Victoria Santa Cruz

Victoria Eugenia Santa Cruz Gamarra (27 October 1922 – August 30, 2014) was an Afro-Peruvian choreographer, composer and activist. Victoria Santa Cruz would go on to be called “the mother of Afro Peruvian dance and theatre.” Along with her brother, Nicomedes Santa Cruz, she is credited as significant in a revival of Afro-Peruvian culture in the 1960s and 1970s. They both came from a long-line of artists and intellectuals. For her part she is said to have had “Afrocentrism” influences in her view of dance trying to discover “ancestral memory” of African forms. She helped to found the Cumanana company. Early life Santa Cruz was born eighth of ten children in Lima, Peru. Her younger brother Nicomedes Santa Cruz became a famous poet who she often performed with. At an early age, Victoria Santa Cruz was introduced to the fine arts, having come from a household full of black artists and musicians. One of her earliest influences were her parents whom she first learned about Afro-Peruvian dance (marinera and other criollo dances) as well as poetry and music. This early on exposure to the fine arts led Victoria Santa Cruz to create and participate in musicals like Malató, which would later