Vera Embree

Vera L. Embree (1921–2004) 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 Embree was born in 1921 in Muskogee, Oklahoma. She studied ballet as a child in Raleigh, North Carolina. She pursued Modern dance at Palmer Memorial Institute in Greensboro, NC. Embree received a B.S. 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.

Embree's study of dance included time working with Alvin Ailey where she taught from 1958 until 1967. Her work included investigations into the development of African-American dance. She received tenure in 1975