Kurath, Gertrude Prokosch (Tula)
Kurath, Gertrude Prokosch (Tula)
Kurath, Gertrude Prokosch (Tula), American ethnomusicologist; b. Chicago, Aug. 19, 1903. She studied at Bryn Mawr Coll. (B.A., 1922; M.A. in art history, 1928), concurrently studying music and dance in Berlin, Philadelphia, N.Y., and Providence, R.I., and then attended the Yale School of Drama (1929–30). She conducted field research for the Wenner-Gren Foundation (1949–73), the American Philosophical Soc (1951–65), and the National Museum of Canada (1962-65; 1969-70); also taught dance, lectured on dance history, and was dance ed. for Ethnomusicology (1958–72). Kurath made substantial contributions to the study of American Indian dance and to dance theory and notation.
Writings
Songs of the Wigwam (Delaware, Ohio, 1955); Iroquois Music and Dance: Ceremonial Arts of Two Seneca Long-houses (Washington, D.C., 1964); Michigan Indian Festivals (Ann Arbor, 1966); Dance and Song Rituals of Six Nations Reserve, Ontario (Ottawa, 1968); with A. Garcia, Music and Dance of the Tewa Pueblos, New Mexico (Santa Fe, 1970: Radiant Call (Ann Arbor, 1971); with R. Miller, With Magnetic Fields Disrupted (Ann Arbor, 1972); Tutelo Rituals on Six Nations Reserve, Ontario (Ann Arbor, 1981); Dance Mémoires (Cambridge, Mass., 1983).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire