Katherine Dunham Katherine Dunham (June 22, 1909 May 21, 2006) was an American dancer, choreograp her,

author, educator, and social activist. Dunham had one of the most successfu l dance careers in American and European theater of the 20th century, and direct ed her own dance company for many years. She has been called the "matriarch and queen mother of black dance".[1] During her heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, Dunham was renowned throughout Europe and Latin America and was widely popular in the United States, where the Washing ton Post called her "dancer Katherine the Great". For almost thirty years she ma intained the Katherine Dunham Dance Company, the only self-supported American bl ack dance troupe at that time, and over her long career she choreographed more t han ninety individual dances.[2] Dunham was an innovator in African-American mod ern dance as well as a leader in the field of dance anthropology, or ethnochoreo logy. Contents 1 2 3 4 5 Early Years Academic Anthropologist Dancer and Choreographer Educator and Writer Social Activist 5.1 The Afonso Arinos Law in Brazil 5.2 Hunger Strike 6 Private Life 7 Death 8 Legacy 9 Awards and Honors 10 References 11 Other sources 12 External links Early Years Katherine Mary Dunham was born in June, 1909 in a Chicago hospital and taken as an infant to her parents' home in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a village about fifteen miles west of Chicago. Her father, Albert Millard Dunham, was a descendant of sl aves from West Africa and Madagascar. Her mother, Fanny June Dunham (n?e Taylor) , who was of mixed French-Canadian and Native American heritage, died when Kathe rine was three years old. After her father's remarriage a few years later, the f amily moved to a predominately white neighborhood in Joliet, Illinois, where Mr. Dunham ran a dry cleaning business.[3] Katherine became interested in both writing and dance at a young age, displaying talent in both fields. In high school she joined the Terpsichorean Club and beg an to learn a kind of modern dance based on ideas of Jaques-Dalcroze and Rudolf von Laban. At the age of 15, she organized the Blue Moon Caf?, a fund-raising ca baret for Brown's Methodist Church in Joliet, where she gave her first public pe rformance. While still a high-school student, she opened a private dance school for young black children. Academic Anthropologist Upon completing her studies at Joliet Junior College, Katharine Dunham moved to Chicago to join her brother Albert, who was attending the University of Chicago as a student of philosophy. In a lecture by Robert Redfield, a professor of anth ropology, she learned that much of black culture in modern America had begun in Africa. She consequently decided to major in anthropology and to focus on dances of the African diaspora. Besides Redfield, she studied under some of the great anthropologists of the day, including A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Edward Sapir, and Br onis?aw Malinowski. Under their tutelage, she showed great promise in her ethnog

raphic studies of dance.[4] In 1935, Dunham was awarded travel fellowships from the Julius Rosenwald and Gug genheim foundations to conduct ethnographic study of the dance forms of the Cari bbean, especially as manifested in the Vodun of Haiti, a path also followed by f ellow anthropology student Zora Neale Hurston. She also received a grant to work with Professor Melville Herskovits of Northwestern University, whose ideas of A frican retention would serve as a platform for her research in the Caribbean. He rskovits provided her with invaluable information in preparation for her voyage. Her stay in the Caribbean began in Jamaica, where she went to live several month s in the remote Maroon village of Accompong, deep in the mountains of Cockpit Co untry. (She later wrote a book, Journey to Accompong, describing her experiences there.) Then she traveled on to Martinique and to Trinidad and Tobago for short stays, primarily to do an investigation of Shango, the African god who remained an important presence in West Indian heritage. Early in 1936 she arrived at las t in Haiti, where she remained for several months, the first of her many extende d stays in that country throughout the rest of her life. While in Haiti, Dunham investigated Vodun rituals and made extensive notes on he r research, particularly on the dance movements of the participants. Years later , after extensive studies and initiations, she became a mambo (priestess) in the Vodun religion. She also became friends with, among others, Dumarsais Estim?, t hen a high-level politician, who became president of Haiti in 1949. Somewhat lat er, she assisted him, at considerable risk to her life, when he was persecuted f or his progressive policies and sent in exile to Jamaica after a coup d'?tat. Dunham returned to Chicago in late spring of 1936 and in August was awarded a ba chelor's degree, a Ph.B. (bachelor of philosophy), with her principal area of st udy named as "social anthropology." In 1938, using materials collected during he r research tour of the Caribbean, Dunham submitted a thesis, "The Dances of Hait i: A Study of Their Material Aspect, Organization, Form, and Function," to the D epartment of Anthropology at the University of Chicago in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a master's degree, but she never completed her course work or took examinations to qualify for the degree. Devoted to dance performance as well as to anthropological research, she realized that she had to choose betwee n them. Although she was offered another grant from the Rockefeller Foundation t o pursue her academic studies, she chose dance, gave up her graduate studies, an d departed for the bright lights of Broadway and Hollywood.[5] Dancer and Choreographer In 1928, while still an undergraduate, Dunham began to study ballet with Ludmill a Speranzeva, a Russian dancer who had settled in Chicago, having come to the Un ited States with the Franco-Russian vaudeville troupe Le Th??tre de la Chauve-So uris directed by impresario Nikita Balieff. She also studied ballet with Mark Tu rbyfill and Ruth Page, who became prima ballerina of the Chicago Opera. Through her ballet teachers, she was also exposed to Spanish, East Indian, Javanese, and Balinese dance forms. In 1931, when she was only 21, Dunham formed a group call ed Ballets N?gres, one of the first black ballet companies in the United States. After a single, well-received performance in 1931, the group was disbanded. Enc ouraged by Speranzeva to focus on modern dance instead of ballet, Dunham opened her first real dance school in 1933 called the Negro Dance Group. It was a venue for Dunham to teach young black dancers about their African heritage. In 1934 36 Dunham performed as a guest artist with the ballet company of the Chica go Opera. Ruth Page had written a scenario and choreographed La Guiablesse ("The Devil Woman"), based on a Martinican folk tale in Lafcadio Hearn's Two Years in the French West Indies. It opened in Chicago in 1933, with a black cast and wit h Page dancing the title role. The next year it was repeated with Katherine Dunh am in the lead and with students from Dunham's Negro Dance Group in the ensemble

. Her dance career was then interrupted by her anthropological research in the C aribbean. Having completed her undergraduate work at the University of Chicago and having made the decision to pursue a career as a dancer and choreographer rather than a s an academic, Dunham revived her dance ensemble and in 1937 journeyed with them to New York to take part in "A Negro Dance Evening" organized by Edna Guy at th e 92nd Street YMHA. The troupe performed a suite of West Indian dances in the fi rst half of the program and a ballet entitled Tropic Death, with Talley Beatty, in the second half. Upon returning to Chicago, the company performed at the Good man Theater and at the Abraham Lincoln Center. Dunham's well-known works Rara To nga and Woman with a Cigar were created at this time. With choreography characte rized by exotic sexuality, both became signature works in the Dunham repertory. After successful performances of her company, Dunham was named dance director of the Chicago Negro Theater Unit of the Federal Theater Project. In this post, sh e choreographed the Chicago production of Run Li'l Chil'lun, performed at the Go odman Theater, and produced several other works of choreography including The Em peror Jones and Barrelhouse. At this time Dunham first became associated with designer John Pratt, whom she l ater married. Together, they produced the first version of her dance composition L'Ag'Ya, which premiered on January 27, 1938, as a part of the Federal Theater Project in Chicago. Based on her research in Martinique, this three-part perform ance integrated elements of a Martinique fighting dance into American ballet to achieve a remarkable degree of syncretism. This blending of cultures also appear ed in the way that Dunham skillfully and stylistically employed choreographic te chniques to evoke images of Afro-Caribbean customs and art. In 1939, Dunham's company gave further performances in Chicago and Cincinnati an d then went back to New York, where Dunham had been invited to stage a new numbe r for the popular, long-running musical revue Pins and Needles 1940, produced by the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union. As this show continued its run at the Windsor Theater, Dunham booked her own company in the theater for a Sund ay performance. This concert, billed as Tropics and Le Hot Jazz, included not on ly her favorite partners Archie Savage and Talley Beatty but her principal Haiti an drummer, Papa Augustin. Initially scheduled for a single performance, the sho w was so popular that the troupe repeated it for another ten Sundays. This success led to the entire company being engaged in the Broadway production Cabin in the Sky, staged by George Balanchine and starring Ethel Waters. With Du nham in the sultry role of temptress Georgia Brown, the show ran for twenty week s in New York before moving to the West Coast for an extended run of performance s there. The show created a minor controversy in the press over whether the torr id dance numbers with bare-midriffed and bare-torsoed performers represented "ar t" or "sex appeal." Most critics called it a draw. After the national tour of Cabin in the Sky, the Dunham company stayed in Los An geles, where they appeared in the Warner Brothers short film Carnival of Rhythm (1941). The next year Dunham appeared in the Paramount musical film Star Spangle d Rhythm (1942) in a specialty number, "Sharp as a Tack," with Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. Other movies she appeared in during this period included the Abbott a nd Costello comedy Pardon My Sarong (1942) and the famous break-through black mu sical Stormy Weather (1943).[6] Later that year, they returned to New York, and in September 1943, under the man agement of the renowned impresario Sol Hurok, her troupe opened in Tropical Revi ew at the Martin Beck Theater. Featuring lively Latin American and Caribbean dan ces, plantation dances, and American social dances, the show was an immediate su ccess. The original two-week engagement was extended by popular demand into a th ree-month run, after which the company embarked on an extensive tour of the Unit

ed States and Canada. In Boston, the bastion of conservatism, the show was banne d in 1944 after only one performance. Although it was well received by the audie nce, local censors feared that the revealing costumes and provocative dances mig ht compromise public morals. After the tour, in 1945, the Dunham company appeare d 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 finale to the first act o f this show was Shango, a staged interpretation of a Vodun ritual that would bec ome a permanent part of the company's repertory. In 1946 Dunham returned to Broadway for a revue entitled Bal N?gre, which receiv ed glowing notices from theater and dance critics. Early in 1947 Dunham choreogr aphed the musical play Windy City, which premiered at the Great Northern Theater in Chicago, and later in the year she opened a cabaret show in Las Vegas, marki ng the first year that the city became a popular entertainment destination. Late r that year she went with her troupe to Mexico, where their performances were so popular that they remained for more than two months. After Mexico, Dunham began touring in Europe, where she was an immediate sensation. In 1948 she opened A C aribbean Rhapsody first at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London, then swept on to the Th??tre des Champs-?lys?es in Paris, where the company took the city by s torm. She and her dancers were treated as members of the jet set, mixing with no bility and celebrities such as famous French actor Maurice Chevalier. This was the beginning of more than twenty years of performing almost exclusivel y outside America. During these years, the Dunham company appeared in some thirt y-three countries in Europe, North Africa, South America, Australia, and East As ia. Dunham continued to develop dozens of new productions during this period, an d the company met with enthusiastic audiences wherever they went. Despite these successes, the company frequently ran into periods of financial difficulties, as Dunham was required to support all of the thirty to forty dancers and musicians . In 1948, Dunham and her company appeared in the Hollywood movie Casbah, with Ton y Martin, Yvonne de Carlo, and Peter Lorre, and in the Italian film Botta e Risp osta, produced by Dino de Laurentiis. Also that year they appeared in the first ever hour-long American spectacular televised by NBC when television was first b eginning to spread across America. This was followed by television spectaculars filmed in London, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Sydney, and Mexico City. In 1950, Sol Hurok presented Katherine Dunham and Her Company in a dance revue a t the Broadway Theater in New York, with a program composed of some of Dunham's best works. It closed after only thirty-eight performances, and the company soon thereafter embarked on a tour of venues in South America, Europe, and North Afr ica. They had particular success in Denmark and France. In the mid-1950s, Dunham and her company appeared in three films: Mambo (1954), made in Italy; Die Gross e Starparade (1954), made in Germany; and M?sica en la Noche (1955), made in Mex ico City. The Dunham company's international tours ended in Vienna in 1960, when it was st randed without money because of bad management by their impresario. Dunham saved the day by arranging for the company to appear in a German television special, Karaibishe Rhythmen, after which they returned to America. Dunham's last appeara nce on Broadway was in 1962 in Bamboche!, which included a few former Dunham dan cers in the cast and a contingent of dancers and dummers from the Royal Troupe o f Morocco. It was not a success, closing after only eight performances. A highlight of Dunham's later career was the invitation from New York's Metropol itan Opera to stage dances for a new production of Aida starring Leontyne Price. Thus, 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. The critic s acknowledged the historical research she did on dance in ancient Egypt but did

not particularly care for the results they saw on the Met stage.[7] Subsequentl y, Dunham undertook various choreographic commissions at several venues in the U nited States and in Europe. In 1967 she officially retired after presenting a fi nal show at the famous Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York. Even in retirement Du nham continued to choreograph: one of her major works was directing Scott Joplin 's opera Treemonisha in 1972 at Morehouse College in Atlanta. In 1978 Dunham was featured in the PBS special, Divine Drumbeats: Katherine Dunh am and Her People, narrated by James Earl Jones, as part of the Dance in America series. Alvin Ailey later produced a tribute for her in 1987-8 with his America n Dance Theater at Carnegie Hall entitled The Magic of Katherine Dunham. Educator and Writer In 1945, Dunham opened and directed the Katherine Dunham School of Dance and The atre near Times Square in New York City after her dance company was provided wit h rent-free studio space for three years by an admirer, Lee Shubert; it had an i nitial enrollment of 350 students. The program included courses in dance, drama, performing arts, applied skills, h umanities, cultural studies, and Caribbean research, and in 1947 it was expanded and granted a charter as the Katherine Dunham School of Cultural Arts. The scho ol was managed in Dunham's absence by one of her dancers, Syvilla Fort, thrived for about ten years, and was considered one of the best learning centers of its type at the time. Schools inspired by it later opened in Stockholm, Paris, and R ome by dancers trained by Dunham. Her alumni included many future celebrities, such as Eartha Kitt, who, as a teen ager, won a scholarship to her school and later became one of her dancers before moving on to a successful singing career. Others who attended her school includ ed James Dean, Gregory Peck, Jose Ferrer, Jennifer Jones, Shelley Winters, Sidne y Poitier, Shirley MacLaine, Doris Duke, Toni Cade Bambara and Warren Beatty. Ma rlon Brando frequently dropped in to play the bongo drums, and jazz musician Cha rles Mingus held regular jam sessions with the drummers. Known for her many inno vations, Dunham developed a dance pedagogy, later named the Dunham Technique, th at won international acclaim and that is now taught as a modern dance style in m any dance schools. By 1957, Dunham was under severe personal strain that was affecting her health, and she decided to live for a year in relative isolation in Kyoto, Japan, where she worked on writing autobiographies of her youth. The first work, entitled A T ouch of Innocence: Memoirs of Childhood, was published in 1959. A continuation b ased on her experiences in Haiti, Island Possessed, was published in 1969, and a fictional work based on her African experiences, Kasamance: A Fantasy, was publ ished in 1974. Throughout her career, she occasionally published articles about her anthropological research (sometimes under the pseudonym of Kaye Dunn) and so metimes lectured on anthropological topics at universities and scholarly societi es.[8] In 1964, Dunham settled in East St. Louis and took up the post of artist-in-resi dence at Southern Illinois University in nearby Edwardsville. There she was able to bring anthropologists, sociologists, educational specialists, scientists, wr iters, musicians, and theater people together to create a liberal arts curriculu m that would be a foundation for further college work. One of her fellow profess ors with whom she collaborated was renowned architect Buckminister Fuller, who h as been called the "planet's friendly genius." The following year, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson nominated Dunham to be techni cal cultural adviser that is, a sort of cultural ambassador to the government of Sen egal in West Africa. Her mission was to help train the Senegalese National Balle t and to assist President Leopold Senghor with arrangements for the First Pan-Af

rican World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar (1965 66). Later she established a sec ond home in Senegal and occasionally returned there to scout for talented Africa n musicians and dancers. In 1967, Dunham opened the Performing Arts Training Center (PATC) in East St. Lo uis as an attempt to use the arts to combat poverty and urban unrest. It served as a catharsis after the 1968 riots, during which she encouraged gang members in the ghetto to vent their frustrations with drumming and dance. The PATC drew on former members of Dunham's touring company as well as local residents for its t eaching staff. While trying to help the young people in the community she was ev en jailed herself, making international headlines which quickly embarrassed loca l police officials to release her. She also continued refining and teaching the Dunham Technique to transmit that knowledge to succeeding generations of dance s tudents, and lecturing at annual Masters' Seminars in St. Louis that attracted d ance students from around the world every summer until her death. She also estab lished the [Katherine Dunham Centers for Arts and Humanities] in East St. Louis to preserve Haitian and African instruments and artifacts from her own personal collection. In 1976 Dunham was guest artist-in-residence and lecturer for Afro-American stud ies at the University of California, Berkeley. A photographic exhibit honoring h er achievements, entitled "Kaiso! Katherine Dunham," was mounted a the Women's C enter on the campus. In 1978, an anthology of writings by and about her, also en titled Kaiso! Katherine Dunham, was published in a limited, numbered edition of 130 copies by the Institute for the Study of Social Change. Social Activist The Katherine Dunham Company toured throughout North America in the mid-1940s, e ven performing in the then-segregated South, where Dunham once refused to hold a show after finding out that the city's black residents had not been allowed to buy tickets for the performance. On another occasion, in October 1944, after get ting a rousing standing ovation in Louisville, Kentucky, she told the all-white audience that she and her company would not return because "your management will not allow people like you to sit next to people like us," and she expressed a h ope that time and the "war for tolerance and democracy" would bring a change.[9] One historian noted that "during the course of the tour, Dunham and the troupe had recurrent problems with racial discrimination, leading her to a posture of m ilitancy which was to characterize her subsequent career." In Hollywood, Dunham refused to sign a lucrative studio contract when the produc er said she would have to replace some of her darker-skinned company members. Sh e and her company frequently had difficulties finding adequate accommodations wh ile on tour because in many regions of the country, black Americans were not all owed to stay at hotels. This was also true elsewhere in the world. While Dunham was recognized as "unofficially" representing American cultural lif e in her foreign tours, she was given very little assistance of any kind by the U.S. State Department. She had incurred the displeasure of departmental official s when her company performed Southland, a ballet that dramatized the lynching of a black man in the racist American South. Its premiere performance on December 9, 1950, at the Teatro Municipal in Santiago, Chile,[10] [11] generated consider able public interest in the early months of 1951.[12] The State Department was d ismayed by the negative view of American society that the ballet presented to fo reign audiences. As a result, Dunham would later experience some diplomatic "dif ficulties" on her tours. The State Department regularly subsidized other less we ll-known groups, but it consistently refused to support her company (even when i t was entertaining U.S. Army troops), although at the same time it did not hesit ate to take credit for them as "unofficial artistic and cultural representatives ." The Afonso Arinos Law in Brazil

In 1950, while visiting Brazil, Dunham and her group were refused rooms at a fir st-class hotel in S?o Paulo, the Hotel Esplanada, frequented by many American bu sinessmen. Understanding that the fact was due to racial discrimination, she mad e sure the incident was publicized. The incident was widely discussed in the Bra zilian press and became a hot political issue. In response, the Afonso Arinos la w was passed in 1951 that made racial discrimination in public places a felony i n Brazil.[13][14][15][16][17][18] Hunger Strike 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. Time reporte d that, "she went on a 47-day hunger strike to protest the U.S.'s forced repatri ation of Haitian refugees. "My job", she said, "is to create a useful legacy."[1 9] 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. This initiative drew international publicity to the plight of the Haitian boat-p eople and U.S. discrimination against them. Dunham ended her fast only after exi led Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Jesse Jackson came to her and p ersonally requested that she stop risking her life for this cause. After it ende d, ABC News nominated her as Person of the Week.[citation needed] In recognition of her stance, President Aristide later awarded her a medal of Haiti's highest honor and called her the "Spiritual Mother of Haiti".[citation needed] Private Life Dunham married Jordis McCoo, a black postal worker, in 1931, but he did not shar e her interests and they gradually drifted apart, finally divorcing in 1938. Abo ut 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. Pratt, who was white, shared Dunham's interests in African-Caribbean cultures a nd was happy to put his talents in her service. After he became her artistic col laborator, they became romantically involved, despite the difference in their ra ces. In the summer of 1941, after the national tour of Cabin in the Sky ended, t hey went to Mexico, where inter-racial marriages were less controversial than in the United States, and engaged in a commitment ceremony on 20 July, which there after they gave as the date of their wedding.[20] 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. Katherine Dunham and John Pratt married i n 1949 to adopt Marie-Christine, a French fourteen-month-old baby. From the begi nning of their association, around 1938, Pratt designed the sets and every costu me Dunham ever wore. He continued as her artistic collaborator and manager (he w as never her manager) of her career until his death in 1986. When she was not performing, Dunham and Pratt often visited Haiti for extended s tays. On one of these visits during the late 1940s she purchased a large propert y of more than seven hectares in the Carrefours suburban area of Port-au-Prince. Reputed to have once belonged to General Charles Leclerc, husband of Pauline Bo naparte, Napoleon's sister, it was known as Habitation Leclerc and was famous fo r its tropical forest and flowing spring, a major source of drinking water for t he city and a sacred site in the Vodun religion. Dunham used Habitation Leclerc as a private retreat for many years, frequently bringing members of her dance co mpany to recuperate from the stress of touring and to work on developing new dan ce productions. After running it as a tourist spot, with Vodun dancing as entert ainment, in the early 1960s, she sold it to a French entrepreneur in the early 1 970s. There was once talk of turning Habitation Leclerc into a botantical garden named in honor of Dunham, but all such hopes were abandoned when the property w as virtually destroyed by the great earthquake of 2010.

In 1949 Dunham returned from international touring with her company for a brief stay in the United States, where she suffered a temporary nervous breakdown afte r the premature death of her beloved brother Albert. He had been a promising phi losophy professor at Howard University and a prot?g? of Alfred North Whitehead. During this time, she developed a warm friendship with famous psychologist and h umanistic philosopher Erich Fromm, whom she had known in Europe. He was only one of a number of international celebrities who were Dunham's friends. In December 1951, a photo of Dunham dancing with Ismaili Muslim leader Prince Ali Khan at a private party he had hosted for her in Paris appeared in a popular magazine and fueled rumors that the two were romantically linked.[21] Both Dunham and the pr ince denied the suggestion. The prince was then married to glamorous Hollywood a ctress Rita Hayworth, and Dunham was, at long last, legally married to John Prat t, having wedded him in a quiet ceremony in Las Vegas earlier in the year.[22] T he couple had then officially adopted their foster daughter, a four-year-old gir l they had found as an infant in a Roman Catholic convent nursery in Fresnes, Fr ance. Named Marie-Christine Dunham Pratt, she was their only child. Among Dunham's closest friends and colleagues was Julie Robinson, formerly a per former with the Katherine Dunham Company, and her husband, singer and later poli tical activist Harry Belafonte. Both remained close friends of Dunham for many y ears, until her death. Glory Van Scott and Jean-L?on Destin? were among other fo rmer Dunham dancers who remained her lifelong friends.[23] Death Katherine Dunham died in her sleep in New York City from old age on May 21, 2006 , aged ninety-six.[24] Legacy Anna Kisselgoff, a dance critic for the New York Times, called Dunham "a major p ioneer in Black theatrical dance . . . ahead of her time." "In introducing authe ntic African dance-movements to her company and audiences, Dunham perhaps more tha n any other choreographer of the time exploded the possibilities of modern dance e xpression." As one of her biographers, Joyce Aschenbrenner, wrote: "Today, it is safe to say , there is no American black dancer who has not been influenced by the Dunham Te chnique, unless he or she works entirely within a classical genre", and the Dunh am Technique is still taught to anyone who studies modern dance. The highly respected Dance magazine did a feature cover story on Dunham in Augus t 2000 entitled "One-Woman Revolution." As Wendy Perron wrote, "Jazz dance, 'fus ion,' and the search for our cultural identity all have their antecedents in Dun ham's work as a dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist. She was the first Ame rican dancer to present indigenous forms on a concert stage, the first to sustai n a black dance company. . . . She created and performed in works for stage, clu bs, and Hollywood films; she started a school and a technique that continue to f lourish; she fought unstintingly for racial justice." Scholar of the arts Harold Cruse wrote in 1964: "Her early and life-long search for meaning and artistic values for black people, as well as for all peoples, ha s motivated, created opportunities for, and launched careers for generations of young black artists ... Afro-American dance was usually in the avant-garde of mo dern dance ... Dunham's entire career spans the period of the emergence of AfroAmerican dance as a serious art." Black writer Arthur Todd described her as "one of our national treasures." Regar ding her impact and effect he wrote: "The rise of American Negro dance commenced . . . when Katherine Dunham and her company skyrocketed into the Windsor Theate r in New York, from Chicago in 1940, and made an indelible stamp on the dance wo rld. . . . Miss Dunham opened the doors that made possible the rapid upswing of

this dance for the present generation." "What Dunham gave modern dance was a coh erent lexicon of African and Caribbean styles of movement a flexible torso and spi ne, articulated pelvis and isolation of the limbs, a polyrhythmic strategy of mo ving which she integrated with techniques of ballet and modern dance." "Her master y of body movement was considered 'phenomenal.' She was hailed for her smooth an d fluent choreography and dominated a stage with what has been described as 'an unmitigating radiant force providing beauty with a feminine touch full of variet y and nuance." Richard Buckle, ballet historian and critic, wrote: "Her company of magnificent dancers and musicians . . . met with the success it has and that herself as expl orer, thinker, inventor, organizer, and dancer should have reached a place in th e estimation of the world, has done more than a million pamphlets could for the service of her people." "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 danc e in Europe were profoundly affected by the performances of the Dunham troupe." While in Europe, she also influenced hat styles on the continent as well as spri ng fashion collections, featuring the Dunham line and Caribbean Rhapsody, and th e Chiroteque Fran?aise made a bronze cast of her feet for a museum of important personalities." The Katherine Dunham Company became an incubator for many well known performers, including Archie Savage, Talley Beatty, Janet Collins, Lenwood Morris, Vanoye A ikens, Lucille Ellis, Pearl Reynolds, Camille Yarbrough, Lavinia Williams, and T ommy Gomez. Alvin Ailey, who stated that he first became interested in dance as a profession al career after having seen a performance of the Katherine Dunham Company as a y oung teenager of 14 in Los Angeles, called the Dunham Technique "the closest thi ng to a unified Afro-American dance existing." 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 Vo odoo Gods of Haiti (1953). Deren is now considered to be a pioneer of independen t American filmmaking. Dunham herself was quietly involved in both the Voodoo an d Orisa communities of the Caribbean and the United States, in particular with t he Lucumi tradition. Not only did Dunham shed light on the cultural value of black dance, but she cle arly 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. As Julia Foulkes pointed out, "Dunham's path to su ccess lay in making high art in the United States from African and Caribbean sou rces, capitalizing on a heritage of dance within the African Diaspora, and raisi ng perceptions of African American capabilities."[25] Awards and Honors Over the years Katherine Dunham has received scores of special awards, including more than a dozen honorary doctorates from various American universities. In 1971 she received the Heritage Award from the National Dance Association. In 1979 at Carnegie Hall, she received the Albert Schweitzer Music Award "fo r a life's work dedicated to music and devoted to humanity." In 1987 she was received the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award , and was also inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, New York. In 1983 she was a recipient of one of the highest artistic awards in the Uni

ted States, the Kennedy Center Honors. In 1986 the American Anthropological Association gave her a Distinguished Se rvice Award. In 1989 she was awarded a National Medal of Arts, an honor shared by only tw o other University of Chicago alumni, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. Dunham has her own star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.[26] In 2000 she was named one of the first one hundred of "America's Irreplaceab le Dance Treasures" by the Dance Heritage Coalition. In 2002 Molefi Kete Asante included her in his book entitled 100 Greatest Af rican Americans.[27] In 2005, she was awarded "Outstanding Leadership in Dance Research" by the C ongress on Research in Dance. References ^ Joyce Aschenbenner, Katherine Dunham: Dancing a Life (Urbana: University o f Illinois Press, 2002). ^ V?V? A. Clark and Sara E. Johnson, editors, Kaiso!: Writings by and about Katherine Dunham (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). This anthology of writings also contains an abbreviated chronology of Dunham's life and career as well as a selected bibliography, a filmography of her commercial works, and a glossary. ^ Claude Conyers, compiler, Katherine Dunham Timeline (2005), Library of Con gress website: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cocoon/ihas/html/dunham/dunham-timeline.htm l. This online document comprises notes on all major biographical and artistic e vents in Dunham's life and career and provides brief essays on all her major cho reographic works. ^ Ira E. Harrison and Faye V. Harrison, African-American Pioneers in Anthrop ology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999). p. 139. ^ Conyers, Katharine Dunham Timeline (2005). ^ Claude Conyers, "Film Choreography by Katherine Dunham, 1939 1964," in Clark and Johnson, Kaiso! (2005), pp. 639 42. ^ Conyers, Katherine Dunham Timeline (2005). ^ See "Selected Bibliography of Writings by Katherine Dunham" in Clark and J ohnson, Kaiso! (2005), pp. 643 46. ^ Clark and Johnson, Kaiso! (2005), p. 252. ^ "Hoy programa extraordinario y el s?bado dos estamos nos ofrece Katherine Dunham," El Mercurio (Santiago, Chile), Thursday, December 7, 1950. ^ Joanna Dee Das, "Katherine Dunham (1909-2006), Dance Heritage Coalition, h ttp://www.danceheritage.org/treasures/dunham_essay_deedas.pdf ^ Constance Valis Hill, "Katherine Dunham's Southland: Protest in the Face o f Repression," reprinted in Clark and Johnson, Kaiso! (2005), pp. 345 63. ^ Edward E. Telles, Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 37. ^ Paulina L. Alberto, Terms of Inclusion: Black Intellectuals in Twentieth-C entury Brazil (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), p. 176-8. ^ George Reid Andrews, Blacks and Whites in S?o Paulo: 1888-1988 (Madison: U niversity of Wisconsin Press, 1991), p.184-6. ^ Ronald W. Walters, Pan Africanism in the African Diaspora: An Analysis of Modern Afrocentric (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993), p. 287. ^ Carl N. Degler, Neither Black not White: Slavery and Racial Relations in B razil and United States (New York: Macmillan, 1971), p.278. ^ Florestan Fernandes, "The Negro Problem in a Class Society: 1951-1960 Braz il," in Arlene Torres and Norman E. Whitten Jr., editors, Blackness in Latin Ame rican and Caribbean (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), p.117. ^ Time magazine article ^ Katherine Dunham, The Minefield (manuscript, c.1980 1985), book II, 122 123, B ox 20, Katherine Dunham Papers, Missouri History Museum Library and Research Cen ter, St. Louis. ^ Jet: The Weekly Negro News Magazine, vol. 1, no. 9 (27 December 1951).

^ Katherine Dunham, The Minefield (manuscript, c.1980-1985). ^ Anna Kisselgoff, "Katherine Dunham's Legacy, Visible in Youth and Age," Ne w York Times (3 March 2003). ^ Anderson, Jack (23 May 2006). "Katherine Dunham, Dance Icon, Dies at 96". The New York Times. Retrieved 9 September 2012. ^ Julia L. Foulkes, Modern Bodies: Dance and American Modernism from Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), p . 72. ^ St. Louis Walk of Fame. "St. Louis Walk of Fame Inductees". stlouiswalkoff ame.org. Retrieved 25 April 2013. ^ Asante, Molefi Kete, 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encycl opedia (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002). Other sources Haskins, James, Katherine Dunham. New York: Coward, McCann, & Geoghegan, 198 2. Kraut, Anthea, "Between Primitivism and Diaspora: The Dance Performances of Josephine Baker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Katherine Dunham," Theatre Journal 55 ( 2003): 433 50. Long, Richard A., The Black Tradition in American Dance. New York: Smithmark Publications, 1995.