Butterfly McQueen

For most of her film career, McQueen was typecast as a servant, but when those roles became scant in Hollywood during the 1950s, she pursued jobs in musical theater, television, and radio. She won the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame Award in 1975 and an Emmy Award for her role in the children’s television special The Seven Wishes of Joanna Peabody (1979).

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Sue Yeon Park

Sue Yeon Park has been given the honorific titles of yisuja for achieving the highest level of mastery of the salpuri-chum (Shaman ritual dance) and jeonsuja for the preservation of seungmu (Buddhist ritual dance) by the Ministry of Culture of South Korea.

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Sophiline Cheam Shapiro

An exceptional dancer, vocalist, teacher, and award-winning choreographer in the Cambodian classical dance form. A master artist of the 1,000-year-old tradition, Shapiro was a member of the first generation to graduate from the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, after the fall of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge.

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Rady Sam-Oeun Tes

In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge terror of the 1970s devastated the institutions that supported dance drama. The tradition was uprooted as dancers and musicians who had survived the genocide fled to the United States. Three of these artists, determined to keep their heritage a living part of Cambodian life in the United States, formed the Apsara Ensemble.

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Naomi Gedo Diouf

Liberian-American dancer and dance teachers who has contributed to the practice and performance of West African dance, drum, and culture in African diasporic communities for more than four decades.

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Inga Stange

German dancer and teacher Inge Stange promoted dance gymnastics in Sydney (Australia) in the early 1930s. She believed “this type of physical education is better adapted than almost any other for inspiring inner cheerfulness and a new courage to face life in these times.” She also performed at the Prince Edward Theatre in London in 1933.

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