Childs’ Family Scrapbook. Subsequently, Dunham undertook various choreographic commissions at several venues in the United States and in Europe. trivia; popular; trending; random; Katherine Dunham Dancer #53226. met with the success it has and that herself as explorer, thinker, inventor, organizer, and dancer should have reached a place in the estimation of the world, has done more than a million pamphlets could for the service of her people. ", Black writer Arthur Todd described her as "one of our national treasures." Even in retirement Dunham continued to choreograph: one of her major works was directing Scott Joplin's opera Treemonisha in 1972 at Morehouse College in Atlanta. . After her mother died when she was 4, she and her brother, Albert Jr., moved in with relatives as their father worked as a salesman. Early in 1947 Dunham choreographed 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, marking the first year that the city became a popular entertainment destination. She married John Pratt, a theatrical designer, who worked with her in 1938 at the Chicago Federal Theatre Project and became her artistic partner. He was only one of a number of international celebrities who were Dunham's friends. Also that year they appeared in the first ever hour-long American spectacular televised by NBC when television was first beginning to spread across America. 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. . After a single, well-received performance in 1931, the group was disbanded. At this time Dunham first became associated with designer John Pratt, whom she later married. An article in the Kooskia Mountaineer of October 23, 1915 reported that Katherine Dunham had died at the home of her son Daniel Dunham, and she was buried at the family farm, at her request. One of her fellow professors with whom she collaborated was renowned architect Buckminister Fuller, who has been called the "planet's friendly genius.". Miss Dunham opened the doors that made possible the rapid upswing of this dance for the present generation." . Both remained close friends of Dunham for many years, until her death. Her father, Albert Millard Dunham, was a descendant of slaves from West Africa and Madagascar. In response, the Afonso Arinos law was passed in 1951 that made racial discrimination in public places a felony in Brazil. Among Dunham's closest friends and colleagues was Julie Robinson, formerly a performer with the Katherine Dunham Company, and her husband, singer and later political activist Harry Belafonte. Katherine Dunham: her birthday, what she did before fame, her family life, fun trivia facts, popularity rankings, and more. ahead of her time." She also continued refining and teaching the Dunham Technique to transmit that knowledge to succeeding generations of dance students, and lecturing at annual Masters' Seminars in St. Louis that attracted dance students from around the world every summer until her death. Her unprecedented blend of cultural anthropology with the artistic genre of dance in the eartly 1930's produced ground breaking forms of movement in the United states. The union of dance and anthropology would have a profound impact on her … She also received a grant to work with Professor Melville Herskovits of Northwestern University, whose ideas of African retention would serve as a platform for her research in the Caribbean. © FamousBirthdays.com - use subject to the information collection practices disclosed in our Privacy Policy. The Katherine Dunham dance company performed for the Quadras Society in 1939. In 1939, Dunham's company gave further performances in Chicago and Cincinnati and then went back to New York, where Dunham had been invited to stage a new number for the popular, long-running musical revue Pins and Needles 1940, produced by the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union. In 1948 she opened A Caribbean Rhapsody first at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London, then swept on to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, where the company took the city by storm. 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 Leontyne Price. Albert Jr. Dunham. I am most grateful to have the continued opportunity to learn and share with you all as we weave our individual and collective voices, and bring to light all that Ms. Dunham has bestowed upon us. She consequently decided to major in anthropology and to focus on dances of the African diaspora. She created and performed in works for stage, clubs, and Hollywood films; she started a school and a technique that continue to flourish; she fought unstintingly for racial justice. Early in 1936 she arrived at last in Haiti, where she remained for several months, the first of her many extended stays in that country throughout the rest of her life. At an early age, Dunham became interested in dance. Dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist Katherine Dunham was born on June 22, 1910, in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a small suburb of Chicago, to Fanny June (Guillaume) and Albert Millard Dunham. She died on May 21, 2006, Manhattan, New York City, NY. Regarding her impact and effect he wrote: "The rise of American Negro dance commenced . Katherine Dunham was my third great-grandaunt. The Katherine Dunham Company became an incubator for many well known performers, including Archie Savage, Talley Beatty, Janet Collins, Lenwood Morris, Vanoye Aikens, Lucille Ellis, Pearl Reynolds, Camille Yarbrough, Lavinia Williams, and Tommy Gomez. 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). As a young dancer and student at the University of Chicago, she chose anthropology as her course of study. To my Dunham family, fellow board members, and certified and master teachers: the bodily wisdom and life experience that you possess and have shared with so many including myself, is invaluable. Katherine Dunham, 1956. Dunham's well-known works Rara Tonga and Woman with a Cigar were created at this time. At 12, Dunham published a poem in a magazine edited by … View the profiles of people named Katherine K. Dunham. Oder starten Sie eine neue Suche, um noch mehr Stock-Fotografie und Bilder zu entdecken. They had particular success in Denmark and France. . Her mother, Fanny June Dunham (née Taylor), who was of mixed French-Canadian and Native American heritage, died when Katherine was four years old. This blending of cultures also appeared in the way that Dunham skillfully and stylistically employed choreographic techniques to evoke images of Afro-Caribbean customs and art. Pratt, who was white, shared Dunham's interests in African-Caribbean cultures and was happy to put his talents in her service. In 1946 Dunham returned to Broadway for a revue entitled Bal Nègre, which received glowing notices from theater and dance critics. Marlon Brando frequently dropped in to play the bongo drums, and jazz musician Charles Mingus held regular jam sessions with the drummers. Her mother, Fanny June Dunham (née Taylor), who was of French-Canadianheritage, died when Dunham was three years old. Throughout her career, she occasionally published articles about her anthropological research (sometimes under the pseudonym of Kaye Dunn) and sometimes lectured on anthropological topics at universities and scholarly societies. The prince was then married to glamorous Hollywood actress Rita Hayworth, and Dunham was, at long last, legally married to John Pratt, having wedded him in a quiet ceremony in Las Vegas earlier in the year. Years later, after extensive studies and initiations, she became a mambo (priestess) in the Vodun religion. Other movies she appeared in during this period included the Abbott and Costello comedy Pardon My Sarong (1942) and the famous break-through black musical Stormy Weather (1943). This was followed by television spectaculars filmed in London, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Sydney, and Mexico City. The Katherine Dunham Company toured throughout North America in the mid-1940s, even 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. children: Marie-Christine Pratt (bachelor of philosophy), with her principal area of study named as "social anthropology." Her father, Albert Millard Dunham, was a descendant of slaves from West Africa and Madagascar. Dunham returned to Chicago in late spring of 1936 and in August was awarded a bachelor's degree, a Ph.B. The next year it was repeated with Katherine Dunham in the lead and with students from Dunham's Negro Dance Group in the ensemble. Katherine Dunham, a few former Dunham dancers, and the Royal Troupe of Morocco appeared in a new revue, Bamboche!, at New York's 54th Street Theater. Join Facebook to connect with Katherine Dunham and others you may know. Her father, Albert Millard Dunham, was a descendant of slaves from West Africa and Madagascar. During these years, the Dunham company appeared in some thirty-three countries in Europe, North Africa, South America, Australia, and East Asia. Known for her many innovations, Dunham developed a dance pedagogy, later named the Dunham Technique, that won international acclaim and that is now taught as a modern dance style in many dance schools. Glory Van Scott and Jean-Léon Destiné were among other former Dunham dancers who remained her lifelong friends. Dunham established African-American dance as an art in its own. . 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. It closed after only thirty-eight performances, and the company soon thereafter embarked on a tour of venues in South America, Europe, and North Africa. The troupe performed a suite of West Indian dances in the first half of the program and a ballet entitled Tropic Death, with Talley Beatty, in the second half. Katherine Dunham died in her sleep in New York City from old age on May 21, 2006, aged ninety-six. Anthropologist, Ethnologue, Choreographer, Dancer, creator of the Dunham Technique, author, Scholar, activist and humanist Katherine DunhamLegendary dancer, choreographer and anthropologist, Katherine Dunham was born on June 22,1909 in Chicago, to an African American father and … In Her career, Katherine Dunham has achieved an Kennedy Center Honors. Select from premium Katherine Dunham of the highest quality. Katherine Dunham is known as of the most influential African American individuals, when it come down to the art of African Dance. - danced in a local company in Chicago. 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. Alvin Ailey, who stated that he first became interested in dance as a professional career after having seen a performance of the Katherine Dunham Company as a young teenager of 14 in Los Angeles, called the Dunham Technique "the closest thing to a unified Afro-American dance existing.". 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 as 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 the 92nd Street YMHA. After it ended, ABC News nominated her as Person of the Week. Her father, a tailor and dry cleaner, was black, while her mother was French Canadian. After successful performances of her company, Dunham was named dance director of the Chicago Negro Theater Unit of the Federal Theater Project. Through her ballet teachers, she was also exposed to Spanish, East Indian, Javanese, and Balinese dance forms. Choreographer, dancer, and anthropologist all in one, she collected ethnic, ritualistic dances, re-interpreted and staged them. Her mission was to help train the Senegalese National Ballet and to assist President Leopold Senghor with arrangements for the First Pan-African World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar (1965–66). About 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. Dunham's last appearance on Broadway was in 1962 in Bamboche!, which included a few former Dunham dancers in the cast and a contingent of dancers and dummers from the Royal Troupe of Morocco. . She had a profound influence on choreographer Alvin Ailey, who was inspired to take up his vocation after watching a performance of her company. mother: Fanny June Dunham. Katherine Mary Dunham (also known as Kaye Dunn, June 22, 1909 – May 21, 2006) was an American dancer, choreographer, author, educator, and social activist. Maya Deren-Wikipedia. In 1950, while visiting Brazil, Dunham and her group were refused rooms at a first-class hotel in São Paulo, the Hotel Esplanada, frequented by many American businessmen. In 1934–36 Dunham performed as a guest artist with the ballet company of the Chicago Opera. The following year, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson nominated Dunham to be technical cultural adviser—that is, a sort of cultural ambassador—to the government of Senegal in West Africa. Her brother, Albert Dunham Jr., … ", 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 Française made a bronze cast of her feet for a museum of important personalities.". 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.". Under their tutelage, she showed great promise in her ethnographic studies of dance. Her stay in the Caribbean began in Jamaica, where she went to live several months in the remote Maroon village of Accompong, deep in the mountains of Cockpit Country. As a result, Dunham would later experience some diplomatic "difficulties" on her tours. 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 Música en la Noche (1955), made in Mexico City. This initiative drew international publicity to the plight of the Haitian boat-people and U.S. discrimination against them. In Hollywood, Dunham refused to sign a lucrative studio contract when the producer said she would have to replace some of her darker-skinned company members. Katherine Mary Dunham was born on June 22, 1909, in a Chicago hospital and taken as an infant to her parents' home in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, about 25 miles west of Chicago. After he became her artistic collaborator, they became romantically involved, despite the difference in their races. View the profiles of people named Katherine Dunham. The Work household warmly welcomes you to experience life off the beaten path” in California’s rugged countryside from the back of a working ranch horse. She had an older brother, Albert Jr., with whom she had a close relationship. Her birthday was22nd June in the year 1909. Radcliffe-Brown, Edward Sapir, and Bronisław Malinowski. At a time when African Americans were still battling blatant racism, she ran her own Katherine Dunham Dance Company, a self-supported organization that performed for decades. 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 militancy which was to characterize her subsequent career.". Although it was well received by the audience, local censors feared that the revealing costumes and provocative dances might compromise public morals. Featuring lively Latin American and Caribbean dances, plantation dances, and American social dances, the show was an immediate success. 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 a lecture by Robert Redfield, a professor of anthropology, she learned that much of black culture in modern America had begun in Africa. The show created a minor controversy in the press over whether the torrid dance numbers with bare-midriffed and bare-torsoed performers represented "art" or "sex appeal." Katherine Dunham, Buried On The Family Ranch In Idaho. Find the perfect Katherine Dunham stock photos and editorial news pictures from Getty Images. Deren is now considered to be a pioneer of independent American filmmaking. Initially scheduled for a single performance, the show was so popular that the troupe repeated it for another ten Sundays. The program included courses in dance, drama, performing arts, applied skills, humanities, cultural studies, and Caribbean research, and in 1947 it was expanded and granted a charter as the Katherine Dunham School of Cultural Arts. From being a young child performing in church, Dunham had wanted to follow a career as a singer, but she was academically talented and so encouraged to study to become a teacher like her older brother. Geni requires JavaScript! She has been called the "matriarch and queen mother of black dance.". Schools inspired by it later opened in Stockholm, Paris, and Rome by dancers trained by Dunham. when Katherine Dunham and her company skyrocketed into the Windsor Theater in New York, from Chicago in 1940, and made an indelible stamp on the dance world. After Mexico, Dunham began touring in Europe, where she was an immediate sensation. In any case, from the beginning of their association, around 1938, Pratt designed every costume Dunham ever wore. After the national tour of Cabin in the Sky, the Dunham company stayed in Los Angeles, where they appeared in the Warner Brothers short film Carnival of Rhythm (1941). Upon returning to Chicago, the company performed at the Goodman Theater and at the Abraham Lincoln Center. I am most grateful to have the continued opportunity to learn and share with you all as we weave our individual and collective voices, and bring to light all that Ms. Dunham … To my Dunham family, fellow committee members and board members, and certified and master teachers: the bodily wisdom and life experience that you possess and have shared with so many including myself, is invaluable. Katherine Dunham was born on June 22nd 1909 in Chicago. 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. it is safe to say that the perspectives of concert-theatrical dance in Europe were profoundly affected by the performances of the Dunham troupe. Dunham ended her fast only after exiled Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Jesse Jackson came to her and personally requested that she stop risking her life for this cause. 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". "What Dunham gave modern dance was a coherent lexicon of African and Caribbean styles of movement—a flexible torso and spine, articulated pelvis and isolation of the limbs, a polyrhythmic strategy of moving—which she integrated with techniques of ballet and modern dance." Encouraged by Speranzeva to focus on modern dance instead of ballet, Dunham opened her first real dance school in 1933. This was the beginning of more than twenty years of performing almost exclusively outside America. 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. Later that year, they returned to New York, and in September 1943, under the management of the renowned impresario Sol Hurok, her troupe opened in Tropical Review at the Martin Beck Theater. While in Haiti, Dunham investigated Vodun rituals and made extensive notes on her research, particularly on the dance movements of the participants. A photographic exhibit honoring her achievements, entitled "Kaiso! Her brother, Albert Dunham Jr., was almost four years old when she was born. 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