“I’ve been a dancer all of my life, starting in the 1940’s when I performed with a high school group. The college I attended didn’t have dance, so I escaped to Denmark to the Scandinavian Seminar, an international school: the hatch just opened, and I slid in. While there, I sang with several jazz club groups, but eventually I left the Seminar and headed to Germany to improve my language skills; I had been a German major originally. While in Frankfurt, I studied with a student of Mary Wigman, an expressionist who was as important to European dance as Martha Graham was (later) to American dance. When I returned to the U.S., I went back to my home theater, the Karamu House in Cleveland, Ohio [oldest African-American theater in the United States, where many Langston Hughes plays were developed and primiered]. There I married, had a daughter (Dawn Rebecca), and danced with several modern dance groups in Ohio. I had the good fortune to be one of the organizers of the First National Congress on Blacks in Dance in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1973. The dance congress got me to library school, library school got me to Memphis, and I opened the Gaston Park Library in 1979. As soon as my daughter went to college, I ran away to St. Croix (Virgin Islands), but I’m back in Memphis now dancing with Project: Motion Modern Dance Collective and serving on its board. On my 75th birthday, Project: Motion produced 75 Rotations: Celebrating Maxine Strawder's Passion for Dance. The most important thing about that production, to me, was that it was intergenerational. The youngest dancers were twentyish, and the oldest was 80.
"I'm 77 now myself and of course I'm still dancing. I’m thinking that one day I may write a biography / autobiography about my mother’s life and mine. Both my mother and grandmother lived to be 96 years old, both faced many obstacles in life, and both possessed a loving fierceness. They instilled that in me.”
"I'm 77 now myself and of course I'm still dancing. I’m thinking that one day I may write a biography / autobiography about my mother’s life and mine. Both my mother and grandmother lived to be 96 years old, both faced many obstacles in life, and both possessed a loving fierceness. They instilled that in me.”
Maxine with long-time friend Paulette Regan at Caritas Village. Maxine and Paulette will present their third annual Carols for Caritas on Wednesday, December 23 at lunchtime. Come join them!
Maxine Strawder, Dancer / Activist / Librarian (retired)
- Originator of the Project: Motion Maxine Strawder Dance Enrichment Scholarship at U of M
- Recipient of the University College Outstanding Alumna Award, 2014
- West Virginian by birth
- Advocate for Campus Workers Union to avoid privatization
- Commercial Appeal article about Maxine Strawder: For the Love of Dance
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