Beryl mcburnie biography graphic organizer

November 2, 1913
March 30, 2000

Beryl Eugenia McBurnie, a pioneer of Trinidad and Tobago's folk dance scene, was born in Trinidad. A child with a natural aptitude for dance who converted her parents' backyard into a theater, McBurnie resented the British colonial school system that promoted "foreign" culture, as opposed to her indigenous heritage.

Native mores and influences were deemed substandard at best, and were scorned at worst.

In the early 1940s, during a stint at New York's Columbia University studying cultural anthropology with Melville Herskovitz, McBurnie refined her dance techniques with Martha Graham, all the while continuing to build a name for herself in her native country.

She collaborated with several ardent Pan-Caribbeanists there. Eric Williams, a scholar and the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, and C. L. R. James, a noted Marxist intellectual, persuaded her to apply her talent to the cause of West Indian unity and independence.