[gentle piano music]   - Dance is a universe   and it's a community of people   and it's a celebration of   life into the afterlife.

I've never been anywhere when I asked, "May I dance?

",   was I ever turned down.

So dance is a universe.

[gentle piano music] - Hello, everybody, and welcome to A Conversation With... Today we're at Ballet Memphis in Midtown, while we're talking with Maxine Strawder, who is known among many people in the dance world in Memphis as Silverbird.

She is a dancer, she is an activist, she's a student of life, an extraordinary person, and I think you're really gonna enjoy our conversation today.

My name is George Larrimore and glad to have you here on A Conversation With... Maxine, thank you for being here.

How you doing?

- Thank you, George, for considering a life worth sharing.

- All right, I'ma ask you the toughest question of all.

Looking back on a life as a dancer, what does it feel like to be on the stage, and the footlights, when that audience is out there in that everything that you've prepared for is in that moment?

What does that feel like to you?

- Home, perhaps, home, yeah.

It's a very comfortable place.

They're many spirits alive in that space.

And most of all, I've been with companies when I started dancing, of course, I started dancing at home when I was two or three years old with my parents.

But dancing as a public expression came in my teen years, my pre-teen and teen years.

So dancing is a kind of home for me.

I'm there, I belong there.

And it's a limitless world.

- You think people understand how much physical work, how much preparation is involved to make something very difficult look, fluid, look graceful?

Do you think people understand how that is?

- They could not understand, no, they could not understand.

And overcoming some of the difficulties is part of the challenge you have as a dancer, you have your instrument, your whole self, your whole life experiences to that point in that moment, engaging with the people, if you're fortunate to be in a company, as most of my life I have been in a company.

It's a universe!

- Now I want to... You were kind enough to give us some photographs of yourself from various points in your life, the one I liked the most   is little Maxine   Starling at your home   with your grandparents.

And you described   that the life   that you grew up in is   there was music everywhere, there was dance everywhere.

Tell us how that sort of informed your life.

- Well one's experience and family, a musical family as ours is, is not unusual.

Other people looking at it perhaps find it unusual, but it was always music and very often dance and different kinds of dancing and dancing to express something good out of the oven.

My grandmother was a great cook and her saying to me as she greeted me in the morning was, "Now, pet, what will you have?

Biscuits, rolls, or cornbread?"

Because she had a warming closet.

So as a dancer, it's very normal, natural to draw on these life experiences and then you offer that if you have an audience, sometimes you're dancing just for the heck of dancing, but other times you're performing.

- For the joy of it?

- For the joy of it.

- Yeah.

Yeah, yeah exactly.

- Okay.

Again, you grew up in West Virginia, but when you were a young girl, because of your father's work, you moved to Cleveland and you told me that it was not the Cleveland we know today.

This was very segregated Cleveland.

So there were difficulties in your life as an African-American as they were all over this country.

But you had an experience when you were 10, you saw the musical "Carmen Jones," tell us if you would, how that felt watching it and how, what it turned inside of you?

- "Carmen Jones", as I describe it now, means a universe of creative, mostly African-Americans, connected with my family, connected with the National Organization of Negro Musicians, brought "Carmen Jones" to Cleveland, Ohio.

And my cousin, Kathleen Holland Forbes, was one of the organizers and so the people who were in the company, the musical people in the company, were in and out of her home on 84th Street.

The dancing, I see it because we were seated behind a concert bass violin, and so I saw the stage and I saw the dancers and I hear the singers and I told my mother, whom I address as Nana, I told Nana, I wanted to do that.

And so she took me   to a neighborhood community   center called Karamu.

And some of the dancers on   that stage were from Karamu.

And so that was the connection of Ms. Dunham's artistry and the local dancers on tour with Katherine Dunham in "Carmen Jones."

- For those of us who don't know Katherine Dunham's work and influence, tell us a little bit about her and about what she meant to you, please?

- Well, Katherine Dunham was a sensation   and a success in   the dance world,   and she's also   an anthropologist   from the University   of Chicago with [indistinct]   and her research that interested me was the Haitian research and, so, seeing the dancers in "Carmen Jones," reading about Ms. Dunham as a young person, and knowing the import she had in the dance world, in film, traveling mostly Europe, I don't remember that she went to Asia, at least in my time knowing her, but I did not meet Ms. Dunham right away.

I met people who were associated with her company in 1952, Karamu House took some of the dance company to New York City.

And Ms. Dunham was not there, Ms. Dunham was on tour, I'd had no idea where she was, but one of our dancers, Nikki, was sailing through the dance studio when we walked in the door and that was exciting, Walter Nicks, his name was Walter Nicks, he's from Cleveland, the Karamu theater was in Cleveland.

So there was always a connection.

Dance for me has meant community connection, enthusiasm, an encyclopedia of experiences.

Dance is a world.

And so Ms. Dunham is one of the peak experiences of that world.

- Now, I wanna remind people that in case you didn't get it, you were, as you told me the other day,   you were kind of a child in a   grownup world in this company,   in this dance company.

- This is a community, the Karamu Dance Organization goes back to the '20s,   and I enter as a high   school student about 16.

So everyone in the company   was in their 20s or older.

And because Karamu   came about in the '20s   and in a neighborhood   that was immigrant,   not African-American, but it moved up to the '80s on 89th street.

Then it was centered in the African-American community.

And we drew from people all over the town.

And in my high school, as a guide, one of the things I did at Karamu besides dance, was a tour guide.

One year I toured people from 52 different countries.

- And you went with Karamu to Haiti?

- Yes, that's very important to me.

Even before I met Ms. Dunham, I was at one of the sites where she is most known for her research and some of the dance that she performed and taught is based in Haiti and in Haitian ritual.

And I think I must've been about 18, when Karamu House had a sociological, United Nations, connected two-week tour of Haiti and the famous Citadel, which we climbed that mountain on back of donkeys, straight up.

Yes, so then I was able to read about Ms. Dunham's research and the importance of the various rituals and the symbolism and visit a temple, a religious space, an outside space, space called a hogan and to meet the priests and priestesses there and have a background so that when I eventually met Ms. Dunham in the '70s I was very familiar with her work, her persona.

She radiated, Ms. Dunham radiated.

- I would say that you radiate too.

[Maxine laughing] Let's talk just a little about your education.

You went to Fisk University in Nashville, then you went overseas to Scandinavia where you studied languages, I believe you told me, you speak German and you speak Danish, today.

And the hitchhiking through Germany is a story I'd like to tell if we had more time to tell it.

But anyway, after that, you... After spending time in Scandinavia, you went back to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where you got your degree.

Now, what was your degree in?

- I have undergraduate scholars degree, it's a Bachelor of Undergraduate Scholars, it's not a BA.

It was something that was created in the early '60s.

I had gone to Fisk and I wanna say that Fisk is the school of my grandfather and [indistinct],   my mother in Class of   '35, she did not finish.

She finished in West Virginia.

So I'm third generation,   Fisk University.

And I remember as a child there in Beckley, I sat on a trunk and I looked down, I was five years old or about, and there was the emblem on Nana's trunk of the Fisk Jubilee Singers and that is one of the most important symbols in my life.

Because later on, as a student at Fisk, I experienced the Jubilee Singers.

- It would be natural to ask you how you happened to be in Memphis and I know that you went to University of Indiana, got your degree in library science, and you came here to work.

What did you find when you came to Memphis?

What was it in terms of dance and people involved in dance?

- One of the first things I heard, thank you, George.

One of the first things I heard about was this dance company in Midtown connected with the theater.

And it was a choreographer from Virginia who was brought there by a poet, Margaret Danna.

And so this young man was teaching dance.

I think he must've started in LeMoyne area, but he was at Playhouse area when I was able to come.

We are in Memphis because Dawn Rebecca Strawder had been traipsed all over to schools where she was in an ethnic minority.

She's tired of being in school of white folks.

This is plain and simple.

- And this is your daughter we're talking about.

- Yeah, Dawn Rebecca.

So, I promised her that when we graduated with the library degree from Indiana University that she could choose where we lived.

So we got a Greyhound bus and we went to my interviews from North Carolina, several places of North Carolina and Tennessee.

And when she got to...

When she got to Memphis, not being upset as adults were about the events of the Memphis in 1974, she saw lots of black folk.

And she said, "This is the place."

And I had made her the promise.

I said, "When we graduate with Master of Library Science, you choose the place we live."

And so that's our good   fortune to been here,   as she said the other   day, almost 50 years.

- Now how did you   meet Harry Bryce?

- I was a librarian for Shelby State Community College and my coworker, who is a Memphian, a poet, knew Harry Bryce.

And she told me early on that there was this dance group directed by Harry Bryce.

And so it took me the first year of '74 to get acclimated to work as a librarian, to come in the summer of '75   to meet Bryce and Mark   and the Playhouse people.

And we were in house,   in the Playhouse Annex.

It's not the proper word,   but in the house is no   longer there on Tucker.

And that's where we rehearsed.

And we did with my good friends, still all these years with Paulette Reagan, Tubular Bells.

And it was filmed by the University of Memphis, which was Memphis State in those days, we performed that in Playhouse Theater,   and filmed it at Memphis State   and had a wonderful   tour of that.

And then Bryce decided just   to do this "African Wedding."

And he brought Ms. Danner, the poet from Chicago, that was his mentor.

And we did the performance at the Playhouse.

I forget how many performances of the "African Wedding" that we did and Ms. Danner insisted that we have a feast afterwards and we had goat.

Right there in the lobby of the theater.

- Dawn must've loved this.

- Well, Dawn had our own theater life with Mark Martinez and also somewhat Harry and Vincent.

She was running sound for our production.

Slides, not sound, slides.

- But it did work for her.. - She had her own life in the theater and her own connections.

And so that was wonderful for her.

- Now tell me about Project Motion, your work with Project Motion?

I know that they observed or celebrated your 75th birthday with a performance.

- Project Motion was a collective of performers and artists and they existed but I was not aware of them while I was active with Bryce as an independent performer.

But once I found them, that was my dance base and my dance home.

And eventually, when I was no longer performing, I was on their board for a number of years.

So the innovative, young, mostly young, college, I was introduced to Project Motion through Holly Lau and my professor who was then later my lead professor on my thesis for The University of Memphis, my second master's.

- Talking about 75 rotations, the observance of your 75th birthday, you produced this program for Project Motion and performed as well, right?

- Not quite, I was in a rehearsal and Rosie walked by the door and leaned in the door and said, "We need to dance your life."

And she just went on.

And the next thing I know people were talking about, "Well, we need to pull this thing together."

And as you have so clearly noticed, they decided to start   with when I first came   to the dance studio,   and that was the kind of   mythology, we thought,   that José Limón was   coming from New York,   it ended up being   Charles Weidman.

These are all foundation   of modern dance people,   which served for the Project   Motion as part of their basis,   because they were   doing Humphrey Weidman   and Limón technique.

And these were people that   I had met as a teenager.

So it connects   the teenage Maxine   with the 80-year-old Maxine.

And they were very generous to perform the things that I told them right on down to the present day with Project Motion itself and the fact that they invited me to perform here in Memphis with them.

- Now to rewind just a little bit and to use an expression that you spoke on when you and I were talking, you talk about how dance connects.

There are photographs of   you in The Commercial Appeal   in which they refer to you   as an Apostle of Dance.

There's a piece about you   in the religion section of The Commercial Appeal because you'd been taking... You'd been going out and performing at churches or in getting people in churches, in Memphis, involved through dance.

Tell me how that work and how that felt for you?

- After the dance, after the Bryce Company ceased to perform as a unit, I went back to something that I had learned at Karamu which was liturgical dance, which is ritual and religion and dance, which of course led me to the Dr. Brewster experience and the Smithsonian, the choreography for that.

But to address Project Motion, these were young people, nifty college age kids, in all aspects of production of dance, and they welcomed me.

So I got to perform with Holly Lao and Wayne Marshall Smith and in workshops and in classes that became my dance performing home in Memphis.

- I don't wanna use this term, but I know someone's bound to have used it with you.

You don't act your age.

You're still involved in classes at the university.

You're learning Spanish, I believe you told me the other day, You're teaching Tai Chi classes.

Tell me about age, tell me what you think about it.

- Well, again, you go back to Granny Beck.

My mother's mother was born in 1867 in Ontario and she held me on her lap and she held Dawn Rebecca, my daughter, on her lap the year before she died in '64.

So she lived to be 97.

My mother who came with us to Memphis lived to be 96.

So longevity on that side of our family is normal.

It's age, yeah, the bones ache, the muscles are not what they used to be, but I'm fortunate to have relatively good health and being a dancer is invigorating and when I'm not performing, I was fortunate to be guided to Tai Chi.

So I'm a part of the Tai Chi for Health World Community.

And that is a nurturing community of people and concepts.

So age, yes, I suppose we look forward in this year to my 84th birthday.

Don't you celebrate one in April too?

- I have a birthday in April, yes.

- You're 16...

The funny thing about the April 30th birthday is it ties into our experience with Opera.

I was born on [speaks in foreign language].

Phenomena and Opera has been a big part of our lives because my father's youngest brother was 20 years with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

So it's creativity, people say the arts, I say it's creativity.

And the creative people that we found in Memphis are storytellers and it just enriches life.

So yes, it's creaky and you have to pay more attention to stairs.

And of course, I've worn glasses since I was 2 1/2.

And the loss of the hearing when I was in library school, that's all age, but.. - It's all life, isn't it?

- It's all life and it's all people and generosity and love and when we have to deal with tragedies, there's always something that envelops us and there's always community that envelops us.

- We have a couple of minutes left and I want to go back to Katherine Dunham.

And I see the way you, your affect, when you talk about her.

Here, all these many, many years, hese decades layou first knew who she was and knew what she was doing, she had an impact on you.

I would like to ask you about the impact that you have had on others.

What do people tell you?

What do people who you knew a long time ago or knew 10 years ago, say to you?

- Still meet some of my kids from the library world.

They call me li-berry, not librarian.

It's children of people that have been generous to include me in their lives.

Those cycle of gifts, a cycle of gifts of self to others is very important.

And of course that feeds the creative process.

And so creativity is not limited to stage or bars, the narrative, the kindness that you have shown our family and bringing out the historical connection and in the many communities that we live in.

So I thank you for that.

- Oh, I thank you for that.

Maxine, it's always such a great pleasure to talk with you under any circumstances.

Thank you again to Ballet Memphis for allowing us into this lovely facility to do this interview today.

And thank you for watching.

I hope you'll join us again on A Conversation With...

I'm George Larrimore.

[gentle piano music] [acoustic guitar chords]