Marian Hannah Winter (March 20, 1910 – December 15, 1981) was an American
musicologist and
dancehistorian. She has been called one of "the [two] foremost names in American dance history."[1]
Early life and education
Winter was born in New York City, the daughter of Ernest Winter and Rose Rosenbluth Winter. Her father and maternal grandparents were all immigrants from central Europe; her mother was a policewoman[2] who collected theatrical sketches.[3]
In 1939, Winter worked for the
Federal Music Project in New York City, and assembled an exhibit on "Art Scores for Music" at the
Brooklyn Museum,[6] called "the first international exhibition of scores for cabaret and concert hall music".[7]
In the 1940s, dance historian
Lincoln Kirstein solicited Winter to write for Dance Index, a magazine he headed. In contrast to Kirstein's analytical or polemical approach to history, Winter was more of an archivist.[1] One of Winter's most influential works is "Juba and American Minstrelsy", published in 1947.[8] The article sketches the life of
Master Juba, a black American dancer active in the mid-19th century. Winter argues that Juba introduced African elements to American dance forms and, in the process, created a new, distinctly American style. The article thus attempts to "[re-appropriate] for black culture what is otherwise generally seen as racist theft."[9]
Winter moved to France in her later years, where she worked as a translator and collected art and ephemera related to fairs and festivals.[3] There, she published The Theater of the Marvels in both English- and French-language editions.[10][11] She was awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974.[12] Of her 1974 book, The Pre-Romantic Ballet, one reviewer said that "Some historians have an ability to write about the remote past as if they were giving a first-hand account of personal experience. Marian Hannah Winter is one of them."[13]
Publications
"American Theatrical Dancing from 1750 to 1800" (1938)[14]
Winter used a wheelchair in her later years, to manage the effects of a progressive neurological condition.[3] She died in
Paris.[1] There is a collection of her papers, including correspondence, notebooks, and photographs, at the
Houghton Library,
Harvard University.[19] The Marian Hannah Winter Professorship in Theatre and Dance Studies at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison was named in her memory. In 1985, items from her collection of fairground memorabilia were displayed at the
Pusey Library in Cambridge.[3]
^"In Response to". The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 1939-04-08. p. 18. Retrieved 2023-03-24 – via Newspapers.com.
^Radcliffe College, Alumnae Directory (1934): 281, lists Winter as a student from 1927 to 1929, and an ex-member of the class of 1931, but not as a graduate.
^"Art and Music". Daily News. 1939-01-24. p. 409. Retrieved 2023-03-24 – via Newspapers.com.