Beryl McBurnie

Beryl Eugenia McBurnie was born on 2 November 1913 in Woodbrook, a district of Port of Spain, Trinidad. Educated at Tranquillity School, she came of age at a time when the African-rooted folk forms of her islands were dismissed as primitive, and she resolved to prove their worth. Working alongside the folklorist Andrew Carr, she travelled the country gathering the songs, rhythms, and steps that lived in its villages, and carried them onto the stage under the performing name La Belle Rosette.

In 1938 she went to New York, studying at Teachers College, Columbia University, and with the pioneering modern dancer Martha Graham. She danced and taught West Indian forms in the city — including a spell replacing Carmen Miranda on Broadway — before returning home in 1945 as an instructor with Trinidad and Tobago's Education Department, bringing folk dance into the schools.

In 1948 she opened the Little Carib Theatre in Woodbrook, the first permanent folk-dance company and theatre in Trinidad, its foundation stone laid by Paul Robeson. It became, in the words of admirers, the mecca of West Indian folk dance, a cradle for generations of Caribbean performers and a proof that the region's own culture could stand with dignity on any stage.

Honours followed her devotion: appointed OBE in 1959, awarded the Hummingbird Gold Medal in 1969, granted an honorary Doctorate of Laws by the University of the West Indies in 1976, and given the Trinity Cross, her nation's highest award. She died on 30 March 2000. Countless melodies and dances that might have vanished endure because she refused to let them be forgotten — we honor the woman who taught a nation to be proud of its own step.