Draft:Vera L. Embree

Vera L. Embree was an American dancer and choreographer, and the first African American women faculty member in the University of Michigan’s Dance Department. She studied under influential dance instructors including Jose Limon and Alvin Ailey. She was a founder of Contemporary Dance Company in Detroit and co-founder of Our Own Thing, an instructional program in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Education
Vera Embree studied ballet as a child in Raleigh, NC. She pursued Modern dance at Palmer Memorial Institute in Greensboro, NC. Embree received a BS in Physical Education and English from The Hampton Institute in the early 1940s. There she had the opportunity to study African dance and she joined the Hampton Institute Creative Dance Institute.

Career
She began her teaching career at the YWCA in Baltimore, and then in Detroit’s public schools.

She moved to Ann Arbor in 1968 to join the Dance Department, where she was its first African American faculty member. She received tenure in 1975 and taught there for 30 years.

She was a co-founder of Our Own Thing with Willis C. Patterson, Bucky Buchannan, and Jon Lockard. Our Own Thing is an instructional program in music and the arts for Black youth in Ann Arbor and beyond.

Awards
She received the Governor’s Michigan Artist Award in 1986.