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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. [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. In 1986 the American Anthropological Association gave her a Distinguished Service Award. [13], Dunham officially joined the department in 1929 as an anthropology major,[13] while studying dances of the African diaspora. One recurring theme that I really . The impresario Sol Hurok, manager of Dunham's troupe for a time, once had Ms. Dunham's legs insured for $250,000. Video. 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". A highlight of Dunham's later career was the invitation from New York's Metropolitan Opera to stage dances for a new production of Aida, starring soprano Leontyne Price. He was only one of a number of international celebrities who were Dunham's friends. After noticing that Katherine enjoyed working and socializing with people, her brother suggested that she study Anthropology. Katherine Dunham, was published in a limited, numbered edition of 130 copies by the Institute for the Study of Social Change. Dunham was always a formidable advocate for racial equality, boycotting segregated venues in the United States and using her performances to highlight discrimination. She also choreographed and appeared in Broadway musicals, operas and the film Cabin in the Sky. In the 1970s, scholars of Anthropology such as Dell Hymes and William S. Willis began to discuss Anthropology's participation in scientific colonialism. Her fieldwork inspired her innovative interpretations of dance in the Caribbean, South America, and Africa. [50] Both Dunham and the prince denied the suggestion. 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. 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. When she was not performing, Dunham and Pratt often visited Haiti for extended stays. Throughout her distinguished career, Dunham earned numerous honorary doctorates, awards and honors. 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: Decolonizing Anthropology Through African American Dance Pedagogy. She expressed a hope that time and the "war for tolerance and democracy" (this was during World War II) would bring a change. Chin, Elizabeth. Died On : May 21, 2006. ..American Anthropologist.. 112, no. Despite 13 knee surgeries, Ms. Dunham danced professionally for more than . Each procession builds on the last and focuses on conditioning the body to prepare for specific exercises that come later. "Katherine Dunham: Decolonizing Anthropology Through African American Dance Pedagogy." The living Dunham tradition has persisted. He started doing stand-up comedy in the late 1980s. She also created several other works of choreography, including The Emperor Jones (a response to the play by Eugene O'Neill) and Barrelhouse. Radcliffe-Brown, Edward Sapir, Melville Herskovits, Lloyd Warner and Bronisaw Malinowski. 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. 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). Dunham became interested in both writing and dance at a young age. In recognition of her stance, President Aristide later awarded her a medal of Haiti's highest honor. He had been a promising philosophy professor at Howard University and a protg of Alfred North Whitehead. 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. Katherine Dunham or the "Matriarch of Black Dance'' as many called her, was a revolutionary African American anthropologist and professional dancer. He was the founder of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York City. During these years, the Dunham company appeared in some 33 countries in Europe, North Africa, South America, Australia, and East Asia. Dunham accepted a position at Southern Illinois University in East St. Louis in the 1960s. Dance is an essential part of life that has always been with me. The following year, she moved to East St. Louis, where she opened the Performing Arts Training Center to help the underserved community. This led to a custody battle over Katherine and her brother, brought on by their maternal relatives. The committee voted unanimously to award $2,400 (more than $40,000 in today's money) to support her fieldwork in the Caribbean. By Renata Sago. 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 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. Luminaries like Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and Katherine Dunham began to shape and define what this new genre of dance would be. As a student, she studied under anthropologists such as A.R. These experiences provided ample material for the numerous books, articles and short stories Dunham authored. [8], Despite her choosing dance, Dunham often voiced recognition of her debt to the discipline: "without [anthropology] I don't know what I would have done.In anthropology, I learned how to feel about myself in relation to other people. Jobson, Ryan Cecil. Gender: Female. Beda Schmid. Grow your vocab the fun way! 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. It opened in Chicago in 1933, with a black cast and with Page dancing the title role. 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. From the solar system to the world economy to educational games, Fact Monster has the info kids are seeking. The Dunham company's international tours ended in Vienna in 1960. [6][10] While still a high school student, she opened a private dance school for young black children. [54] This wave continued throughout the 1990s with scholars publishing works (such as Decolonizing Anthropology: Moving Further in Anthropology for Liberation,[55] Decolonizing Methodologies,[56] and more recently, The Case for Letting Anthropology Burn[57]) that critique anthropology and the discipline's roles in colonial knowledge production and power structures. It was not a success, closing after only eight performances. She also continued refining and teaching the Dunham Technique to transmit that knowledge to succeeding generations of dance students. "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,". [34], According to Dunham, the development of her technique came out of a need for specialized dancers to support her choreographic visions and a greater yearning for technique that "said the things that [she] wanted to say. Years later, after extensive studies and initiations in Haiti,[21] she became a mambo in the Vodun religion. Katherine Dunham introduced African and Caribbean rhythms to modern dance. Katherine Dunham predated, pioneered, and demonstrated new ways of doing and envisioning Anthropology six decades ahead of the discipline. 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. At an early age, Dunham became interested in dance. Dunham created many all-black dance groups. - Pic Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images. 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. In particular, Dunham is a model for the artist as activist. Her technique was "a way of life". Chin, Elizabeth. Her dance company was provided with rent-free studio space for three years by an admirer and patron, Lee Shubert; it had an initial enrollment of 350 students. [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. Occupation(s): from the University of Chicago, she had acquired a vast knowledge of the dances and rituals of the Black peoples of tropical America. As a result, Dunham would later experience some diplomatic "difficulties" on her tours. In the 1930s, she did fieldwork in the Caribbean and infused her choreography with the cultures . A photographic exhibit honoring her achievements, entitled Kaiso! Katherine Dunham. 4 (December 2010): 640642. Other movies she performed in as a dancer during this period included the Abbott and Costello comedy Pardon My Sarong (1942) and the black musical Stormy Weather (1943), which featured a stellar range of actors, musicians and dancers.[24]. Actress: Star Spangled Rhythm. 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. Through her ballet teachers, she was also exposed to Spanish, East Indian, Javanese, and Balinese dance forms.[23]. 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. [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. The Katherine Dunham Museum is located at 1005 Pennsylvania Avenue, East St. Louis, Illinois. Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) brought African dance aesthetics to the United States, forever influencing modern and jazz dance. 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. A carriage house on the grounds is to . [7] The family moved to a predominantly white neighborhood in Joliet, Illinois. Subsequently, Dunham undertook various choreographic commissions at several venues in the United States and in Europe. Beautiful, Justice, Black. 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. Others who attended her school included James Dean, Gregory Peck, Jose Ferrer, Jennifer Jones, Shelley Winters, Sidney Poitier, Shirley MacLaine and Warren Beatty. She returned to graduate school and submitted a master's thesis to the anthropology faculty. 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. Katherine Mary Dunham, 22 Jun 1909 - 21 May 2006 Exhibition Label Born Glen Ellyn, Illinois One of the founders of the anthropological dance movement, Katherine Dunham distilled Caribbean and African dance elements into modern American choreography. Omissions? June 22 Dancer #4. In my mind, it's the most fascinating thing in the world to learn".[19]. Katherine Dunham on dance anthropology. [17] She was one of the first African-American women to attend this college and to earn these degrees. Born: June 22, 1909. 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. 2023 The HistoryMakers. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Using some ballet vernacular, Dunham incorporates these principles into a set of class exercises she labeled as "processions". She wanted to know not only how people danced but why they dance. katherine dunham fun factsaiken county sc register of deeds katherine dunham fun facts "My job", she said, "is to create a useful legacy. However, she did not seriously pursue a career in the profession until she was a student at the University of Chicago. She has been called the "matriarch and queen mother of black dance." Interesting facts. Dunham passed away on Sunday, May 21, 2006 at the age of 96. Classes are led by Ruby Streate, director of dance and education and artistic director of the Katherine Dunham Children's Workshop.