She was born on June 22, 1909 in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a small . Dunham ended her fast only after exiled Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Jesse Jackson came to her and personally requested that she stop risking her life for this cause. Dunham is still taught at widely recognized dance institutions such as The American Dance Festival and The Ailey School. Katherine Dunham and the dances of the African diaspora Katherine Dunham predated, pioneered, and demonstrated new ways of doing and envisioning Anthropology six decades ahead of the discipline. [1] The Dunham Technique is still taught today. They had particular success in Denmark and France. In 1938 she joined the Federal Theatre Project in Chicago and composed a ballet, LAgYa, based on Caribbean dance. 3 (1992): 24. About Modern Dance - Jacqueline Burgess Jacqueline Burgess [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. It was a venue for Dunham to teach young black dancers about their African heritage. [3] Dunham was an innovator in African-American modern dance as well as a leader in the field of dance anthropology, or ethnochoreology. Divine Technique: Katherine Dunham Archive - Selkirk Auctioneers Katherine Dunham - Dance Tropics (choreographed 1937) and Le Jazz Hot (1938) were among the earliest of many works based on her research. As a result, Dunham would later experience some diplomatic "difficulties" on her tours. Why was Katherine Dunham called the mother of African American dance Occupation(s): Banks, Ojeya Cruz. 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.". This led to a custody battle over Katherine and her brother, brought on by their maternal relatives. [50] Both Dunham and the prince denied the suggestion. A Short Danceography: Katherine Dunham - YouTube If Cities Could Dance: East St. Louis. most important pedagogues original work which includes :Batuada. Beautiful, Justice, Black. Also that year they appeared in the first ever, hour-long American spectacular televised by NBC, when television was first beginning to spread across America. After Mexico, Dunham began touring in Europe, where she was an immediate sensation. movement and expression. 2 (2020): 259271. There, he ran a dry cleaning business in a place mostly occupied by white people. "The Case for Letting Anthropology Burn: Sociocultural Anthropology in 2019." It was considered one of the best learning centers of its type at the time. Katherine Mary Dunham (June 22, 1909 May 21, 2006)[1] was an American dancer, choreographer, anthropologist, and social activist. Katherine Dunham, was published in a limited, numbered edition of 130 copies by the Institute for the Study of Social Change. [41] The State Department was dismayed by the negative view of American society that the ballet presented to foreign audiences. Facts about Alvin Ailey talk about the famous African-American activist and choreographer. [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. Upon returning to Chicago, the company performed at the Goodman Theater and at the Abraham Lincoln Center. 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. The following year, she moved to East St. Louis, where she opened the Performing Arts Training Center to help the underserved community. Childhood & Early Life. Throughout her distinguished career, Dunham earned numerous honorary doctorates, awards and honors. Katherine Dunham. 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. Over the years Katherine Dunham has received scores of special awards, including more than a dozen honorary doctorates from various American universities. [22] Katherine Dunham, a world-renowned dancer and choreographer, had big plans for East St. Louis in 1977. Dunham's last appearance on Broadway was in 1962 in Bamboche!, which included a few former Dunham dancers in the cast and a contingent of dancers and drummers from the Royal Troupe of Morocco. Katherine Dunham Birthday & Fun Facts | Kidadl The critics acknowledged the historical research she did on dance in ancient Egypt, but they were not appreciative of her choreography as staged for this production.[25]. By the time she received an M.A. Katherine Dunham - Students | Britannica Kids | Homework Help Black Joy, Black Power: Dancing the Legacy of Katherine Dunham In 1963, she became the first African American to choreograph for the Met since Hemsley Winfield set the dances for The Emperor Jones in 1933. Two Avant-Garde Women Who Took Big Risks in Chicago's Art Scene The living Dunham tradition has persisted. This is where, in the late 1960s, global dance legend Katherine Dunham put down roots and taught the arts of the African diaspora to local children and teenagers. [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. The prince was then married to actress Rita Hayworth, and Dunham was now legally married to John Pratt; a quiet ceremony in Las Vegas had taken place earlier in the year. Intrigued by this theory, Dunham began to study African roots of dance and, in 1935, she traveled to the Caribbean for field research. As a choreographer, anthropologist, educator, and activist, Katherine Dunham transformed the field of dance in the twentieth century. On one of these visits, during the late 1940s, she purchased a large property of more than seven hectares (approximately 17.3 acres) in the Carrefours suburban area of Port-au-Prince, known as Habitation Leclerc. He had been a promising philosophy professor at Howard University and a protg of Alfred North Whitehead. Katherine Dunham's long and remarkable life spanned the fields of anthropology, dance, theater, and inner city social work.As an anthropologist, Dunham studied and lived among the peoples of Haiti and other Caribbean islands; as a dancer and choreographer she combined "primitive" Caribbean dances with . - Pic Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images. One example of this was studying how dance manifests within Haitian Vodou. She was likely named after Catherine of Aragon. ", Richard Buckle, ballet historian and critic, wrote: "Her company of magnificent dancers and musicians met with the success it has and that herself as explorer, thinker, inventor, organizer, and dancer should have reached a place in the estimation of the world, has done more than a million pamphlets could for the service of her people. In Boston, then a bastion of conservatism, the show was banned in 1944 after only one performance. Katherine Dunham in 1956. In the 1930s, she did fieldwork in the Caribbean and infused her choreography with the cultures . Deren is now considered to be a pioneer of independent American filmmaking. Her father was of black ancestry, a descendant of slaves from West Africa and Madagascar, while her mother belonged to mixed French-Canadian and Native . Katherine Dunham - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia informed by new methods of america's most highly regarded. "Katherine Dunham's Dance as Public Anthropology. Katherine Dunham introduced African and Caribbean rhythms to modern dance. 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. Katherine Dunham Facts for Kids Corrections? She also continued refining and teaching the Dunham Technique to transmit that knowledge to succeeding generations of dance students. 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. American dancer and choreographer (19092006). However, she did not seriously pursue a career in the profession until she was a student . 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. The Katherine Dunham Museum is located at 1005 Pennsylvania Avenue, East St. Louis, Illinois. Dunham considered some really important and interesting issues, like how class and race issues translate internationally, being accepted into new communities, different types of being black, etc. Katherine Dunham: The Artist as Activist | Center for the Humanities 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. Her popular books are Island Possessed (1969), Touch of Innocence (1959), Dances of Haiti (1983), Kaiso! Dunham and her company appeared in the Hollywood movie Casbah (1948) with Tony Martin, Yvonne De Carlo, and Peter Lorre, and in the Italian film Botta e Risposta, produced by Dino de Laurentiis. 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. Schools inspired by it were later opened in Stockholm, Paris, and Rome by dancers who had been trained by Dunham. In 1947 it was expanded and granted a charter as the Katherine Dunham School of Cultural Arts. Radcliffe-Brown, Fred Eggan, and many others that she met in and around the University of Chicago. until hia death in the 1986. 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. As a student, she studied under anthropologists such as A.R. Kraft from the story by Jerry Horwin and Seymour B. Robinson, directed by Andrew L. Stone, produced by William LeBaron and starring Lena Horne, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and Cab Calloway.The film is one of two Hollywood musicals with an African . Childhood & Early Life. The highly respected Dance magazine did a feature cover story on Dunham in August 2000 entitled "One-Woman Revolution". Mae C. Jemison: First African American Female Astronaut - Biography 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. Stormy Weather (1943 film) - Wikipedia Fun facts. . Her mother passed away when Katherine was only 3 years old. ", Kraut, Anthea, "Between Primitivism and Diaspora: The Dance Performances of, This page was last edited on 12 February 2023, at 22:48. 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. Katherine returnedto to the usa in 1931 miss Dunham met one of. Dunhams writings, sometimes published under the pseudonym Kaye Dunn, include Katherine Dunhams Journey to Accompong (1946), an account of her anthropological studies in Jamaica; A Touch of Innocence (1959), an autobiography; Island Possessed (1969); and several articles for popular and scholarly journals. Dancer. The result of this trip was Dunham's Master's thesis entitled "The Dances of Haiti". Most Popular #73650. 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. 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. Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers in American and European theater of the 20th century, and directed her own dance company for many years. Johnson 's gift for numbers allowed her to accelerate through her education. Dunham accepted a position at Southern Illinois University in East St. Louis in the 1960s. June 22 Dancer #4. In 1986 the American Anthropological Association gave her a Distinguished Service Award. ((Photographer unknown, Courtesy of Missouri History Museum Photograph and Prints collection. See "Selected Bibliography of Writings by Katherine Dunham" in Clark and Johnson. Q. Katherine Mary Dun ham was an African-American dancer, choreographer, author, educator, anthropologist, and social activist. The Dunham Technique Ballet African Dancing Her favorite color was platinum Caribbean Dancing Her favorite food was Filet of Sole How she started out Ballet African Dance Caribbean Dance The Dunham Technique wasn't so much as a technique so "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,". There she met John Pratt, an artist and designer and they got married in 1941 until his death in 1986. About that time Dunham met and began to work with John Thomas Pratt, a Canadian who had become one of America's most renowned costume and theatrical set designers. Omissions? Time reported that, "she went on a 47-day hunger strike to protest the U.S.'s forced repatriation of Haitian refugees. Book. 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. Text:. Katherine Dunham died on May 21 2006. [6][10] While still a high school student, she opened a private dance school for young black children. In the mid-1950s, Dunham and her company appeared in three films: Mambo (1954), made in Italy; Die Grosse Starparade (1954), made in Germany; and Msica en la Noche (1955), made in Mexico City. [20] She recorded her findings through ethnographic fieldnotes and by learning dance techniques, music and song, alongside her interlocutors. Katherine Dunham - Bio, Age, Wiki, Facts and Family - in4fp.com Long, Richard A, and Joe Nash. Anthropology News 33, no. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200003840/. Video footage of Dunham technique classes show a strong emphasis on anatomical alignment, breath, and fluidity. Fun facts about Julie Belafonte brought to you by IDTC! Text: Julie Dunham, Katherine dnm . In 1978, an anthology of writings by and about her, also entitled Kaiso! Radcliffe-Brown, Edward Sapir, Melville Herskovits, Lloyd Warner and Bronisaw Malinowski. 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. I Took A Katherine Dunham-Technique Dance Class And Learned - Essence The PATC teaching staff was made up of former members of Dunham's touring company, as well as local residents. ", Black writer Arthur Todd described her as "one of our national treasures". Members of Dunham's last New York Company auditioned to become members of the Met Ballet Company. Dunham's background as an anthropologist gave the dances of the opera a new authenticity. She returned to the United States in 1936 informed by new methods of movement and expression, which she incorporated into techniques that transformed the world of dance. . Retrieved from the Library of Congress, . [13], Dunham officially joined the department in 1929 as an anthropology major,[13] while studying dances of the African diaspora. He was only one of a number of international celebrities who were Dunham's friends. ", "Kaiso! Despite 13 knee surgeries, Ms. Dunham danced professionally for more than . from the University of Chicago, she had acquired a vast knowledge of the dances and rituals of the Black peoples of tropical America. Glory Van Scott and Jean-Lon Destin were among other former Dunham dancers who remained her lifelong friends. After her company performed successfully, Dunham was chosen as dance director of the Chicago Negro Theater Unit of the Federal Theatre Project. Katherine Dunham, the dancer, choreographer, teacher and anthropologist whose pioneering work introduced much of the black heritage in dance to the stage, died Sunday at her home in Manhattan. You can't learn about dances until you learn about people. 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. While a student at the University of Chicago, she formed a dance group that performed in concert at the Chicago Worlds Fair in 1934 and with the Chicago Civic Opera company in 193536. Dunham created Rara Tonga and Woman with a Cigar at this time, which became well known. By Renata Sago. While in Haiti, she hasn't only studied Vodun rituals, but also participated and became a mambo, female high priest in the Vodun religion. In August she was awarded a bachelor's degree, a Ph.B., bachelor of philosophy, with her principal area of study being social anthropology. In September 1943, under the management of the impresario Sol Hurok, her troupe opened in Tropical Review at the Martin Beck Theater. Katherine Dunham is credited Her dance troupe in venues around. Katherine Dunham - Author, Career, Childhood - Katherine Dunham Biography [4], Katherine Mary Dunham was born on 22 June 1909 in a Chicago hospital. American Anthropologist 122, no. In 1976, Dunham was guest artist-in-residence and lecturer for Afro-American studies at the University of California, Berkeley. As this show continued its run at the Windsor Theater, Dunham booked her own company in the theater for a Sunday performance. A continuation based on her experiences in Haiti, Island Possessed, was published in 1969. 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. Such visitors included ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, Robert Redfield, Bronisaw Malinowski, A.R. [6] After her mother died, her father left the children with their aunt Lulu on Chicago's South Side. ", 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. 1. Katherine Dunham. Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) brought African dance aesthetics to the United States, forever influencing modern and jazz dance. Pratt, who was white, shared Dunham's interests in African-Caribbean cultures and was happy to put his talents in her service. [2] Most of Dunham's works previewed many questions essential to anthropology's postmodern turn, such as critiquing understandings of modernity, interpretation, ethnocentrism, and cultural relativism. 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 1992, at age 83, Dunham went on a highly publicized hunger strike to protest the discriminatory U.S. foreign policy against Haitian boat-people. Katherine Dunham. Decolonozing Anthropology: Katherine "the Great" Dunham Example. She also created several other works of choreography, including The Emperor Jones (a response to the play by Eugene O'Neill) and Barrelhouse. Back in the United States she formed an all-black dance troupe, which in 1940 performed her Tropics and Le Jazz . Dancers are frequently instructed to place weight on the balls of their feet, lengthen their lumbar and cervical spines, and breathe from the abdomen and not the chest. She has been called the "matriarch and queen mother of black dance."[2]. All You Need to Know About Dunham Technique - Dance Spirit Years later, after extensive studies and initiations in Haiti,[21] she became a mambo in the Vodun religion. After noticing that Katherine enjoyed working and socializing with people, her brother suggested that she study Anthropology. : Writings by and About Katherine Dunham. Katherine Dunham Facts for Kids | KidzSearch.com The original two-week engagement was extended by popular demand into a three-month run, after which the company embarked on an extensive tour of the United States and Canada. 30 seconds. During her studies, Dunham attended a lecture on anthropology, where she was introduced to the concept of dance as a cultural symbol. Biography. Dance is an essential part of life that has always been with me. Dunham also studied ballet with Mark Turbyfill and Ruth Page, who became prima ballerina of the Chicago Opera. Facts About Katherine Dunham. [15] It was in a lecture by Redfield that she learned about the relationship between dance and culture, pointing out that Black Americans had retained much of their African heritage in dances. The company returned to New York. [21] This style of participant observation research was not yet common within the discipline of anthropology. Dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist Katherine Dunham was born on June 22, 1910, in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a small suburb of . Her field work in the Caribbean began in Jamaica, where she lived for several months in the remote Maroon village of Accompong, deep in the mountains of Cockpit Country. [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. Katherine Dunham always had an interest in dance and anthropology so her main goal in life was to combine them. She is known for her many innovations, one of her most known . Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. ", Examples include: The Ballet in film "Stormy Weather" (Stone 1943) and "Mambo" (Rossen 1954). This was followed by television spectaculars filmed in London, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Sydney, and Mexico City. Katherine Dunham and John Pratt married in 1949 to adopt Marie-Christine, a French 14-month-old baby. Her father was given a number of important positions at court . for the developing one of the the world performed many of her. In 1921, a short story she wrote when she was 12 years old, called "Come Back to Arizona", was published in volume 2 of The Brownies' Book. Katherine Dunham on dance anthropology. As one of her biographers, Joyce Aschenbrenner, wrote: "anthropology became a life-way"[2] for Dunham. Two years later she formed an all-Black company, which began touring extensively by 1943. The program she created runs to this day at the Katherine Dunham Centers for Arts and Humanities, revolutionizing lives with dance and culture. She directed the Katherine Dunham School of Dance in New York, and was artist-in-residence at Southern Illinois University. However, it has now became a common practice within the discipline. [60], However, this decision did not keep her from engaging with and highly influencing the discipline for the rest of her life and beyond. Katherine Dunham was an American dancer and choreographer, credited to have brought the influence of Africa and the Caribbean into American dance . She decided to live for a year in relative isolation in Kyoto, Japan, where she worked on writing memoirs of her youth. She died a month before her 97th birthday.[53]. "My job", she said, "is to create a useful legacy. As a graduate student in anthropology in the mid-1930s, she conducted dance research in the Caribbean. 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. Dunham's mother, Fanny June Dunham (ne Taylor), who was of mixed French-Canadian and Native American heritage. 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. Initially scheduled for a single performance, the show was so popular that the troupe repeated it for another ten Sundays. For several years, Dunham's personal assistant and press promoter was Maya Deren, who later also became interested in Vodun and wrote The Divine Horseman: The Voodoo Gods of Haiti (1953). The Washington Post called her "dancer Katherine the Great." Fighting, Alive, Have Faith. Legendary dancer, choreographer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham was born June 22, 1909, to an African American father and French-Canadian mother who died when she was young. A actor. Dunham early became interested in dance. About Miss Dunham - Katherine Dunham Centers for Arts and Humanities 113 views, 2 likes, 4 loves, 0 comments, 6 shares, Facebook Watch Videos from Institute for Dunham Technique Certification: Fun facts about Julie Belafonte brought to you by IDTC! American dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist. 10 Facts about Alvin Ailey - Fact File This gained international headlines and the embarrassed local police officials quickly released her. At the recommendation of her mentor Melville Herskovits, PhB'20a Northwestern University anthropologist and African studies expertDunham's calling cards read both "dancer" and . Born in 1909 #28. Dunham became interested in both writing and dance at a young age. Katherine Dunham (born June 22, 1909) [1] [2] was an American dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist. Video. Legendary dancer, choreographer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham was born June 22, 1909, to an African American father and French-Canadian mother who died when she was young.
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