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The Baltimore Sun | Sunday, June 8, 2025 13
MARIA
BROOM
When the dancer, actress, educator and healer Maria Broom talks about her “freelance life,” she isn’t just referring to her employment history. She’s also describing
her philosophy, a hard-won commitment to living an intuitive and unafraid existence, a struggle from which she has emerged triumphant.
Broom, 75, follows her hunches. She trusts in her instincts and a beneficial providence. She has stayed true to her mission to be a “dance-bringer,” even if that
profession isn’t recognized by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and even if forgoing a full-time salary means doing without things like health insurance and a
retirement account.
“I want to say how much I love my wonderful life,” Broom says, while chatting in the kitchen of her fairy-tale stone cottage in Windsor Mill, over a pot of tea.
“It’s like living in a movie full of blessings and serendipity. Much of my adult life has been guided by the Sanskrit phrase ‘Idam na mama,’ which means, ‘Not my
will, but divine will be done.’ It keeps me at peace.”
Broom doesn’t so much walk as flow. Her colorful garments catch the breeze. Her fingers are in
constant motion, forming graceful shapes in the air.
When temporarily stumped by a question, she will
sway a little or rotate her hand. It isn’t until she moves
her body that answers come to her.
It’s not as though Broom hasn’t had ample opportunities to pursue more traditional careers.
She walked away from such jobs as flight attendant
(for Pan Am Airways in the early 1970s) and television reporter (first for the ABC franchise in Miami,
and later Baltimore’s WJZ-TV, where she worked
with a young Oprah Winfrey).
“When I quit television at age 28, it was a big thing,”
Broom recalled. People said, ‘You’re kidding me.
You’re leaving television to dance?'”
She was indeed. But even then, she didn’t follow
the typical dance career road map.
Rosiland Cauthen, executive director of Baltimore
School for the Arts, where Broom has taught dance
for 30 years, describes her as “a walking, talking ball
of joy” who “is the mama and heart-center of our
school.”
Cauthen said she looks forward to the chant and
dance that Broom incorporates into every teaching
session.
“She makes over and under movements while
saying, ‘You have to think something good; you have
to say something good; you have to do something
good,” Cauthen repeated.
“There are generations of people in Baltimore who
know that chant and dance. It’s not unusual to see
Maria’s former students jump up to join her on stage.
It’s kind of like a flash mob.”
Broom became smitten with dance when she was 6
Name: Maria Broom
Age: 75
Hometown: Baltimore
Current residence: Windsor Mill
Education: Morgan State University, B.S. in
education; Fulbright fellowship in Germany;
studied dance therapy at Goucher College
Career highlights: Reporter for the ABC
affiliate in Miami and WJZ-TV; 30 years
teaching at Baltimore School for the Arts;
teacher for The Park School of Baltimore;
host of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
“Music Box”educational concerts; featured
roles in HBO’s“The Wire”and“The Corner”
Family: Her brother, Dr. Michael Broom,
lives in Florida
years old and her mother took her to see the Ballet
Russe de Monte Carlo at the Lyric Baltimore. To see
the ballerinas’ feet, the tiny girl had to sit atop a pile
of coats.
But when she began to explore the art form more
seriously, she found herself drawn most strongly to
dance from Indonesia, India and Japan. Western
dance was too rigid for Broom, too much about form
and technique.
“I wanted to feel freer,” she said — and for Broom,
that means eschewing categories.
So, she’s a dancer who also has had a distinguished acting career. In 1970, when Broom was in
Germany on a Fulbright fellowship, she performed
in that country’s national touring production of
“Hair.”
Decades later, she would portray such memorable
characters as the drug-addicted Bunchie Boyd in
HBO’s “The Corner” and the politically ambitious
councilwoman Marla Daniels in “The Wire.”
And she’s a dancer who has devised her own healing method inspired by Vedic Homa rituals.
“Dance medicine has been one of Maria’s most
miraculous inventions for this community,” said
Broom’s longtime friend, the artist, curator and
educator Leslie King-Hammond.
“We put on sarongs and take off our shoes, and
Maria leads us into another universe. She creates
a moment where we can find our inner selves. We
come back transformed.”
It hasn’t always been easy.
Several years ago, Broom had emergency surgery
and was unable to work for nearly a year — a calamity for someone without much health insurance.
First, the hospital wrote off the costs of Broom’s
surgery. Then Broom’s supporters held fundraisers that raised $26,000 for the ailing dancer. Still
more people sent checks spontaneously in the mail.
It was enough to tide Broom over until she could
work again.
Sixteen years later, she’s still dancing and healing
and figuring it out as she goes along. “The StoryDancer” a documentary about Broom filmed by two
former students, is being submitted to film festivals
nationwide — including Maryland.
“It’s beyond humbling,” Broom said, clasping her
hands to her chest.
“To live a freelance life in a city and to have people
think so highly of you is overwhelming to the heart.
I think of myself as the village’s favorite daughter.”
— Mary Carole McCauley
