Dr. Kariamu Welsh was a pioneer and trailblazer of African diaspora dance, a dance professor at Temple University for 30 years before retiring in 2019, and the author and editor of seminal works on Afrocentricity and Black movement traditions. Carole Ann Welsh was born on September 22, 1949 in Thomasville, North Carolina to Ruth Hoover. Her family moved to Brooklyn, New York, when she was a child. Welsh is known as Kariamu in Kiswahili, which means “one who reflects the moon.”
Welsh co-founded The School of Movement in Buffalo, New York, in the 1970s. She received a scholarship to the University of Buffalo, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1972. Welsh earned her Master of Arts in Humanities from the same university in 1975. Welsh was the founding artistic director of the National Dance Company of Zimbabwe and a member of the Dance Trust of Zimbabwe from 1981 to 1983. She is also the creator of Umfundalai, a Kiswahili term that refers to the theory and practice of contemporary African dance that combines steps, rhythm, and sensibility from various African dance traditions.
Welsh joined Temple University’s faculty as a dance professor in the Boyer College of Music and Dance. Welsh received her Doctorate of Arts in Dance History and Choreography from New York University in 1993. Welsh met Molefi Kete Asante at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The couple married, but the marriage ended in 2000. Dr. Welsh founded the Institute for African Dance Research and Performance while teaching at Temple University.
Dr. Welsh has authored the following books: African Culture: The Rhythms of Unity (1989), The African Aesthetic: Keeper of the Traditions (1994), African Dance: An Artistic, Historical, and Philosophical Inquiry (1997), Zimbabwe Dance: Rhythmic Forces, Ancestral Voices, an Aesthetic Analysis (2000), Umfundalai: An African Dance Technique (2003) and Iwe Illanan: A Umfundalai Teacher’s Handbook (2017). She has co-authored African Dance (World of Dance) (2010) with Elizabeth A. Hanley, African Culture The Rhythms of Unity (1985) with Molefi Kete Asante, Hot Feet and Social Change: African Dance and Diaspora Communities (2019) with Thomas F. DeFrantz, Danny Glover, et al., and A Guide to African and African-American Art (1980) with Molefi Kete Asante.
Dr. Welsh has received the National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowship, the New York Creative Public Service Award, a Pew Fellowship (1997), a Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (1997), a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant (1998), and three Senior Fulbright Scholar awards.
Dr. Kariamu Welsh-Asante died on October 12, 2021, at the age of 72, at her home in North Carolina, from complications related to a neurological disorder.