Interesting facts. Dunham created Rara Tonga and Woman with a Cigar at this time, which became well known. Among Dunham's closest friends and colleagues was Julie Robinson, formerly a performer with the Katherine Dunham Company, and her husband, singer and later political activist Harry Belafonte. Using some ballet vernacular, Dunham incorporates these principles into a set of class exercises she labeled as "processions". Last Name Dunham #5. [58] Early on into graduate school, Dunham was forced to choose between finishing her master's degree in anthropology and pursuing her career in dance. ", Scholar of the arts Harold Cruse wrote in 1964: "Her early and lifelong search for meaning and artistic values for black people, as well as for all peoples, has motivated, created opportunities for, and launched careers for generations of young black artists Afro-American dance was usually in the avant-garde of modern dance Dunham's entire career spans the period of the emergence of Afro-American dance as a serious art. Katherine Dunham in 1956. Dunham early became interested in dance. [18] to the Department of Anthropology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a master's degree. Receiving a post graduate academic fellowship, she went to the Caribbean to study the African diaspora, ethnography and local dance. Dunham also studied ballet with Mark Turbyfill and Ruth Page, who became prima ballerina of the Chicago Opera. As Julia Foulkes pointed out, "Dunham's path to success lay in making high art in the United States from African and Caribbean sources, capitalizing on a heritage of dance within the African Diaspora, and raising perceptions of African American capabilities."[65]. [21] This style of participant observation research was not yet common within the discipline of anthropology. She established the Katherine Dunham Centers for Arts and Humanities in East St. Louis to preserve Haitian and African instruments and artifacts from her personal collection. Video. Called the Matriarch of Black Dance, her groundbreaking repertoire combined innovative interpretations of Caribbean dances, traditional ballet, African rituals and African American rhythms to create the Dunham Technique, which she performed with her dance troupe in venues around the world. (Below are 10 Katherine Dunham quotes on positivity. [37] One historian noted that "during the course of the tour, Dunham and the troupe had recurrent problems with racial discrimination, leading her to a posture of militancy which was to characterize her subsequent career."[38]. Katherine Dunham predated, pioneered, and demonstrated new ways of doing and envisioning Anthropology six decades ahead of the discipline. As I document in my book Katherine Dunham: Dance and the . Died On : May 21, 2006. From the 40s to the 60s, Dunham and her dance troupe toured to 57 countries of the world. In 1950, Sol Hurok presented Katherine Dunham and Her Company in a dance revue at the Broadway Theater in New York, with a program composed of some of Dunham's best works. After the 1968 riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Dunham encouraged gang members in the ghetto to come to the center to use drumming and dance to vent their frustrations. Katherine Dunham or the "Matriarch of Black Dance'' as many called her, was a revolutionary African American anthropologist and professional dancer. Katherine Dunham, pseudonym Kaye Dunn, (born June 22, 1909, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, U.S.died May 21, 2006, New York, New York), American dancer and choreographer who was a pioneer in the field of dance anthropology. A continuation based on her experiences in Haiti, Island Possessed, was published in 1969. "Her mastery of body movement was considered 'phenomenal.' She decided to live for a year in relative isolation in Kyoto, Japan, where she worked on writing memoirs of her youth. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. In 2000 she was named one of the first one hundred of "America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures" by the Dance Heritage Coalition. At an early age, Dunham became interested in dance. Although Dunham was offered another grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to pursue her academic studies, she chose dance. Jobson, Ryan Cecil. [ ] Katherine Dunham was born on June 22, 1909 (age 96) in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, United States. Having completed her undergraduate work at the University of Chicago and decided to pursue a performing career rather than academic studies, Dunham revived her dance ensemble. 2 (2020): 259271. Although it was well received by the audience, local censors feared that the revealing costumes and provocative dances might compromise public morals. However, after her father remarried, Albert Sr. and his new wife, Annette Poindexter Dunham, took in Katherine and her brother. She and her company frequently had difficulties finding adequate accommodations while on tour because in many regions of the country, black Americans were not allowed to stay at hotels. Early in 1936, she arrived in Haiti, where she remained for several months, the first of her many extended stays in that country through her life. In August she was awarded a bachelor's degree, a Ph.B., bachelor of philosophy, with her principal area of study being social anthropology. 7 Katherine Dunham facts. In 1950, while visiting Brazil, Dunham and her group were refused rooms at a first-class hotel in So Paulo, the Hotel Esplanada, frequented by many American businessmen. "Katherine Dunham's Dance as Public Anthropology. [1] The Dunham Technique is still taught today. Dunham saved the day by arranging for the company to be paid to appear in a German television special, Karibische Rhythmen, after which they returned to the United States. Back in the United States she formed an all-black dance troupe, which in 1940 performed her Tropics and Le Jazz . Katherine Dunham was an American dancer and choreographer, credited to have brought the influence of Africa and the Caribbean into American dance . Her world-renowned modern dance company exposed audiences to the diversity of dance, and her schools brought dance training and education to a variety of populations sharing her passion and commitment to dance as a medium of cultural communication. Dunham is credited with introducing international audiences to African aesthetics and establishing African dance as a true art form. Video. Over her long career, she choreographed more than ninety individual dances. Her alumni included many future celebrities, such as Eartha Kitt. She is known for her many innovations, one of her most known . Commonly grouped into the realm of modern dance techniques, Dunham is a technical dance form developed from elements of indigenous African and Afro-Caribbean dances. Encouraged by Speranzeva to focus on modern dance instead of ballet, Dunham opened her first dance school in 1933, calling it the Negro Dance Group. Katherine Johnson, ne Katherine Coleman, also known as (1939-56) Katherine Goble, (born August 26, 1918, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, U.S.died February 24, 2020, Newport News, Virginia), American mathematician who calculated and analyzed the flight paths of many spacecraft during her more than three decades with the U.S. space program. After her company performed successfully, Dunham was chosen as dance director of the Chicago Negro Theater Unit of the Federal Theatre Project. In this post, she choreographed the Chicago production of Run Li'l Chil'lun, performed at the Goodman Theater. Dunham's mother, Fanny June Dunham (ne Taylor), who was of mixed French-Canadian and Native American heritage. Alvin Ailey later produced a tribute for her in 198788 at Carnegie Hall with his American Dance Theater, entitled The Magic of Katherine Dunham. In Hollywood, Dunham refused to sign a lucrative studio contract when the producer said she would have to replace some of her darker-skinned company members. Johnson 's gift for numbers allowed her to accelerate through her education. By drawing on a vast, never-utilized trove of archival materials along with oral histories, choreographic analysis, and embodied research, Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora offers new insight about how this remarkable woman built political solidarity through the arts. If Cities Could Dance: East St. Louis. Dunham was exposed to sacred ritual dances performed by people on the islands of Haiti and Jamaica. Somewhat later, she assisted him, at considerable risk to her life, when he was persecuted for his progressive policies and sent in exile to Jamaica after a coup d'tat. Later in the year she opened a cabaret show in Las Vegas, during the first year that the city became a popular entertainment as well as gambling destination. The finale to the first act of this show was Shango, a staged interpretation of a Vodun ritual, which became a permanent part of the company's repertory. The program she created runs to this day at the Katherine Dunham Centers for Arts and Humanities, revolutionizing lives with dance and culture. Example. In 1967, Dunham opened the Performing Arts Training Center (PATC) in East St. Louis in an effort to use the arts to combat poverty and urban unrest. Later Dunham established a second home in Senegal, and she occasionally returned there to scout for talented African musicians and dancers. 288 pages, Hardcover. Katherine Dunham Quotes On Positivity. During these years, the Dunham company appeared in some 33 countries in Europe, North Africa, South America, Australia, and East Asia. Additionally, she was named one of the most influential African American anthropologists. She was hailed for her smooth and fluent choreography and dominated a stage with what has been described as 'an unmitigating radiant force providing beauty with a feminine touch full of variety and nuance. from the University of Chicago, she had acquired a vast knowledge of the dances and rituals of the Black peoples of tropical America. teaches us about the impact Katherine Dunham left on the dance community & on the world. She died a month before her 97th birthday.[53]. Dunham Technique was created by Katherine Dunham, a legend in the worlds of dance and anthropology. She is best known for bringing African and Caribbean dance styles to the US [1]. Admission is $10, or $5 for students and seniors, and hours are by appointment; call 618-875-3636, or 618-618-795-5970 three to five days in advance. "What Dunham gave modern dance was a coherent lexicon of African and Caribbean styles of movementa flexible torso and spine, articulated pelvis and isolation of the limbs, a polyrhythmic strategy of movingwhich she integrated with techniques of ballet and modern dance." Katherine Dunham is credited Her dance troupe in venues around. This was the beginning of more than 20 years during which Dunham performed with her company almost exclusively outside the United States. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, . Video footage of Dunham technique classes show a strong emphasis on anatomical alignment, breath, and fluidity. Dunham was always a formidable advocate for racial equality, boycotting segregated venues in the United States and using her performances to highlight discrimination. They had particular success in Denmark and France. She was one of the first researchers in anthropology to use her research of Afro-Haitian dance and culture for remedying racist misrepresentation of African culture in the miseducation of Black Americans. [14] For example, she was highly influenced both by Sapir's viewpoint on culture being made up of rituals, beliefs, customs and artforms, and by Herkovits' and Redfield's studies highlighting links between African and African American cultural expression. She was born on June 22, 1909 in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a small . Later that year she took her troupe to Mexico, where their performances were so popular that they stayed and performed for more than two months. [10], After completing her studies at Joliet Junior College in 1928, Dunham moved to Chicago to join her brother Albert at the University of Chicago. On another occasion, in October 1944, after getting a rousing standing ovation in Louisville, Kentucky, she told the all-white audience that she and her company would not return because "your management will not allow people like you to sit next to people like us." There, he ran a dry cleaning business in a place mostly occupied by white people. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. She also appeared in the Broadway musicals "Bal . Throughout her career, Dunham occasionally published articles about her anthropological research (sometimes under the pseudonym of Kaye Dunn) and sometimes lectured on anthropological topics at universities and scholarly societies.[27]. Omissions? Ruth Page had written a scenario and choreographed La Guiablesse ("The Devil Woman"), based on a Martinican folk tale in Lafcadio Hearn's Two Years in the French West Indies. A fictional work based on her African experiences, Kasamance: A Fantasy, was published in 1974. She was the first American dancer to present indigenous forms on a concert stage, the first to sustain a black dance company. She created and performed in works for stage, clubs, and Hollywood films; she started a school and a technique that continue to flourish; she fought unstintingly for racial justice. International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, First Pan-African World Festival of Negro Arts, National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame, "Katherine Dunham | African American dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist", "Timeline: The Katherine Dunham Collection at the Library of Congress (Performing Arts Encyclopedia, The Library of Congress)", "Special Presentation: Katherine Dunham Timeline". Katherine Dunham. Dance is an essential part of life that has always been with me. Born in 1512 to Sir Thomas Parr, lord of the manor of Kendal in Westmorland, and Maud Green, an heiress and courtier, Catherine belonged to a family of substantial influence in the north. American Anthropologist 122, no. As a teenager, she won a scholarship to the Dunham school and later became a dancer with the company, before beginning her successful singing career. [26] This work was never produced in Joplin's lifetime, but since the 1970s, it has been successfully produced in many venues. However, she did not seriously pursue a career in the profession until she was a student at the University of Chicago. Charm Dance from "L'Ag'Ya". ..American Anthropologist.. 112, no. [54] Her dance education, while offering cultural resources for dealing with the consequences and realities of living in a racist environment, also brought about feelings of hope and dignity for inspiring her students to contribute positively to their own communities, and spreading essential cultural and spiritual capital within the U.S.[54], Just like her colleague Zora Neale Hurston, Dunham's anthropology inspired the blurring of lines between creative disciplines and anthropology. Artists are necessary to social justice movements; they are the ones who possess a gift to see beyond the bleak present and imagine a better future. [13] University of Chicago's anthropology department was fairly new and the students were still encouraged to learn aspects of sociology, distinguishing it from other anthropology departments in the US that focused almost exclusively on non-Western peoples. At an early age, Dunham became interested in dance. [59] She ultimately chose to continue her career in dance without her master's degree in anthropology. She made world tours as a dancer, choreographer, and director of her own dance company. Example. She also choreographed and appeared in Broadway musicals, operas and the film Cabin in the Sky. In 1928, while still an undergraduate, Dunham began to study ballet with Ludmilla Speranzeva, a Russian dancer who had settled in Chicago, after having come to the United States with the Franco-Russian vaudeville troupe Le Thtre de la Chauve-Souris, directed by impresario Nikita Balieff. Her choreography and performances made use of a concept within Dance Anthropology called "research-to-performance". They were stranded without money because of bad management by their impresario. Katherine Mary Dunham (June 22, 1909 - May 21, 2006) was an American dancer, choreographer, creator of the Dunham Technique, author, educator, anthropologist, and social activist. Dunham refused to hold a show in one theater after finding out that the city's black residents had not been allowed to buy tickets for the performance. Her mother, Fanny June Dunham, who, according to Dunham's memoir, possessed Indian, French Canadian, English and probably African ancestry, died when Dunham was four years old. The next year the production was repeated with Katherine Dunham in the lead and with students from Dunham's Negro Dance Group in the ensemble. ZURICH Othella Dallas lay on the hardwood . The school was managed in Dunham's absence by Syvilla Fort, one of her dancers, and thrived for about 10 years. Known for her many innovations, Dunham developed a dance pedagogy, later named the Dunham Technique, a style of movement and exercises based in traditional African dances, to support her choreography. [6][10] While still a high school student, she opened a private dance school for young black children. New York: Rizzoli, 1989. Updates? She wrote that he "opened the floodgates of anthropology" for her. . The Dunham company's international tours ended in Vienna in 1960. Katherine Dunham facts for kids. One example of this was studying how dance manifests within Haitian Vodou. Alvin Ailey, who stated that he first became interested in dance as a professional career after having seen a performance of the Katherine Dunham Company as a young teenager of 14 in Los Angeles, called the Dunham Technique "the closest thing to a unified Afro-American dance existing.". Katherine Dunham: The Artist as Activist During World War II. Kaiso is an Afro-Caribbean term denoting praise. She had incurred the displeasure of departmental officials when her company performed Southland, a ballet that dramatized the lynching of a black man in the racist American South. You can't learn about dances until you learn about people. As celebrities, their voices can have a profound influence on popular culture. These experiences provided ample material for the numerous books, articles and short stories Dunham authored. As Wendy Perron wrote, "Jazz dance, 'fusion,' and the search for our cultural identity all have their antecedents in Dunham's work as a dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist. First Name Katherine #37. In September 1943, under the management of the impresario Sol Hurok, her troupe opened in Tropical Review at the Martin Beck Theater. Fun Facts. This was followed by television spectaculars filmed in London, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Sydney, and Mexico City. [15], In 1935, Dunham was awarded travel fellowships from the Julius Rosenwald and Guggenheim foundations to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, and Trinidad studying the dance forms of the Caribbean. On February 22, 2022, Selkirk will offer a unique, one-lot auction titled, Divine Technique: Katherine Dunham Ephemera And Documents. From the beginning of their association, around 1938, Pratt designed the sets and every costume Dunham ever wore. After the national tour of Cabin in the Sky, the Dunham company stayed in Los Angeles, where they appeared in the Warner Brothers short film Carnival of Rhythm (1941). [13], Dunham officially joined the department in 1929 as an anthropology major,[13] while studying dances of the African diaspora. "Katherine Dunham: Decolonizing Anthropology through African American Dance Pedagogy." The restructuring of heavy industry had caused the loss of many working-class jobs, and unemployment was high in the city. In 1946, Dunham returned to Broadway for a revue entitled Bal Ngre, which received glowing notices from theater and dance critics. USA. In recognition of her stance, President Aristide later awarded her a medal of Haiti's highest honor. She describes this during an interview in 2002: "My problemmy strong drive at that time was to remain in this academic position that anthropology gave me, and at the same time continue with this strong drive for motionrhythmic motion". The result of this trip was Dunham's Master's thesis entitled "The Dances of Haiti". katherine dunham fun factsaiken county sc register of deeds katherine dunham fun facts [15] Dunham's relationship with Redfield in particular was highly influential. Many of Dunham students who attended free public classes in East St. Louis Illinois speak highly about the influence of her open technique classes and artistic presence in the city. Katherine Dunham is the inventor of the Dunham technique and a renowned dancer and choreographer of African-American descent. [6] After her mother died, her father left the children with their aunt Lulu on Chicago's South Side. ", Examples include: The Ballet in film "Stormy Weather" (Stone 1943) and "Mambo" (Rossen 1954). She lectured every summer until her death at annual Masters' Seminars in St. Louis, which attracted dance students from around the world. Katherine Dunham. Harrison, Faye V. "Decolonizing Anthropology Moving Further Toward and Anthropology for Liberation." The next year, after the US entered World War II, Dunham appeared in the Paramount musical film Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) in a specialty number, "Sharp as a Tack," with Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. Cruz Banks, Ojeya. It was a huge collection of writings by and about Katherine Dunham, so it naturally covered a lot of area. While in Haiti, Dunham investigated Vodun rituals and made extensive research notes, particularly on the dance movements of the participants. The company was located on the property that formerly belonged to the Isadora Duncan Dance in Caravan Hill but subsequently moved to W 43rd Street. At this time Dunham first became associated with designer John Pratt, whom she later married. She did not complete the other requirements for that degree, however, as she realized that her professional calling was performance and choreography. But what set her work even further apart from Martha Graham and Jos Limn was her fusion of that foundation with Afro-Caribbean styles. After the tour, in 1945, the Dunham company appeared in the short-lived Blue Holiday at the Belasco Theater in New York, and in the more successful Carib Song at the Adelphi Theatre. [52], On May 21, 2006, Dunham died in her sleep from natural causes in New York City. Her mission was to help train the Senegalese National Ballet and to assist President Leopold Senghor with arrangements for the First Pan-African World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar (196566). He started doing stand-up comedy in the late 1980s. According to the Katherine Dunham Centers for Arts and Humanities, Dunham never thought she'd have a career in dance, although she did study with ballerina and choreographer Ruth Page, among others. In 1937 she traveled with them to New York to take part in A Negro Dance Evening, organized by Edna Guy at the 92nd Street YMHA. Katherine Mary Dunham (June 22, 1909 - May 21, 2006) was an American dancer, choreographer, anthropologist, and social activist. Luminaries like Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and Katherine Dunham began to shape and define what this new genre of dance would be. [6] At the age of 15, she organized "The Blue Moon Caf", a fundraising cabaret to raise money for Brown's Methodist Church in Joliet, where she gave her first public performance. Dunham married Jordis McCoo, a black postal worker, in 1931, but he did not share her interests and they gradually drifted apart, finally divorcing in 1938. Schools inspired by it were later opened in Stockholm, Paris, and Rome by dancers who had been trained by Dunham. It was a venue for Dunham to teach young black dancers about their African heritage. Her dance career was interrupted in 1935 when she received funding from the Rosenwald Foundation which allowed her to travel to Jamaica, Martinique, Trinidad, and Haiti for eighteen months to explore each country's respective dance cultures. In 1964, Dunham settled in East St. Louis, and took up the post of artist-in-residence at Southern Illinois University in nearby Edwardsville. Dunham herself was quietly involved in both the Voodoo and Orisa communities of the Caribbean and the United States, in particular with the Lucumi tradition. Photo provided by Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Morris Library Special Collections Research Center. Such visitors included ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, Robert Redfield, Bronisaw Malinowski, A.R. Katherine Dunham, it includes photographs highlighting the many dimensions of Dunham's life and work. Katherine Mary Dunham (also known as Kaye Dunn, June 22, 1909 - May 21, 2006) was an American dancer, choreographer, author, educator, and social activist. until hia death in the 1986. The State Department regularly subsidized other less well-known groups, but it consistently refused to support her company (even when it was entertaining U.S. Army troops), although at the same time it did not hesitate to take credit for them as "unofficial artistic and cultural representatives". The Black Tradition in American Modern Dance. movement and expression. She was likely named after Catherine of Aragon. At the recommendation of her mentor Melville Herskovits, PhB'20a Northwestern University anthropologist and African studies expertDunham's calling cards read both "dancer" and . In December 1951, a photo of Dunham dancing with Ismaili Muslim leader Prince Ali Khan at a private party he had hosted for her in Paris appeared in a popular magazine and fueled rumors that the two were romantically linked. Dun ham had one of the most successful dance careers in African-American and European theater of the 20th century, and directed her own dance company for many years. She has been called the "matriarch and queen mother of black dance." [54], Six decades before this new wave of anthropological discourse began, Katherine Dunham's work demonstrated anthropology being used as a force for challenging racist and colonial ideologies. Facts about Alvin Ailey talk about the famous African-American activist and choreographer. In the mid-1930s she conducted anthropological research on dance and incorporated her findings into her choreography, blending the rhythms and movements of . Stormy Weather is a 1943 American musical film produced and released by 20th Century Fox, adapted by Frederick J. Jackson, Ted Koehler and H.S. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. She also continued refining and teaching the Dunham Technique to transmit that knowledge to succeeding generations of dance students. The troupe performed a suite of West Indian dances in the first half of the program and a ballet entitled Tropic Death, with Talley Beatty, in the second half. This concert, billed as Tropics and Le Hot Jazz, included not only her favorite partners Archie Savage and Talley Beatty, but her principal Haitian drummer, Papa Augustin. [50] Both Dunham and the prince denied the suggestion. The company returned to New York. Regarding her impact and effect he wrote: "The rise of American Negro dance commenced when Katherine Dunham and her company skyrocketed into the Windsor Theater in New York, from Chicago in 1940, and made an indelible stamp on the dance world Miss Dunham opened the doors that made possible the rapid upswing of this dance for the present generation." See "Selected Bibliography of Writings by Katherine Dunham" in Clark and Johnson. "Hoy programa extraordinario y el sbado dos estamos nos ofrece Katherine Dunham,", Constance Valis Hill, "Katherine Dunham's, Anna Kisselgoff, "Katherine Dunham's Legacy, Visible in Youth and Age,". The highly respected Dance magazine did a feature cover story on Dunham in August 2000 entitled "One-Woman Revolution". Born in Glen Ellyn, IL #6. Her technique was "a way of life". Birth City: Decatur. Anthropology News 33, no. In particular, Dunham is a model for the artist as activist. Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers of the 20th century, and directed her own dance company for many years. One of the most important dance artists of the twentieth century, dancer and choreographer Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) created works that thrilled audiences the world over. sequatchie county police scanner, heavy vehicle parking blacktown council,