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.