity by exploring diverse
cultural subject matter through his integrated dance
company. As the New York Times critic Jennifer Dunning once
put it, Pomare "seethed" rather than "exploded".
It took some eventful travelling before he found his
artistic vocation and "voice." Born in Santa Marta,
Colombia, he lost his father in 1943 when a submarine
torpedoed the ship they were travelling on to Panama. His
father, the ship's captain, drowned. Six-year-old Eleo
survived and later lived in Cartagena and Panama before his
mother took him to live in New York in 1947. There he
enrolled in the High School of Performing Arts to study
acting, but the slightly built Pomare, who admitted being
"five-something", later switched to dance.
He blossomed there, and his progress took him back into
Harlem, where he had attended school, to organise student
performances in schools and churches, and to teach dance for
the Boys' Athletic League. His studies and his early
creations, such as Cantos from a Monastery (1958),
acquainted him with the work of the German choreographer
Kurt Jooss. Fascinated by photographs depicting the
expressionist intensity of Jooss's company, and still
subscribing to "the myths that one had to study in Europe to
be really educated, and that Europe was more sensitive to
black people", he left for Germany in 1962, courtesy of a
John Hay Whitney fellowship, to train with the company.
Jooss, however, soon expelled the mercurial Pomare after he
organised a student dance company, telling him: "There can't
be two demi-gods in this space, and I was here first ..."
Pomare formed a new company in Amsterdam. Almost immediately
he flew back to the US for the 1963 March On Washington and
then returned for another march in Amsterdam that he had
organised with James Baldwin. Responding passionately to the
new phase in the civil rights struggle and the Harlem riot
of 1964, Pomare created Blues for the Jungle in 1966.
Despite it being "disorganised and violent" Pomare later
reflected: "The reception was warm. That was something I
didn't expect."
His compassionate but unflinching depiction of hopelessness
in the Junkie sequence from Blues indicated Pomare's real
artistic strength. In 1967 he became the first artistic
director of Dance-mobile, a travelling performance space on
the back of a flat-bed truck. Opening to shouts of "Get some
soul brother!" he persevered and persuaded the Harlem
audience that he had it, even if not expressed in their
familiar street argot.
Ruminations on his European experiences, and his initial
attempts to see audiences through "blue eyes", led to
another classic piece. Based on Lorca's play The House of
Bernarda Alba, and set to a jazz score by John Coltrane, Las
Desenamoradas was brought into being through Pomare's
ability to transform the written and spoken word into dance.
This study of the destructive impact of a dominant matriarch
on her children, with some reference to his own "mothering
problems", which had apparently helped to send him to
Europe, became as equally a powerful and personal work as
Blues for the Jungle.
Since he was a prolific choreographer, the quality of his
work often depended on the interpretation given in
particular productions, thus reviews varied wildly. On one
memorable occasion in a loft performance, he stared at the
audience as he slowly ate watermelon and spat the seeds out.
Eclectic but carefully woven diversity was his guiding
intent. Although generally eschewing the "abstract" he
composed Back to Bach in 1983, though it did contain some
Watusi influence. In 1986 he created Morning Without Sunrise
in honour of Nelson Mandela. He became a founding member of
the Association of Black Choreographers, and international
recognition and numerous awards followed. The 2001 PBS TV
series Free to Dance, which has yet to be shown in the UK,
provides a broad appreciation of his work.
The high esteem in which he was held by his fellow dancers
sustained his sense of purpose, which never lost its
choleric fire, and he was able to keep earning, and
creating, until the onset of the cancer that brought him
down.
Although he commented wryly on one occasion: "Actually, I
guess I don't want to be rich and famous," he nevertheless
became supremely successful and influential.
In addition to his partner, Glenn Conner, he is survived by
three sisters.
. Eleo Pomare, dancer and choreographer, born October 20
1937; died August 8 2008