Kariamu Welsh

Kariamu Welsh Asante (born 22 September 1949) is a contemporary dance choreographer and scholar whose awards include a National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is a professor at Temple University's Boyer School of Music and Dance. She is the mother of author, filmmaker, and hip-hop artist M. K. Asante.

Welsh received her Doctorate of Arts in Dance History from New York University and her MA.H. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Widely published in both scholarly journals and book length studies, she is a scholar of cultural studies including performance and culture within Africa and the African diaspora. Welsh serves as the Director of the Institute for African Dance Research and Performance.

Welsh is the author of numerous books, including Zimbabwe Dance: Rhythmic Forces, Ancestral Voices—An Aesthetic Analysis and Umfundalai: An African Dance Technique. She is the editor of The African Aesthetic: Keeper of Traditions and African Dance: An Artistic, Historical and Philosophical Inquiry. She co-edited African Culture: Rhythms of Unity.

Welsh is the recipient of numerous fellowships, grants, and awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowship, the Creative Public Service Award of NY, a 1997 Pew Fellowship, a 1997 Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a 1998 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant, and three Senior Fulbright Scholar Awards. She is the founding artistic director of the National Dance Company of Zimbabwe in southern Africa.

Welsh is the creator of the Umfundalai dance technique, a pan-African contemporary technique that has been in existence for over thirty-three years.