82 Facts About Katherine Dunham

Katherine Mary Dunham was an American dancer, choreographer, anthropologist, and social activist.

Katherine Dunham returned to graduate school and submitted a master's thesis to the anthropology faculty.

Katherine Dunham did not complete the other requirements for that degree as she realized that her professional calling was performance and choreography.

At the height of her career in the 1940s and 1950s, Katherine Dunham was renowned throughout Europe and Latin America and was widely popular in the United States.

Katherine Dunham was an innovator in African-American modern dance as well as a leader in the field of dance anthropology, or ethnochoreology.

Katherine Dunham developed the Dunham Technique, a method of movement to support her dance works.

Katherine Mary Dunham was born on 22 June 1909 in a Chicago hospital.

Katherine Dunham's father, Albert Millard Dunham, was a descendant of slaves from West Africa and Madagascar.

Katherine Dunham became interested in both writing and dance at a young age.

Katherine Dunham 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.

Katherine Dunham officially joined the department in 1929 as an anthropology major, while studying dances of the African diaspora.

Katherine Dunham wrote that he "opened the floodgates of anthropology" for her.

Katherine Dunham showed her the connection between dance and social life giving her the momentum to explore a new area of anthropology, which she later termed "Dance Anthropology".

In 1935, Katherine 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.

Katherine Dunham received a grant to work with Professor Melville Herskovits of Northwestern University, whose ideas about retention of African culture among African Americans served as a base for her research in the Caribbean.

Katherine Dunham was one of the first African-American women to attend this college and to earn these degrees.

In 1938, using materials collected ethnographic fieldwork, Katherine Dunham submitted a thesis, The Dances of Haiti: A Study of Their Material Aspect, Organization, Form, and Function,.

Katherine Dunham recorded her findings through ethnographic fieldnotes and by learning dance techniques, music and song, alongside her interlocutors.

Katherine Dunham 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.

Katherine Dunham felt it was necessary to use the knowledge she gained in her research to acknowledge that Africanist esthetics are significant to the cultural equation in American dance.

Katherine Dunham became friends with, among others, Dumarsais Estime, then a high-level politician, who became president of Haiti in 1949.

In 1928, while still an undergraduate, Katherine 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 Theatre de la Chauve-Souris, directed by impresario Nikita Balieff.

Katherine Dunham studied ballet with Mark Turbyfill and Ruth Page, who became prima ballerina of the Chicago Opera.

In 1931, at the age of 21, Katherine Dunham formed a group called Ballets Negres, one of the first black ballet companies in the United States.

Katherine Dunham created Rara Tonga and Woman with a Cigar at this time, which became well known.

Katherine Dunham created several other works of choreography, including The Emperor Jones and Barrelhouse.

In 1939, Katherine Dunham's company gave additional performances in Chicago and Cincinnati and then returned to New York.

Katherine Dunham had been invited to stage a new number for the popular, long-running musical revue Pins and Needles 1940, produced by the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union.

The next year, after the US entered World War II, Katherine Dunham appeared in the Paramount musical film Star Spangled Rhythm in a specialty number, "Sharp as a Tack," with Eddie "Rochester" Anderson.

Katherine Dunham was located on the property that formerly belonged to the Isadora Duncan Dance in Caravan Hill but subsequently moved to W 43rd Street.

In 1946, Katherine Dunham returned to Broadway for a revue entitled Bal Negre, which received glowing notices from theater and dance critics.

Early in 1947 Katherine Dunham choreographed the musical play Windy City, which premiered at the Great Northern Theater in Chicago.

Katherine Dunham continued to develop dozens of new productions during this period, and the company met with enthusiastic audiences in every city.

Katherine Dunham soon embarked on a tour of venues in South America, Europe, and North Africa.

Katherine 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.

Subsequently, Katherine Dunham undertook various choreographic commissions at several venues in the United States and in Europe.

Katherine Dunham's alumni included many future celebrities, such as Eartha Kitt.

Katherine Dunham decided to live for a year in relative isolation in Kyoto, Japan, where she worked on writing memoirs of her youth.

In 1963 Katherine Dunham was commissioned to choreograph Aida at New York's Metropolitan Opera Company, with Leontyne Price in the title role.

Katherine Dunham was consulted on costuming for the Egyptian and Ethiopian dress.

Dana McBroom-Manno still teaches Katherine Dunham Technique in New York City and is a Master of Katherine Dunham Technique.

In 1964, Katherine Dunham settled in East St Louis, and took up the post of artist-in-residence at Southern Illinois University in nearby Edwardsville.

Katherine Dunham's 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.

Later Katherine Dunham established a second home in Senegal, and she occasionally returned there to scout for talented African musicians and dancers.

In 1967, Katherine Dunham opened the Performing Arts Training Center in East St Louis in an effort to use the arts to combat poverty and urban unrest.

The PATC teaching staff was made up of former members of Katherine Dunham's touring company, as well as local residents.

Katherine Dunham continued refining and teaching the Dunham Technique to transmit that knowledge to succeeding generations of dance students.

Katherine Dunham lectured every summer until her death at annual Masters' Seminars in St Louis, which attracted dance students from around the world.

Katherine Dunham 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.

In 1976, Katherine Dunham was guest artist-in-residence and lecturer for Afro-American studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Commonly grouped into the realm of modern dance techniques, Katherine Dunham is a technical dance form developed from elements of indigenous African and Afro-Caribbean dances.

Strongly founded in her anthropological research in the Caribbean, Katherine Dunham technique introduces rhythm as the backbone of various widely known modern dance principles including contraction and release, groundedness, fall and recover, counterbalance, and many more.

Katherine Dunham's 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 technique is inviting to the influence of cultural movement languages outside of dance including karate and capoeira.

Katherine Dunham is still taught at widely recognized dance institutions such as The American Dance Festival and The Ailey School.

The Katherine Dunham Company toured throughout North America in the mid-1940s, performing as well in the racially segregated South.

Katherine 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.

In Hollywood, Katherine Dunham refused to sign a lucrative studio contract when the producer said she would have to replace some of her darker-skinned company members.

Katherine Dunham 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.

In 1992, at age 83, Katherine Dunham went on a highly publicized hunger strike to protest the discriminatory US foreign policy against Haitian boat-people.

Katherine 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.

Katherine 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.

About that time Katherine 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.

Katherine Dunham continued as her artistic collaborator until his death in 1986.

Katherine Dunham used Habitation Leclerc as a private retreat for many years, frequently bringing members of her dance company to recuperate from the stress of touring and to work on developing new dance productions.

In 1949, Katherine Dunham returned from international touring with her company for a brief stay in the United States, where she suffered a temporary nervous breakdown after the premature death of her beloved brother Albert.

Katherine Dunham had been a promising philosophy professor at Howard University and a protege of Alfred North Whitehead.

Katherine Dunham was only one of a number of international celebrities who were Dunham's friends.

The prince was then married to actress Rita Hayworth, and Katherine Dunham was now legally married to John Pratt; a quiet ceremony in Las Vegas had taken place earlier in the year.

On May 21,2006, Katherine Dunham died in her sleep from natural causes in New York City.

Katherine Dunham predated, pioneered, and demonstrated new ways of doing and envisioning Anthropology six decades ahead of the discipline.

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.

Just like her colleague Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Dunham's anthropology inspired the blurring of lines between creative disciplines and anthropology.

Early on into graduate school, Katherine Dunham was forced to choose between finishing her master's degree in anthropology and pursuing her career in dance.

Katherine Dunham ultimately chose to continue her career in dance without her master's degree in anthropology.

Katherine Dunham was a pioneer of Dance Anthropology, established methodologies of ethnochoreology, and her work gives essential historical context to current conversations and practices of decolonization within and outside of the discipline of anthropology.

Katherine Dunham was the first American dancer to present indigenous forms on a concert stage, the first to sustain a black dance company.

Katherine Dunham 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.

Miss Katherine Dunham opened the doors that made possible the rapid upswing of this dance for the present generation.

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.

Katherine 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.

Not only did Katherine Dunham shed light on the cultural value of black dance, but she clearly contributed to changing perceptions of blacks in America by showing society that as a black woman, she could be an intelligent scholar, a beautiful dancer, and a skilled choreographer.