She is a celebrity dancer. While Dunham was recognized as "unofficially" representing American cultural life in her foreign tours, she was given very little assistance of any kind by the U.S. State Department. Katherine Dunham Facts for Kids | KidzSearch.com [ ] Katherine Dunham was born on June 22, 1909 (age 96) in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, United States. "What Dunham gave modern dance was a coherent lexicon of African and Caribbean styles of movementa flexible torso and spine, articulated pelvis and isolation of the limbs, a polyrhythmic strategy of movingwhich she integrated with techniques of ballet and modern dance." Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. The Katherine Dunham Museum: Saving the Legacy of a True Renaissance Woman 30 seconds. She was instrumental in getting respect for Black dancers on the concert dance stage and directed the first self-supported Black dance company. International dance icon Katherine Dunham (right,) also an anthropologist, founded an art museum in East St. Louis, IL. Upon returning to Chicago, the company performed at the Goodman Theater and at the Abraham Lincoln Center. Gender: Female. Despite 13 knee surgeries, Ms. Dunham danced professionally for more than . Later Dunham established a second home in Senegal, and she occasionally returned there to scout for talented African musicians and dancers. . Katherine Dunham Facts that are Fun!!! Stormy Weather is a 1943 American musical film produced and released by 20th Century Fox, adapted by Frederick J. Jackson, Ted Koehler and H.S. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, . Each procession builds on the last and focuses on conditioning the body to prepare for specific exercises that come later. (Below are 10 Katherine Dunham quotes on positivity. The Washington Post called her "dancer Katherine the Great." She Learned From Katherine Dunham. At 93, She's Teaching Her Technique Katherine Dunham, it includes photographs highlighting the many dimensions of Dunham's life and work. Mae C. Jemison: First African American Female Astronaut - Biography In particular, Dunham is a model for the artist as activist. Deren is now considered to be a pioneer of independent American filmmaking. She was likely named after Catherine of Aragon. Marlon Brando frequently dropped in to play the bongo drums, and jazz musician Charles Mingus held regular jam sessions with the drummers. A carriage house on the grounds is to . "Kaiso! Dunham, Katherine | FactMonster 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. Katherine Johnson graduated from college at age 18. See "Selected Bibliography of Writings by Katherine Dunham" in Clark and Johnson. [58] Early on into graduate school, Dunham was forced to choose between finishing her master's degree in anthropology and pursuing her career in dance. Katherine Dunham - Dancing with History What are some fun facts about Katherine Dunham? She is known for her many innovations, one of her most known . The Katherine Dunham Company toured throughout North America in the mid-1940s, performing as well in the racially segregated South. 7 Katherine Dunham facts. The original two-week engagement was extended by popular demand into a three-month run, after which the company embarked on an extensive tour of the United States and Canada. All You Need to Know About Dunham Technique - Dance Spirit Keep reading for more such interesting quotes at Kidadl!) Dunham, Katherine Mary (1909-2006) - Routledge After her company performed successfully, Dunham was chosen as dance director of the Chicago Negro Theater Unit of the Federal Theatre Project. This won international acclaim and is now taught as a modern dance style in many dance schools. 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. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Additionally, she was named one of the most influential African American anthropologists. "[35] Dunham explains that while she admired the narrative quality of ballet technique, she wanted to develop a movement vocabulary that captured the essence of the Afro-Caribbean dancers she worked with during her travels. As a choreographer, anthropologist, educator, and activist, Katherine Dunham transformed the field of dance in the twentieth century. ", Scholar of the arts Harold Cruse wrote in 1964: "Her early and lifelong search for meaning and artistic values for black people, as well as for all peoples, has motivated, created opportunities for, and launched careers for generations of young black artists Afro-American dance was usually in the avant-garde of modern dance Dunham's entire career spans the period of the emergence of Afro-American dance as a serious art. TOP 25 QUOTES BY KATHERINE DUNHAM | A-Z Quotes She 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. However, fully aware of her passion for both dance performance, as well as anthropological research, she felt she had to choose between the two. There, her father ran a dry-cleaning business.[8]. She was hailed for her smooth and fluent choreography and dominated a stage with what has been described as 'an unmitigating radiant force providing beauty with a feminine touch full of variety and nuance. They were stranded without money because of bad management by their impresario. By drawing on a vast, never-utilized trove of archival materials along with oral histories, choreographic analysis, and embodied research, Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora offers new insight about how this remarkable woman built political solidarity through the arts. 52 Copy quote. ", While in Europe, she also influenced hat styles on the continent as well as spring fashion collections, featuring the Dunham line and Caribbean Rhapsody, and the Chiroteque Franaise made a bronze cast of her feet for a museum of important personalities.". The committee voted unanimously to award $2,400 (more than $40,000 in today's money) to support her fieldwork in the Caribbean. The following year, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Dunham to be technical cultural advisera sort of cultural ambassadorto the government of Senegal in West Africa. Childhood & Early Life. Katherine Dunham : Dance and the African Diaspora - Google Books The highly respected Dance magazine did a feature cover story on Dunham in August 2000 entitled "One-Woman Revolution". There is also a strong emphasis on training dancers in the practices of engaging with polyrhythms by simultaneously moving their upper and lower bodies according to different rhythmic patterns. [18] to the Department of Anthropology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a master's degree. Katherine Dunham, a world-renowned dancer and choreographer, had big plans for East St. Louis in 1977. Katherine Dunham was a rebel among rebels. Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) brought African dance aesthetics to the United States, forever influencing modern and jazz dance. Its premiere performance on December 9, 1950, at the Teatro Municipal in Santiago, Chile,[39][40] generated considerable public interest in the early months of 1951. With Dunham in the sultry role of temptress Georgia Brown, the show ran for 20 weeks in New York. Later in the year she opened a cabaret show in Las Vegas, during the first year that the city became a popular entertainment as well as gambling destination. When she was not performing, Dunham and Pratt often visited Haiti for extended stays. In 1987 she received the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award, and was also inducted into the. [15] He 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". Dunham was always a formidable advocate for racial equality, boycotting segregated venues in the United States and using her performances to highlight discrimination. Book. The first work, entitled A Touch of Innocence: Memoirs of Childhood, was published in 1959. [1] The Dunham Technique is still taught today. The impresario Sol Hurok, manager of Dunham's troupe for a time, once had Ms. Dunham's legs insured for $250,000. Jobson, Ryan Cecil. Katherine Dunham got an early bachelor's degree in anthropology as a student at the University of Chicago. Died: May 21, 2006. She did not complete the other requirements for that degree, however, as she realized that her professional calling was performance and choreography. The next year, after the US entered World War II, Dunham appeared in the Paramount musical film Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) in a specialty number, "Sharp as a Tack," with Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. He lived on 5 January 1931 and passed away on 1 December 1989. In 1966, she served as a State Department representative for the United States to the first ever World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal. Birth Year: 1956. Dunham was active in human rights causes, and in 1992 she staged a 47-day hunger strike to highlight the plight of Haitian refugees. Dunham is credited with introducing international audiences to African aesthetics and establishing African dance as a true art form. Birthday : June 22, 1909. Dancer Born in Illinois #12. Katherine Dunham. Among her dancers selected were Marcia McBroom, Dana McBroom, Jean Kelly, and Jesse Oliver. Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers in American and European theater of the 20th century, and directed her own dance company for many years. Dunham Company member Dana McBroom-Manno was selected as a featured artist in the show, which played on the Music Fair Circuit. Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers in African-American and European theater of the 20th . 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. She majored in anthropology at the University of Chicago, and after learning that much of Black . Transforming Anthropology 20 (2012): 159168. Tune in & learn about the inception of. [5] She had an older brother, Albert Jr., with whom she had a close relationship. He started doing stand-up comedy in the late 1980s. Katherine Dunham: The Artist as Activist During World War II. However, after her father remarried, Albert Sr. and his new wife, Annette Poindexter Dunham, took in Katherine and her brother. The PATC teaching staff was made up of former members of Dunham's touring company, as well as local residents. Our site is COPPA and kidSAFE-certified, so you can rest assured it's a safe place for kids . Genres Novels. The State Department regularly subsidized other less well-known groups, but it consistently refused to support her company (even when it was entertaining U.S. Army troops), although at the same time it did not hesitate to take credit for them as "unofficial artistic and cultural representatives". The result of this trip was Dunham's Master's thesis entitled "The Dances of Haiti". She has been called the "matriarch and queen mother of black dance." Katherine Dunham. After the tour, in 1945, the Dunham company appeared in the short-lived Blue Holiday at the Belasco Theater in New York, and in the more successful Carib Song at the Adelphi Theatre. First Name Katherine #37. . Never completing her required coursework for her graduate degree, she departed for Broadway and Hollywood. He had been a promising philosophy professor at Howard University and a protg of Alfred North Whitehead. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190264871.003.0001, "Dunham Technique: Fall and recovery with body roll", "Katherine Dunham on need for Dunham Technique", "The Negro Problem in a Class Society: 19511960 Brazil", "Katherine Dunham, Dance Icon, Dies at 96", "Candace Award Recipients 19821990, Page 1", "Katherine the Great: 2004 Lifetime Achievement Awardee Katherine Dunham", Katherine Dunham's Dance as Public Anthropology, Katherine Dunham on her anthropological films, Guide to the Photograph Collection on Katherine Dunham, Katherine Dunham's oral history video excerpts, "Katherine Dunham on Overcoming 1940s Racism", Katherine Dunham Centers for Arts and Humanities, Recalling Choreographer and Activist Dunham, "How Katherine Dunham Revealed Black Dance to the World", Katherine Dunham, Dance Pioneer, Dies at 96, "On Stage and Backstage withTalented Katherine Dunham, Master Dance Designer", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Katherine_Dunham&oldid=1139015494, American people of French-Canadian descent, 20th-century African-American politicians, Short description is different from Wikidata, Pages using infobox person with multiple spouses, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, In 1971 she received the Heritage Award from the, In 1983 she was a recipient of one of the highest artistic awards in the United States, the. Katherine Dunham: The Artist as Activist | Center for the Humanities Katherine Dunham in a photograph from around 1945. After Mexico, Dunham began touring in Europe, where she was an immediate sensation.
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