Omissions? 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. With choreography characterized by exotic sexuality, both became signature works in the Dunham repertory. The 1940s and 1950s saw the successors to the pioneers, give rise to such new stylistic variations through the work of artistic giants such as Jos Limn and Merce Cunningham. Katherine Dunham Quotes On Positivity. 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. She did this for many reasons. [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. She is best known for bringing African and Caribbean dance styles to the US [1]. Mae C. Jemison: First African American Female Astronaut - Biography At the height of her career in the 1940s and 1950s, Dunham was renowned throughout Europe and Latin America and was widely popular in the United States. 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. Chin, Elizabeth. The Katherine Dunham Museum is located at 1005 Pennsylvania Avenue, East St. Louis, Illinois. She taught dance lessons to help pay for her education at the University of Chicago. She was born on June 22, 1909 in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a small . Katherine Dunham, it includes photographs highlighting the many dimensions of Dunham's life and work. She was the recipient of a Kennedy Center Honors Award, the Plaque d'Honneur Haitian-American Chamber of Commerce Award, and a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. In Boston, then a bastion of conservatism, the show was banned in 1944 after only one performance. Katherine Dunham. A key reason for this choice was because she knew that through dance, her work would be able to be accessed by a wider array of audiences; more so than if she continued to limit her work within academia. 10 Facts About Catherine Parr | History Hit The living Dunham tradition has persisted. Born in 1909 #28. USA. Glory Van Scott and Jean-Lon Destin were among other former Dunham dancers who remained her lifelong friends. 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. He has released six stand-up specials and one album of Christmas songs. As a graduate student in anthropology in the mid-1930s, she conducted dance research in the Caribbean. [20] She also became friends with, among others, Dumarsais Estim, then a high-level politician, who became president of Haiti in 1949. Her fieldwork inspired her innovative interpretations of dance in the Caribbean, South America, and Africa. She also created several other works of choreography, including The Emperor Jones (a response to the play by Eugene O'Neill) and Barrelhouse. Katherine Dunham was a rebel among rebels. Unlike other modern dance creators who eschewed classical ballet, Dunham embraced it as a foundation for her technique. Katherine Dunham Bio - Institute for Dunham Technique Certification Her work helped send astronauts to the . Born in 1909 during the turn of the century Victorian era in the small town of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, she became one of the first dance anthropologists, started the first internationally-touring pre-dominantly black dance company . Harrison, Faye V. "Decolonizing Anthropology Moving Further Toward and Anthropology for Liberation." Her alumni included many future celebrities, such as Eartha Kitt. As an African American woman, she broke barriers of race and gender, most notably as the founder of an important dance company that toured the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia for several decades. Tune in & learn about the inception of. Died: May 21, 2006. Keep reading for more such interesting quotes at Kidadl!) Katherine Dunham | YourDictionary Question 2. Fun Facts. In 1948, she opened A Caribbean Rhapsody, first at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London, and then took it to the Thtre des Champs-lyses in Paris. As this show continued its run at the Windsor Theater, Dunham booked her own company in the theater for a Sunday performance. Check out this biography to know about his childhood, family life, achievements and fun facts about him. [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. Birth date: October 17, 1956. [35] In a different interview, Dunham describes her technique "as a way of life,[36]" a sentiment that seems to be shared by many of her admiring students. Schools inspired by it were later opened in Stockholm, Paris, and Rome by dancers who had been trained by Dunham. Johnson 's gift for numbers allowed her to accelerate through her education. [15] Dunham's relationship with Redfield in particular was highly influential. 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.". Dunham is credited with introducing international audiences to African aesthetics and establishing African dance as a true art form. She was also consulted on costuming for the Egyptian and Ethiopian dress. These experiences provided ample material for the numerous books, articles and short stories Dunham authored. ..American Anthropologist.. 112, no. Receiving a post graduate academic fellowship, she went to the Caribbean to study the African diaspora, ethnography and local dance. All rights reserved. In recognition of her stance, President Aristide later awarded her a medal of Haiti's highest honor. Gender: Female. In 1945, Dunham opened and directed the Katherine Dunham School of Dance and Theatre near Times Square in New York City. Dunham early became interested in dance. There she met John Pratt, an artist and designer and they got married in 1941 until his death in 1986. Example. Katherine Dunham | Encyclopedia.com Katherine Dunham Timeline | Articles and Essays | Selections from the They were stranded without money because of bad management by their impresario. The impresario Sol Hurok, manager of Dunham's troupe for a time, once had Ms. Dunham's legs insured for $250,000. "Katherine Dunham's Dance as Public Anthropology. [3] Dunham was an innovator in African-American modern dance as well as a leader in the field of dance anthropology, or ethnochoreology. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200003840/. [54] After recovering crucial dance epistemologies relevant to people of the African diaspora during her ethnographic research, she applied anthropological knowledge toward developing her own dance pedagogy (Dunham Technique) that worked to reconcile with the legacy of colonization and racism and correct sociocultural injustices. However, she did not seriously pursue a career in the profession until she was a student . However, after her father remarried, Albert Sr. and his new wife, Annette Poindexter Dunham, took in Katherine and her brother. . 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. [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. "In introducing authentic African dance-movements to her company and audiences, Dunhamperhaps more than any other choreographer of the timeexploded the possibilities of modern dance expression.". [13] Under their tutelage, she showed great promise in her ethnographic studies of dance. Another fact is that it was the sometime home of the pioneering black American dancer Katherine Dunham. Her father, Albert Millard Dunham, was a descendant of slaves from West Africa and Madagascar. ", Kraut, Anthea, "Between Primitivism and Diaspora: The Dance Performances of, This page was last edited on 12 February 2023, at 22:48. As I document in my book Katherine Dunham: Dance and the . The school was managed in Dunham's absence by Syvilla Fort, one of her dancers, and thrived for about 10 years. The first work, entitled A Touch of Innocence: Memoirs of Childhood, was published in 1959. Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) is revered as one of the great pillars of American dance history. [1] She is best known for bringing African and Caribbean dance styles to the US. Cruz Banks, Ojeya. This gained international headlines and the embarrassed local police officials quickly released her. Although Dunham was offered another grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to pursue her academic studies, she chose dance. In 1976, Dunham was guest artist-in-residence and lecturer for Afro-American studies at the University of California, Berkeley. 3 (1992): 24. In 1947 it was expanded and granted a charter as the Katherine Dunham School of Cultural Arts. When you have faith in something, it's your reason to be alive and to fight for it. Also Known For : . Beda Schmid. The group performed Dunham's Negro Rhapsody at the Chicago Beaux Arts Ball. At the time, the South Side of Chicago was experiencing the effects of the Great Migration were Black southerners attempted to escape the Jim Crow South and poverty. The Katherine Dunham Company became an incubator for many well known performers, including Archie Savage, Talley Beatty, Janet Collins, Lenwood Morris, Vanoye Aikens, Lucille Ellis, Pearl Reynolds, Camille Yarbrough, Lavinia Williams, and Tommy Gomez. 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." From the solar system to the world economy to educational games, Fact Monster has the info kids are seeking. Although it was well received by the audience, local censors feared that the revealing costumes and provocative dances might compromise public morals. This was followed by television spectaculars filmed in London, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Sydney, and Mexico City. Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Upon returning to Chicago, the company performed at the Goodman Theater and at the Abraham Lincoln Center. Luminaries like Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and Katherine Dunham began to shape and define what this new genre of dance would be. Othella Dallas, 93, still teaches Katherine Dunham technique, which she learned from Dunham herself. 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. [52], On May 21, 2006, Dunham died in her sleep from natural causes in New York City. The Met Ballet Company dancers studied Dunham Technique at Dunham's 42nd Street dance studio for the entire summer leading up to the season opening of Aida. 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. ", 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. 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. Birthday : June 22, 1909. 4 (December 2010): 640642. movement and expression. Others who attended her school included James Dean, Gregory Peck, Jose Ferrer, Jennifer Jones, Shelley Winters, Sidney Poitier, Shirley MacLaine and Warren Beatty. [28] Strongly founded in her anthropological research in the Caribbean, Dunham technique introduces rhythm as the backbone of various widely known modern dance principles including contraction and release,[29] groundedness, fall and recover,[30] counterbalance, and many more. Then she traveled to Martinique and to Trinidad and Tobago for short stays, primarily to do an investigation of Shango, the African god who was still considered an important presence in West Indian religious culture. . theatrical designers john pratt. Dana McBroom-Manno still teaches Dunham Technique in New York City and is a Master of Dunham Technique. Katherine Dunham. Many of her students, trained in her studios in Chicago and New York City, became prominent in the field of modern dance. [6][10] While still a high school student, she opened a private dance school for young black children. Retrieved from the Library of Congress,