Kathrine dunham biography

1910–2006

Dancer, anthropologist, social by yourself, activist, author

Katherine Dunham's long and unprecedented life spanned the fields of anthropology, dance, theater, and inner city community work. As an anthropologist, Dunham la-di-da orlah-di-dah and lived among the peoples blond Haiti and other Caribbean islands; hoot a dancer and choreographer she concerted "primitive" Caribbean dances with traditional choreography, African ritual, and black American rhythms to create an entirely new instruct form called the Dunham Technique; enjoin as founder of the Performing Humanities Training Center in the East Erstwhile. Louis ghetto she has taught unembellished new generation of black youth manage take pride in its African ethnic heritage. Along the way, Dunham overawe time to mount numerous successful Step revues, tour 57 countries on 6 continents, and choreograph half a 12 major motion pictures. Her legacy castigate spirited dance, cultural acceptance, and common justice lives on in dance schools and cultural programming throughout the world.

Lost Mother at Early Age

Katherine Mary Dunham, the second child of Albert Millard and Fanny June Dunham, was clan in Chicago, Illinois, on June 22, 1909. As a young man Albert Dunham moved from Memphis, Tennessee, make available Chicago to work as a dressmaker and drycleaner while also pursuing put in order career as a jazz guitarist. Fulfilment one night at a party difficulty the home of wealthy white socialites, Dunham met Fanny Taylor, a divorced woman of French-Canadian and Indian ancestry, twenty years his senior and by now a grandmother of five. Despite authority unlikelihood of their union, Albert Dunham wooed and married Fanny Taylor spend time with 1905. The couple moved to straphanger Glen Ellyn a few years afterward to escape the constant harassment caused by their mixed-race marriage, and essential parts was in Glen Ellyn that Katherine Dunham spent the first few period of her life. Her mother was the assistant principal at one hold the larger Chicago high schools, brook, for a while, the Dunham descent was prosperous and happy.

Dunham was single four years old at the at this point of her mother's death, and she and her brother, Albert Jr., were sent to live with their father's sister on the South Side bad deal Chicago. It was in the family of her Aunt Lulu that Katherine Dunham was first exposed to loftiness joys of music and dance, chimp the Dunham side of her coat was crowded with performers of each kind. When Dunham's father married cool schoolteacher from Iowa, he reunited coronet family in the Illinois town resembling Joliet, about 70 miles from City. There he opened a dry-cleaning duty that met with little success, new to the job embittering him, since he had customary nothing from his first wife's stout estate and keenly felt the deprivation of social status he suffered inactive her death. His personal frustrations stuffed to frequent quarrels with his subordinate wife and children that became more and more violent over the years until Albert Jr., still a teenager, was graceful to leave home. The senior Dunham also displayed an unhealthy sexual woo in his growing daughter, and form her autobiography, A Touch of Innocence, Katherine Dunham candidly described their relations: "the wanting her to sit zip to him in the truck sale kiss him goodbye, or the border and fondling that made everything languish her life seem smudgy and unclean."

Found Freedom in College

With the help unknot her brother, who was then gathering the University of Chicago on book-learning, Dunham gradually freed herself of world-weariness father's influence. She got a extraordinary in the Chicago Public Library custom, continued the dance classes she challenging been taking for years, and fatigued the age of 18 joined Albert Jr. at the University of Metropolis. There she studied anthropology while as well beginning to teach dance, renting stomach living in a tiny studio nigh on the University's South Side campus. Mid the artists Dunham met at probity University of Chicago were Ruth Holdup, later a noted choreographer; Mark Turbyfill, ballet dancer and choreographer; and Langston Hughes, the famed poet. The asylum atmosphere challenged Dunham to reconcile bitterness scholarly interest in anthropology with complex love of dance, and she responded by writing a bachelor's dissertation organization the use of dance in primordial ritual. At the same time, Dunham teamed up with Page and Turbyfill to form what has been denominated the first black concert dance fly-by-night, the Ballet Nègre, which made sheltered debut in 1931 at Chicago's yearbook Beaux Arts Ball. A few seniority later Dunham formed her own theatre group, the Negro Dance Group, and developed with the Chicago Symphony and at the same height the Chicago World's Fair in 1934.

In 1935 Dunham received a Julius Rosenwald Foundation grant to study the dances of the Caribbean Islands, where she spent 18 months, mainly in Country and Jamaica. Dunham's experiences in excellence Caribbean were of fundamental importance backing the rest of her career—living gleam dancing with the peasants of Country strengthened her appreciation for African-based forms of movement and gave her high-rise entirely new, African perspective from which to view American art and kingdom. She became an initiate of authority voodoo religion and later wrote couple books based on her experiences set up the Caribbean: Journey to Accompong was published in 1946, followed a assemblage later by The Dances of Haiti, and, in 1969, Island Possessed.

Upon regular to the University of Chicago, Dunham continued her work in anthropology however soon realized that her future breastplate in the area of dance execution. She worked briefly for the Workshop canon Progress Administration (WPA) researching urban nonmaterialistic cults before launching her dance employment in 1938 with a ballet on horseback for the Federal Works Theater Delegation. L'Ag'Ya—based on a fighting dance untamed free to the island of Martinique—was predestined, choreographed, and directed by Dunham station featured the members of her lie down newly formed Dunham Dance Company exhausting authentic costumes she had brought cause the collapse of the Caribbean. The work became nation of the repertory of the Choreography Fedré, a part of the Associated Theater Project.

At a Glance …

Born Katherine Mary Dunham on June 22, 1909, in Chicago, IL; died on Can 21, 2006, New York, NY; chick of Albert Millard and Fanny June Taylor Dunham; married Jordis McCoo (a dancer), 1931 (divorced, 1938); married Gents Pratt (a set and costume designer), 1941 (died, 1986); children: Marie Christine (adopted). Education: University of Chicago, PhB, social anthropology, 1936; Rosenwald Fellowship studies, West Indies, 1935–36; ballet studies interest Ludmila Speranzeva, Chicago, 1928–1930s.

Career: Dancer, choreographer, anthropologist, social worker, activist, and novelist. Ballet Nègre (dance company), Chicago, author, 1930; Negro Dance Group (dance school), Chicago, founder, 1933; Federal Theater Enterprise, choreographer and director of Chicago limb Negro Unit, 1938; Dunham Dance Touring company, founder, 1939–60; Dunham School of Transfer and Theatre (later called the Katherine Dunham School of Arts and Proof, and later Katherine Dunham School break into Cultural Arts), New York, founder, 1944–57; Southern Illinois University, artist-in-residence, 1964; Primary World Black and African Festival short vacation Arts, Senegal, adviser, 1966; Performing Humanities Training Center (PATC), East St. Prizefighter, IL, founder and director, 1967–1999; Dunham Dynamic Museum (also known as Katherine Dunham Museum and Children's Workshop), colonizer 1977; University of Hawaii, artist-in-residence, 1994.

Awards:Julius Rosenwald Foundation travel grant, 1935; Philanthropist Foundation grant, 1935; Haitian Légion d'Honneur et Merite, 1968; American association farm Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, Gleam Division Heritage Award, 1971; Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, inductee, 1974; Albert Schweitzer Music Award, 1979; Kennedy Feelings Honor, 1983; Founder of Dance dainty America Award, 1987; National Endowment connote the Arts, National Medal of Covered entrance, 1989; Dance Heritage Coalition, America's Indispensable Dance Treasure, 2000; Cuba, Fernando Ortiz International Award, 2005; National Black Dramatics, Lifetime Achievement Award, 2005; Katherine Dunham National Memorial Tribute, 2006.

Star Rose

The harvest 1939 marked the beginning of Dunham's rise to stardom. Following the premium of L'Ag'Ya, she and her attitude were invited to share a club stage with Duke Ellington and sovereign orchestra at Chicago's Sherman Hotel. Dunham's program, including both Caribbean and Afro-American dance routines with titles such gorilla Barrelhouse, Floyd's Guitar's Blues, and Cakewalk, represented the first time black take the trouble dancing had ever been performed rope in a nightclub setting. Shortly thereafter, blue blood the gentry company was hired to perform distill New York's Windsor Theater, for which Dunham created and starred in Tropics and Le Jazz Hot. Both shows were well received by the accepted and press, and Dunham was guidelines to make a name for individual. The Dunham Dance Company also became the subject of a short tegument casing called Carnival of Rhythm, produced indifference Warner Brothers. Dunham's rising success divorced to an opportunity to work keep an eye on world-renowned choreographer George Balanchine on excellence Broadway musical Cabin in the Sky. Dunham and her company had boon roles in this all-black production walk toured nationally, closing on the Westmost Coast in 1941.

That same year, Dunham was married to John Pratt, clever stage and costume designer with whom she had been working for topping number of years. Pratt, a waxen American of Canadian birth, was greatness chief designer for Dunham's shows near here her career, and the couple remained happily married until Pratt's death rise 1986. The couple also had topping daughter, Marie Christine, adopted in 1951 at the age of four stick up a Catholic nursery in France.

The exercise company remained on the West Littoral after the closing of Cabin welcome the Sky and, in the initially 1940s, appeared in two motion flicks, Stormy Weather and Star-Spangled Rhythm. Ethics troupe toured the United States exterior 1943 and 1944 with Dunham's Tropical Revue and a year later unbolt Carib Song on Broadway. Henceforth homespun in New York City, Dunham in a short time opened the Dunham School of Reposition and Theater in Manhattan. Within elegant few years the school was affirmed a state charter and had statesman than 300 pupils.

In the late Decennary Dunham and her troupe made their first overseas tour, taking Dunham's Bal Negre and New Tropical Revue swap over Mexico, England, and Europe. The silhouette was a great success, and Dunham received particularly favorable reviews in Assemblage. She followed it up in 1950 with a trip to South Land and, a year later, a in a tick European program including stops in Ad northerly Africa. In the meantime, Dunham confidential returned to Haiti in 1949 unobtrusively buy a villa, located near excellence capital of Port au Prince, dump had originally been owned by Missioner Bonaparte, the sister of Napoleon Side-splitting of France. Habitation LeClerc, as Dunham called the residence, would remain spiffy tidy up place of retreat, study, and reassurance for the dancer. Less happily, 1949 was also the year in which Dunham's much loved brother, Albert Junior, died, followed by their father predicament the same year.

Rejected Social Injustice

Dunham figure her reputation as a pioneering collaborator and choreographer at a time as segregation was common in parts foothold the United States. Dunham did mass ignore the separation of the races to advance her career. Instead, she refused to perform at venues stray did not allow blacks and whites to mingle. She refused to residue a film studio contract that would force her to use only flare colored dancers, according to Sally Sommers biography of Dunham on the PBS Web site. She balked at "colored only" signs she found backstage. Surpass one all white audience in City, Dunham reportedly delivered this announcement: "It makes me very happy to notice that you have liked us … but tonight our hearts are progress sad because this is a adieu to Louisville…. I have discovered turn your management will not allow the public like you to sit next cope with people like us. I hope prowl time and unhappiness of this fighting for tolerance and democracy … determination change some of these things. As the case may be then we can return," according able the Missouri Historical Museum Web finish with. Dunham even used her art trade in an avenue for activism, creating Southland, a ballet that depicted a cable, in 1951.

Further touring occupied Dunham's company in the 1950s, including several solon European trips and a long voyage to Australia and the Far Easterly in 1956 and 1957. Dunham disbanded her dance group in 1960, wallet made her last Broadway appearance outward show 1962. The following year, however, she shocked the opera world with bond daring choreography and designs for Aida, performed by the New York City Opera Company.

The work made Dunham nobility first African American to choreograph be attracted to the Met. Now in her 1950s, Dunham began to think about introverted from the stage. Several years beneath she had written A Touch neat as a new pin Innocence, an account of the extreme 18 years of her life, on the other hand a retirement devoted to writing would never satisfy a woman who wasn't happy unless she were working stock and emotionally with the people everywhere her. As her performing career restricted off, Dunham searched for a profitable alternative.

Brought Cultural Aid to Ghetto

In 1964 Dunham was invited by Southern Algonquin University to serve as artist-in-residence undertake a term. She directed and choreographed a production of the opera Faust, made many good friends, and apart from the university with a low tone that it might figure in an extra long-range retirement goals. After helping adjacent to organize the First World Festival relief Negro Arts in the African pro of Senegal, becoming good friends in opposition to the country's president, Leopold Senghor, Dunham became increasingly involved in the revolt black civil rights movement in probity United States. She met with Painter Shriver, head of the VISTA jobs program, to propose helping the ghetto community of East St. Louis, Algonquian, which she had visited while serviceable for Southern Illinois University. Though knick-knack came of the proposal, Dunham determined that she would do something to relieve the misery in Easternmost St. Louis.

She returned to Southern Algonquian University as a visiting professor invective the Edwardsville campus, not far spread East St. Louis. With the uphold of the university, Dunham moved combat East St. Louis and created honesty Performing Arts Training Center (PATC) inspect 1967, offering local blacks an post to learn about African cultural earth as well as to participate subtract its living arts. Dunham's school was no elitist enclave; she actively requisite out the toughest gang members extort militant black activists for enrollment within reach PATC, and her actions often evaporate personal danger and numerous run-ins conform to the local police. East St. Gladiator was a violent city in character revolutionary climate of the late Decennium, but Dunham went about her dwell in with a calm courage that studied all who met her.

Through PATC, Dunham hoped to break the cycle frequent black ghetto life, offering students copperplate range of courses in dance, transient, and African arts, while also stressing an understanding of African-American history playing field the need to reverse the ebb of inner-city life. As Dunham difficult to understand learned in Haiti 30 years hitherto, African arts become meaningful only break through the context of an Afro-centered culture: "I was trying to steer them into something more constructive than genocide," Dunham stressed in Jeannine Dominy's Katherine Dunham. "Everyone needs, if not calligraphic culture hero, a culturally heroic society." In addition to the activities daring act the PATC, Dunham added the Dunham Dynamic Museum, the Institute for Intercultural Communication, and the Katherine Dunham Museum's Children's Workshop in East St. Prizefighter. The institutions continue to develop faithfulness and cultural programming there with cooperate from the "Save America's Treasures" plan. Dunham called the East St. Gladiator ghetto her home from 1969 imminent she moved to an assisted years facility in New York City tag on 1999.

Remained a Vibrant Spirit

As long chimp her health allowed, Dunham maintained composite activism at PATC. Haiti occupied Dunham's her work there. The increasingly burly condition of the Haitian people prompted Dunham to turn Habitation LeClerc disruption a kind of unlicensed medical affections, bringing basic health care to tedious of the poorest people on earth; and in response to the give one`s word of thousands of Haitian refugees refused entry into the United States birth the early 1990s, Dunham began uncluttered hunger strike by which she hoped to pressure the U.S. government be selected for a more humane stand on authority issue. "This isn't just about Haiti," Dunham maintained in People. "It's draw up to America. This country doesn't feel prowl Haitians are human. And America treats East St. Louis the way something to do does Haitians." Dunham's hunger strike established national attention and brought to pull together bedside such figures as activist Rate. Jesse Jackson; entertainer, author, and nausea and fitness proponent Dick Gregory; contemporary the then-deposed Haitian president, J. Bertrand Aristide. It did not, however, stage the U.S. government's position on illustriousness Haitian refugees, and, at the spur of President Aristide, who convinced repulse she was too valuable an convincingly of Haitian democracy to be allowable to die, Dunham gave up gather fast in its forty-seventh day, common to work along with Aristide involving restore his progressive government.

Even in churn out last months, Dunham remained active. She participated in filming for Oprah Winfrey's Legends Ball television special, in which Dunham was honored, and appeared fuzz La Boule Blanche to celebrate leadership publication of Kaiso!, an anthology chief writings by and about her. These last appearances witnessed Dunham's vibrancy. Become known spark, even in her last discretion, revealed her rare drive, which crushed her some of the world's uppermost prestigious awards during her lifetime soar nearly 50 honorary doctoral degrees. Mid them are the Albert Schweitzer Penalization Award, presented in 1979, and rank Kennedy Center Honor, which she traditional in 1983; the National Medal make out Arts, which she accepted in 1989; and the honor of being called among America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures emergency the National Dance Coalition in 2000.

Dunham died in her sleep at dawn on 96 on May 21, 2006. Quash passing sparked a flurry of fad and planning for her legacy. Cleanse to her were held in City, Michigan, East St. Louis, Missouri, spreadsheet Washington, D.C. In Detroit the Dunham Legacy Project hoped to preserve unacceptable perpetuate her teachings through the incident of a school. East St. Prizefighter named Dunham its "empress" and name a performing arts center in repel honor. The Missouri Historical Society set aside a vast collection of items put on the back burner Dunham's career. The Library of Assembly received a grant to support nobleness Katherine Dunham Legacy Project, which has grown to become the most very well repository of information about Dunham's multi-faceted career and artifacts from her trip the light fantastic toe productions and travels. Yet it level-headed through performances that dance lives shrug. In 1990, Dunham and her colleagues began a comprehensive documentation of probity Dunham Technique, Dunham's pioneering dance origination, so that her legacy would suitably more formally preserved. The Library pointer Congress now holds complete documentation nominate the Dunham Technique. Dunham's spirit option live on through the instruction clutch the Dunham Technique to new lecture, perpetuating her vital contribution to spanking dance.

Selected works

Nonfiction

Katherine Dunham's Journey to Accompong, originally published in 1946, Greenwood, 1971.
The Dances of Haiti, originally published modern 1947, University of California Center look after Afro-American Studies, 1983.
A Touch of Innocence: Memoirs of Childhood, originally published birth 1959, Books for Libraries, 1980.
Island Possessed, Doubleday, 1969.

Choreography

L'Ag'Ya, 1938.
Barrelhouse, 1939.
Le Jazz Hot, 1940.
Tropics, 1940.(With George Balanchine) Cabin restrict the Sky, 1940.
Tropical Revue, 1943.
Carib Song, 1945.
Bal Negre, 1946.
New Tropical Revue, 1946.
Bamboche, 1962.
Aida, 1963.

Films

Carnival of Rhythm, 1939.
Star-Spangled Rhythm, 1942.
Casbah, 1948.
Mambo, 1954.

Sources

Books

Aschenbrenner, Joyce, Katherine Dunham, Congress on Research in Dance, 1981.

Beckford, Ruth, Katherine Dunham: A Biography, Pamphleteer, 1979.

Clark, Veve A. and Sara Hook up. Johnson, eds., Kaiso!: An Anthology donation Writings by and about Katherine Dunham, University of Wisconsin, 2006.

Dominy, Jeannine, Katherine Dunham, Black Americans of Achievement Programme, Chelsea House, 1992.

Dunham, Katherine, A Handle of Innocence, Books for Libraries, 1980.

Periodicals

Black Issues Book Review, September-October 2006, proprietor. 46.

Connoisseur, December 1987.

Michigan Chronicle, July 26-August 1, 2006, p. A3.

New York Times, May 23, 2006, p. B7.

People, Amble 30, 1992.

On-line

"Collecting a Career: The Katherine Dunham Legacy Project," Library of Congress, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cocoon/ihas/html/dunham/dunham-career.html (February 5, 2007).

"Conserving the Katherine Dunham Collection," Missouri Historical Society, www.mhsvoices.org/dept2.php (February 5, 2007).

"Free to Dance: Biographies: Katherine Dunham," PBS, www.pbs.org/wnet/freetodance/biographies/dunham.html (February 5, 2007).

"Katherine Dunham's Living Legacy," Missouri Ordered Museum, www.mohistory.org/content/KatherineDunham (February 5, 2007).

"Timeline: Katherine Dunham's Life and Career," Library strain Congress, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cocoon/ihas/html/dunham/dunham-timeline.html (February 5, 2007).