Viviane Gauthier

Viviane (or Vivianne) Gauthier (March 17, 1918 – June 1, 2017 Haitian-American singer Riva Nyri Précil is another alumna of her dance school. Many prominent Haitian dancers and dance teachers have received training from her at some point in their career, including Lynn William Rouzier, Joëlle Donatien Belot, Jean Appolon, Mikerline Pierre and Lionel St. Surin.

Early life and career Gauthier learned to dance by imitating the workers on her parents' sugar plantation.

Her formal training appears to have started in the early 1950s when Lavinia Williams, an African-American following in the footsteps of Katherine Dunham came to teach in Port-au-Prince at the invitation of the Haitian government. Gauthier was around 34. She is said to have served as Lavinia Williams' assistant at the Haitian Institute for Folklore and Classic Dance in the 1950s and 1960s. Williams, a Katherine Dunham trainee, had been courted away from her dance studio in Brooklyn, New York, by President Paul Magloire around 1951 to start the school in Port-au-Prince which would train Gauthier along with other Haitian dance stalwarts such as Lynn Williams Rouzier and Régine Montrosier-Trouillot.

Gauthier describes the teaching style of the woman Haitians affectionately called Lavinia as emphasizing discipline in precision of movement, rigidity of the torso and adherence to proper dress-code. Her studio was the oft-filmed and photographed veranda or her Victorian gingerbread house in Pétion-Ville, a suburb or Port-au-Prince. She performed for the first time in Europe at the age of 53.

Views Gauthier believed that the Yanvalou dance was the basis of all of the other Haitian dances and that it was the best form of exercise because it involved moving all parts of the body from head to toe. She worried that the authenticity of the Ibo dance was under threat. Although often credited as a choreographer she considered her vocation to be the preservation of Haitian dance. She drew a line between Haitian folkloric dance and Vodou, saying the two were not the same.

Personal life Viviane Gauthier never married or had children. She cherished her independence and did not believe her lifestyle as a researcher compatible with the life of a married woman of her time.