Dancing into History....Katherine Dunham [1909- ]

“SOME SIXTY YEARS after she first began studying dance, Katherine Dunham remains a shining light of artistic achievement among African-American women. Like Isadore Duncan and Martha Graham, Katherine left an indelible mark on modern dance. Her accomplishments over a half-century are even more inspiring considering that few black American women had access to the formal world of theatrical dance during the early twentieth century. As a vocal advocate for human rights around the globe, Katherine is an impressive role model for all artists concerned about social justice...

Born June 22, 1909, in Chicago South Side, Dunham was the cherished second child of her father, Albert Dunham, Jr. Her mother died when Katherine was very young, and her father remarried. When her father moved the family to Jolier, Illinois, Katherine began expressing interest in the arts. In public school, she excelled at sports as well as theater and dance studies. In junior college, she determined that dance was something she had to explore... Her academic work began to reflect her newfound love of Afro-Carribean dance and Katherine became a pioneer in the field of anthropology as it pertains to dance. While still an undergraduate, Katherine cofounded a revolutionary dance group, Ballet Negre. Although she was young and virtually untested on the popular stages of the day, Katherine’s academic work also earned her a prestigious fellowship, which she used to travel to the Carribeans. There, during the thirties , she studied first hand the ancient rituals of dance. During this period, Katherine was also tapped to organize a historic African dance exhibit for the immense Chicago Century of Progress Exposition in 1933. It was a far cry from the Chicago World Exposition of nearly fifty years earlier in which blacks were barred from participating...[Soon after] Katherine embarked on a long and fruitful career of choreography, dance, and the excavation of hundreds of years of little-understood Afro-Caribbean dance traditions.

Over the next few decades, she experienced a flurry of creativity that coincided with a growing public acceptance of the “exotic” forms of dance practiced by blacks and other indigenous people around the world. With other members of the Ballet Negre (later renamed the Negro Dance Group), Katherine traveled the world, alternately gathering, recording, and performing works culled from tiny villages and primitive cultures.

Soon she founded the Katherine Dunham Dance Company. The next decade was a famously prolific period for Katherine, and included her Broadway debut in 1938 and her work with legendary ballet choreographer, George Ballanchine. Katherine debuted on the London stage in 1948 and danced in numerous Hollywood films, including Stormy Weather, Cabin in the Sky and Star-Spangled Rhythm as well as several other groundbreaking dance numbers for stage and screen.

Her experience in Hollywood convinced her that black Americans deserved a choreographer familiar with complexities of African American heritage. Consequently, Katherine set out to explore ways of bringing those complexities to the stage in the form of dance. She became the FIRST BLACK WOMAN to choreograph a major work of the New York Metropolitan Opera, Aida in 1963.

After officially retiring from performing during the sixties, Katherine served as cultural advisor to the government of Senegal, Africa and in 1967, founded a revolutionary arts program at the Southern Illinois University. That program today remains one of the most popular arts education opportunities in the nation. As a testament to her level of influence in the arts and humanitarian fields, Katherine has been awarded several important honors during her long life, including an Albert Schweitzer Award, A Kennedy Centers Honor and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Moreover, Katherine continued writing of her travels and anthropological work and chronicling her experiences with blacks in Jamaica, West Africa, and Haiti. In 1959, she published her autobiography, A Touch of Innocence. Residing in East Louis, Missouri, Katherine remains dedicated to cultural arts and to the hard work of improving the troubled living conditions in third world nations. In the early nineties, at the age of eighty-two, she stunned her political and active communities by staging a hunger strike to emphasize the plight of Haitians struggling under a totalitarian regime. In press conferences in Miami and Port-au-Prince, Katherine brought to the world’s attention the poverty and oppression that characterized the lives of Haitians.

As Katherine saw it, the hardships experienced by the Haitian people were not far removed from those of black Americans. Her courageous act helped galvanize Americans to both the plight of Haitians and our nation’s underclass. And, in the process, it reminded all Americans of the STRENGTH AND DEDICATION OF THE BLACK WOMEN who have helped CHANGE this nation for the better. “

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Excerpts from “Fifty Black Women Who Changed America”

Alexander, Amy “Fifty Black Women Who Changed America” New Jersey: Birch Lane Press, 1999:98