Birthday : June 22, 1909. In recognition of her stance, President Aristide later awarded her a medal of Haiti's highest honor. for the developing one of the the world performed many of her. "Katherine Dunham: Decolonizing Anthropology through African American Dance Pedagogy." Search input Search submit button. Fun Facts. From the beginning of their association, around 1938, Pratt designed the sets and every costume Dunham ever wore. While a student at the University of Chicago, Dunham also performed as a dancer, ran a dance school, and earned an early bachelor's degree in anthropology. [17] She was one of the first African-American women to attend this college and to earn these degrees. Dunham and Kitt collaborated again in the 1970s in an Equity Production of the musical Peg, based on the Irish play, Peg O' My Heart. However, she did not seriously pursue a career in the profession until she was a student at the University of Chicago. Birth Year: 1956. In 1963, Dunham became the first African-American to choreograph for the Metropolitan Opera. Lyndon B. Johnson was in the audience for opening night. ", "Dunham's European success led to considerable imitation of her work in European revues it is safe to say that the perspectives of concert-theatrical dance in Europe were profoundly affected by the performances of the Dunham troupe. The Katherine Dunham Fund buys and adapts for use as a museum an English Regency-style townhouse on Pennsylvania Avenue at Tenth Street in East Saint Louis. Dancer, anthropologist, social worker, activist, author. From the solar system to the world economy to educational games, Fact Monster has the info kids are seeking. 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. 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. Dunham Company member Dana McBroom-Manno was selected as a featured artist in the show, which played on the Music Fair Circuit. : Writings by and About Katherine Dunham. As one of her biographers, Joyce Aschenbrenner, wrote: "anthropology became a life-way"[2] for Dunham. There, he ran a dry cleaning business in a place mostly occupied by white people. 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. However, one key reason was that she knew she would be able to reach a broader public through dance, as opposed to the inaccessible institutions of academia. Katherine Dunham (born June 22, 1909) [1] was an American dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist [1]. It was considered one of the best learning centers of its type at the time. 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! The recipient of numerous awards, Dunham received a Kennedy Center Honor in 1983 and the National Medal of Arts in 1989. 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. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). 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. In 1964, Dunham settled in East St. Louis, and took up the post of artist-in-residence at Southern Illinois University in nearby Edwardsville. In September 1943, under the management of the impresario Sol Hurok, her troupe opened in Tropical Review at the Martin Beck Theater. 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". [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. She returned to graduate school and submitted a master's thesis to the anthropology faculty. Digital Library. These exercises prepare the dancers for African social and spiritual dances[31] that are practiced later in the class including the Mahi,[32] Yonvalou,[33] and Congo Paillette. Based on her research in Martinique, this three-part performance integrated elements of a Martinique fighting dance into American ballet. In 1987 she received the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award, and was also inducted into the. Intrigued by this theory, Dunham began to study African roots of dance and, in 1935, she traveled to the Caribbean for field research. She is a celebrity dancer. She decided to live for a year in relative isolation in Kyoto, Japan, where she worked on writing memoirs of her youth. Katherine Dunham PhB'36. [26] This work was never produced in Joplin's lifetime, but since the 1970s, it has been successfully produced in many venues. She graduated from Joliet Central High School in 1928, where she played baseball, tennis, basketball, and track; served as vice-president of the French Club, and was on the yearbook staff. One example of this was studying how dance manifests within Haitian Vodou. Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) By Halifu Osumare Katherine Dunham was a world famous dancer, choreographer, author, anthropologist, social activist, and humanitarian. In 1940, she formed the Katherine Dunham Dance Company, which became the premier facility for training dancers. Gender: Female. ZURICH Othella Dallas lay on the hardwood . Katherine Dunham introduced African and Caribbean rhythms to modern dance. [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. 2 (2020): 259271. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Tropics (choreographed 1937) and Le Jazz Hot (1938) were among the earliest of many works based on her research. London: Zed Books, 1999. She taught dance lessons to help pay for her education at the University of Chicago. [59] She ultimately chose to continue her career in dance without her master's degree in anthropology. ", Examples include: The Ballet in film "Stormy Weather" (Stone 1943) and "Mambo" (Rossen 1954). 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. [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. Throughout her distinguished career, Dunham earned numerous honorary doctorates, awards and honors. Biography. She majored in anthropology at the University of Chicago, and after learning that much of Black . As a graduate student in anthropology in the mid-1930s, she conducted dance research in the Caribbean. - Pic Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images. She is known for her many innovations, one of her most known . [16], After her research tour of the Caribbean in 1935, Dunham returned to Chicago in the late spring of 1936. One of her fellow professors, with whom she collaborated, was architect Buckminster Fuller. At the age of 82, Dunham went on a hunger strike in . Book. THE DIGITAL REPOSITORY FOR THE BLACK EXPERIENCE. Actress: Star Spangled Rhythm. While Dunham was recognized as "unofficially" representing American cultural life in her foreign tours, she was given very little assistance of any kind by the U.S. State Department. When you have faith in something, it's your reason to be alive and to fight for it. Some Facts. 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). However, she did not seriously pursue a career in the profession until she was a student . At an early age, Dunham became interested in dance. Chin, Elizabeth. Over the years Katherine Dunham has received scores of special awards, including more than a dozen honorary doctorates from various American universities. 4 (December 2010): 640642. During her tenure, she secured funding for the Performing Arts Training Center, where she introduced a program designed to channel the energy of the communitys youth away from gangs and into dance. It next moved to the West Coast for an extended run of performances there. Here are some interesting facts about Alvin Ailey for you: Facts about Alvin Ailey 1: the popular modern dance 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. As celebrities, their voices can have a profound influence on popular culture. There is also a strong emphasis on training dancers in the practices of engaging with polyrhythms by simultaneously moving their upper and lower bodies according to different rhythmic patterns. A continuation based on her experiences in Haiti, Island Possessed, was published in 1969. Dunham, Katherine dnm . 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. She was a woman far ahead of her time. Her choreography and performances made use of a concept within Dance Anthropology called "research-to-performance". Named Marie-Christine Dunham Pratt, she was their only child. "Between Primitivism and Diaspora: The Dance Performances of Josephine Baker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Katherine Dunham". [49] In fact, that ceremony was not recognized as a legal marriage in the United States, a point of law that would come to trouble them some years later. Dunham is credited with introducing international audiences to African aesthetics and establishing African dance as a true art form. This won international acclaim and is now taught as a modern dance style in many dance schools. 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. 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. As a choreographer, anthropologist, educator, and activist, Katherine Dunham transformed the field of dance in the twentieth century. 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. 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. Cruz Banks, Ojeya. Through her ballet teachers, she was also exposed to Spanish, East Indian, Javanese, and Balinese dance forms.[23]. She was also consulted on costuming for the Egyptian and Ethiopian dress. "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.". Katherine Dunham and John Pratt married in 1949 to adopt Marie-Christine, a French 14-month-old baby. Dunham accepted a position at Southern Illinois University in East St. Louis in the 1960s. Beda Schmid. 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. . 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. [20] She also became friends with, among others, Dumarsais Estim, then a high-level politician, who became president of Haiti in 1949. In 1978 Dunham was featured in the PBS special, Divine Drumbeats: Katherine Dunham and Her People, narrated by James Earl Jones, as part of the Dance in America series. 1. Dunham is a ventriloquist comedian and uses seven different puppets in his act, known by his fans as the "suitcase posse." His first Comedy Central Presents special premiered in 2003. This led to a custody battle over Katherine and her brother, brought on by their maternal relatives. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, . Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers in African-American and European theater of the 20th . [36] Her classes are described as a safe haven for many and some of her students even attribute their success in life to the structure and artistry of her technical institution. Katherine Dunham is the inventor of the Dunham technique and a renowned dancer and choreographer of African-American descent. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. 30 seconds. The Washington Post called her "dancer Katherine the Great." 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. from the University of Chicago, she had acquired a vast knowledge of the dances and rituals of the Black peoples of tropical America. [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. They were stranded without money because of bad management by their impresario. Genres Novels. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. 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. Never completing her required coursework for her graduate degree, she departed for Broadway and Hollywood. She also continued refining and teaching the Dunham Technique to transmit that knowledge to succeeding generations of dance students. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. "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." Pratt, who was white, shared Dunham's interests in African-Caribbean cultures and was happy to put his talents in her service. Grow your vocab the fun way! 8 Katherine Dunham facts. In 1966, she served as a State Department representative for the United States to the first ever World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal. 1. The committee voted unanimously to award $2,400 (more than $40,000 in today's money) to support her fieldwork in the Caribbean. most important pedagogues original work which includes :Batuada. In this post, she choreographed the Chicago production of Run Li'l Chil'lun, performed at the Goodman Theater. Writings by and about Katherine Dunham" , Katherine Dunham, 2005. Much of the literature calls upon researchers to go beyond bureaucratic protocols to protect communities from harm, but rather use their research to benefit communities that they work with. Dunham, who died at the age of 96 [in 2006], was an anthropologist and political activist, especially on behalf of the rights of black people. "My job", she said, "is to create a useful legacy. [11], During her time in Chicago, Dunham enjoyed holding social gatherings and inviting visitors to her apartment. 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. She was instrumental in getting respect for Black dancers on the concert dance stage and directed the first self-supported Black dance company. The highly respected Dance magazine did a feature cover story on Dunham in August 2000 entitled "One-Woman Revolution". By 1957, Dunham was under severe personal strain, which was affecting her health. In 1946, Dunham returned to Broadway for a revue entitled Bal Ngre, which received glowing notices from theater and dance critics. She was born on June 22, 1909 in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a small . 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. [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. Katherine Dunham was a rebel among rebels. From the 40s to the 60s, Dunham and her dance troupe toured to 57 countries of the world. Katherine Mary Dunham (also known as Kaye Dunn, June 22, 1909 - May 21, 2006) was an American dancer, choreographer, author, educator, and social activist. There she met John Pratt, an artist and designer and they got married in 1941 until his death in 1986. Each procession builds on the last and focuses on conditioning the body to prepare for specific exercises that come later. It was a venue for Dunham to teach young black dancers about their African heritage. "[48] During her protest, Dick Gregory led a non-stop vigil at her home, where many disparate personalities came to show their respect, such Debbie Allen, Jonathan Demme, and Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam. "Her mastery of body movement was considered 'phenomenal.' Although Dunham was offered another grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to pursue her academic studies, she chose dance. These experiences provided ample material for the numerous books, articles and short stories Dunham authored. By Renata Sago. All rights reserved. In 2000 she was named one of the first one hundred of "America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures" by the Dance Heritage Coalition. At the recommendation of her mentor Melville Herskovits, PhB'20a Northwestern University anthropologist and African studies expertDunham's calling cards read both "dancer" and . Keep reading for more such interesting quotes at Kidadl!) She also choreographed and starred in dance sequences in such films as Carnival of Rhythm (1942), Stormy Weather (1943), and Casbah (1947). The company soon embarked on a tour of venues in South America, Europe, and North Africa. "Katherine Dunham's Dance as Public Anthropology." Radcliffe-Brown, Fred Eggan, and many others that she met in and around the University of Chicago. Alvin Ailey later produced a tribute for her in 198788 at Carnegie Hall with his American Dance Theater, entitled The Magic of Katherine Dunham. Additionally, she worked closely with Vera Mirova who specialized in "Oriental" dance. Understanding that the fact was due to racial discrimination, she made sure the incident was publicized. She was likely named after Catherine of Aragon.