"A Creole Dance Teacher, Teaching Some Steps to a Negro Slave Woman and a Creole Woman" (caption title). This illustration shows a creole dance master playing a violin, while an enslaved woman and a creole woman dance. Benoit described how "the pupils are being taught to dance on their toes; they are very superior in this exercise, the author writes, to our European dancers" (p. 27). Pierre Jacques Benoit (1782-1854) was a Belgian artist, who visited the Dutch colony of Suriname on his own initiative for several months in 1831. He stayed in Paramaribo, but visited plantations, maroon communities and indigenous villages inland.
Un maître de danse créole, enseignant des pas à une esclave négresse et à une créole
SI-OB-927
1831
Un maître de danse créole, enseignant des pas à une esclave négresse et à une créole
"Figure 23" in Pierre Jacques Benoit, Voyage à Surinam; description des possessions néerlandaises dans la Guyane (Bruxelles: Société des Beaux-Arts de Wasme et Laurent, 1839).
French
Music, Dance & Recreational Activities
South America--Suriname--Paramaribo
Jerome Handler; Michael Tuite; Henry B. Lovejoy Graduate Research Assistants: Tiffany Beebe; Travis May
20-Dec-11; 3-Sep-19
BEN-F