Dunham, Katherine 1910(?)–

Katherine Dunham 1910(?)–

Dancer, anthropologist, social worker, activist, author

At a Glance…

Combined Interest in Anthropology and Dance

Attained Stardom Through Dance

Expanded Role as Social Worker and Activist

Selected writings

Selected choreography

Sources

Katherine Dunham’s long and remarkable life has spanned the fields of anthropology, dance, theater, and inner-city social work. As an anthropologist, Dunham studied and lived among the peoples of Haiti and other Caribbean islands; as a dancer and choreographer she combined “primitive” Caribbean dances with traditional ballet, African ritual, and black American rhythms to create an entirely new dance form called the Dunham Technique; and as founder of the Performing Arts Training Center in the East St. Louis ghetto she has taught a new generation of black youth to take pride in its African cultural heritage. Along the way, Dunham found time to mount numerous successful Broadway revues, tour 57 countries on 6 continents, and choreograph a half dozen major motion pictures. In the early 1990s the vigorous Dunham made headlines around the world with a hunger strike in support of refugees from her beloved Haiti.

Katherine Mary Dunham, the second child of Albert Millard and Fanny June Dunham, was born in Chicago on June 22, probably in the year 1910. As a young man Albert Dunham moved from Memphis, Tennessee, to Chicago to work as a tailor and drycleaner while also pursuing a career as a jazz guitarist. Performing one night at a party in the home of wealthy white socialites, Dunham met Fanny Taylor, a divorced woman of French-Canadian and Indian blood, twenty years his senior and already a grandmother of five. Despite the unlikeliness of their union, Albert Dunham wooed and married Fanny Taylor around 1905. The couple moved to suburban Glen Ellyn a few years later to escape the constant harassment caused by their mixed-race marriage, and it was in Glen Ellyn that Katherine Dunham spent the first few years of her life. Her mother was the assistant principal at one of the larger Chicago high schools, and, for a while, the Dunham family was prosperous and happy.

Katherine was only four years old at the time 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 of Chicago. It was in the household of her Aunt Lulu that Katherine Dunham was first exposed to the joys of music and dance, as the Dunham side of her family was crowded with performers of every kind. When Katherine’s father married a schoolteacher from Iowa, he reunited his family in the Illinois town of Joliet, about 70 miles from Chicago. There he opened a drycleaning business that met with little success, further embittering him, since he had received

At a Glance…

Born Katherine Mary Dunham on June 22, c. 1910, in Chicago, IL; daughter of Albert Millard and Fanny June Taylor Dunham; married Jordis McCoo (a dancer), c. 1931 (divorced); married John Pratt (a set and costume designer), 1941 (died, 1986); children: Marie Christine (adopted). Education: Bachelor’s degree in anthropology, University of Chicago, 1936; studied with Melville Herskovits, head of Northwestern University’s African studies program, 1935; field study in Caribbean through Rosenwald Fellowship, 1935-36; studied dance in Caribbean and with Ludmila Speranzeva in United States. Religion: Vaudun (Haitian voodoo).

Dancer, choreographer, anthropologist, social worker, activist, and author. Formed Ballets Negre, 1931; appeared at Beaux Arts Ball, Chicago, 1931; performed at Chicago World’s Fair, 1934; lived and studied in Caribbean, 1935-36; formed Dunham Dance Company, 1939; choreographed with George Balanchine and appeared on Broadway in Cabin in the Sky, 1940-41; appeared in Star Spangled Rhythm, Paramount Pictures, 1942, and in Stormy Weather, Twentieth Century Fox, 1943; opened Katherine Dunham School of Dance, New York, 1945; toured Mexico and Europe, 1946-49, and South America, 1950; choreographed Aida for Metropolitan Opera Company, New York, 1963; artist-inresidence, Southern Illinois University, 1964; helped organize First World Festival of Negro Arts, Senegal, 1965; founder and director of Performing Arts Training Center (PATC), East St. Louis, IL, 1967—.

Selected awards: Rosenwald Foundation travel grant, 1935; Rockefeller Foundation grant, c. 1935; Albert Schweitzer Music Award, 1979; Kennedy Center Honor, 1983.

Addresses: Office —Performing Arts Training Center, 10th St., East St. Louis, IL 62201.

nothing from his first wife’s large estate and keenly felt the loss of social status he suffered with her death. His personal frustrations led to frequent quarrels with his second wife and children that became increasingly violent over the years until Albert Jr., still a teenager, was forced to leave home. The senior Dunham also displayed an unhealthy sexual interest in his growing daughter, and in her autobiography, A Touch of Innocence, Katherine Dunham candidly described their relations: “the wanting her to sit close to him in the truck or kiss him goodbye, or the touch and fondling that made everything about her life seem smudgy and unclean.”

Combined Interest in Anthropology and Dance

With the help of her brother, who was then attending the University of Chicago on scholarship, Katherine gradually freed herself of her father’s influence. She got a job in the Chicago Public Library system, continued the dance classes she had been taking for years, and at the age of 18 joined Albert Jr. at the University of Chicago. There she studied anthropology while also beginning to teach dance, renting and living in a tiny studio near the University’s South Side campus. Among the artists Katherine met at the University of Chicago were Ruth Page, later a noted choreographer; Mark Turbyfill, ballet dancer and choreographer; and Langston Hughes, the famed poet. The university atmosphere challenged Dunham to reconcile her scholarly interest in anthropology with her love of dance, and she responded by writing a bachelor’s dissertation on the use of dance in primitive ritual. At the same time, Dunham teamed up with Page and Turbyfill to form what has been called the first black concert dance group, the Ballets Negre, which made its debut in 1931 at Chicago’s annual Beaux Arts Ball. A few years later Dunham formed her own company, the Negro Dance Group, and appeared with the Chicago Symphony and at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1934.

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

Attained Stardom Through Dance

Upon returning to the University of Chicago, Dunham continued her work in anthropology but soon realized that her future lay in the area of dance performance. She worked briefly for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) researching urban religious cults before launching her dance career in 1938 with a ballet mounted for the Federal Works Theater Project. L’Ag’Ya —based on a fighting dance native to the island of Martinique—was written, choreographed, and directed by Dunham and featured the members of her own newly-formed Dunham Dance Company wearing authentic costumes she had brought from the Caribbean.

The year 1939 marked the beginning of Dunham’s rise to stardom. Following the success of L’Ag’Ya, she and her company were invited to share a nightclub stage with Duke Ellington and his orchestra at Chicago’s Sherman Hotel. Dunham’s program, including both Caribbean and Afro-American dance routines with titles such as Barrelhouse, Floyd’s Guitar’s Blues, and Cakewalk, represented the first time black concert dancing had ever been performed in a nightclub setting. Shortly thereafter, the company was hired to perform at New York’s Windsor Theater, for which Dunham created and starred in Tropics and Le Jazz Hot. Both shows were well received by the public and press, and Dunham was beginning to make a name for herself. The Dunham Dance Company also became the subject of a short film called Carnival of Rhythm, produced by Warner Brothers. Dunham’s rising success led to an opportunity to work with world-renowned choreographer George Balanchine on the Broadway musical Cabin in the Sky. Dunham and her company had lead roles in this all-black production that toured nationally, closing on the West Coast in 1941.

That same year, Dunham was married to John Pratt, a stage and costume designer with whom she had been working for a number of years. Pratt, a white American of Canadian birth, was the chief designer for Dunham’s shows throughout her career, and the couple remained happily married until Pratt’s death in 1986. The couple also had a daughter, Marie Christine, adopted in 1951 at the age of four from a Catholic nursery in France.

The dance company remained on the West Coast after the closing of Cabin in the Sky and, in the early 1940s, appeared in two motion pictures, Stormy Weather and Star-Spangled Rhythm. The troupe toured the United States in 1943 and 1944 with Dunham’s Tropical Revue and a year later opened Carib Song on Broadway. Henceforth based in New York City, Dunham soon opened the Dunham School of Dance and Theater in Manhattan. Within a few short years the school was given a state charter and had more than 300 pupils

In the late 1940s Dunham and her troupe made their first overseas tour, taking Dunham’s Bal Negre and New Tropical Revue to Mexico, England, and Europe. The tour was a great success, and Dunham received particularly favorable reviews in Europe. She followed it up in 1950 with a trip to South America and, a year later, a second European program including stops in North Africa. In the meantime, Dunham had returned to Haiti in 1949 to buy a villa, located near the capital of Port au Prince, that had originally been owned by Pauline Bonaparte, the sister of Napoleon I of France. Habitation LeClerc, as Dunham called the residence, would remain a place of retreat, study, and relaxation for the dancer. Less happily, 1949 was also the year in which Dunham’s much loved brother, Albert Jr., died, followed by their father in the same year.

Expanded Role as Social Worker and Activist

Further touring occupied Dunham’s troupe in the 1950s, including several more European trips and a long excursion to Australia and the Far East in 1956 and 1957. Dunham choreographed her last Broadway show in 1962, but the following year she shocked the opera world with her daring choreography and designs for Aida, performed by the New York Metropolitan Opera Company. Now in her fifties, Dunham began to think about retiring from the stage. Several years earlier she had written A Touch of Innocence, an account of the first 18 years of her life, but a retirement devoted to writing would never satisfy a woman who wasn’t happy unless she were working physically and emotionally with the people around her. As her performing career tapered off, Dunham searched for a worthwhile alternative.

In 1964 Dunham was invited by Southern Illinois University to serve as artist-in-residence for a term. She directed and choreographed a production of the opera Faust, made many good friends, and parted from the university with a feeling that it might figure in her long range retirement goals. After helping to organize the First World Festival of Negro Arts in the African nation of Senegal, becoming good friends with the country’s president, Leopold Senghor, Dunham became increasingly involved in the rising black civil rights movement in the United States. She met with Sargent Shriver, head of the VISTA jobs program, to propose helping the ghetto community of East St. Louis, Illinois, which she had visited while working for Southern Illinois University. Though nothing came of the proposal, Dunham resolved that she would do something herself to relieve the misery in East St. Louis.

She returned to Southern Illinois University as a visiting professor at the Edwardsville campus, not far from East St. Louis. With the support of the university, Dunham moved to East St. Louis and created the Performing Arts Training Center (PATC) in 1967, offering local blacks an opportunity to learn about African cultural history as well as to participate in its living arts. Dunham’s school was no elitist enclave; she actively sought out the toughest gang members and militant black activists for enrollment at PATC, and her actions often involved personal danger and numerous run-ins with the local police. East St. Louis was a violent city in the revolutionary climate of the late 1960s, but Dunham went about her business with a calm courage that impressed all who met her.

Through PATC, Dunham hoped to break the cycle of black ghetto life, offering students a range of courses in dance, theater, and African arts, while also stressing an understanding of African-American history and the need to reverse the decay of inner-city life. As Dunham had learned in Haiti 30 years before, African arts become meaningful only in 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 a culture hero, a culturally heroic society.” PATC has continued its mission, and Dunham still calls the East St. Louis ghetto her home.

Dunham has received many awards and honorary degrees in her life. Most important of these are probably the Albert Schweitzer Music Award, presented in 1979, and the Kennedy Center Honor, which she received in 1983. The Haitian government, however, has also bestowed a number of its highest honors on Dunham for her celebration of the island’s cultural riches, and it is Haiti that occupies what time Dunham can spare from her work at PATC. The increasingly desperate condition of the Haitian people prompted Dunham to turn Habitation LeClerc into a kind of unlicensed medical center, bringing basic health care to some of the poorest people on earth; and in response to the plight of thousands of Haitian refugees refused entry into the United States in the early 1990s, Dunham began a hunger strike by which she hoped to pressure the U.S. government into a more humane stand on the issue. “This isn’t just about Haiti,” Dunham maintained in People. “It’s about America. This country doesn’t feel that Haitians are human. And America treats East St. Louis the way it does Haitians.”

Dunham’s hunger strike received national attention and brought to her bedside such figures as activist Rev. Jesse Jackson; entertainer, author, and health and fitness proponent Dick Gregory; and the recently deposed Haitian president, J. Bertrand Aristide. It did not, however, change the U.S. government’s position on the Haitian refugees, and, at the urging of president Aristide, who convinced her she was too valuable an ally of Haitian democracy to be allowed to die, Dunham gave up her fast in its forty-seventh day, agreeing to work along with Aristide to restore his progressive government.

Selected writings

Katherine Dunham’s Journey to Accompong, originally published in 1946, Greenwood, 1971.

The Dances of Haiti, originally published in 1947, University of California Center for Afro-American Studies, 1983.

A Touch of Innocence, originally published in 1959, Books for Libraries, 1980.

Island Possessed, Doubleday, 1969.

Selected choreography

L’Ag’Ya, 1938.

Barrelhouse, 1939.

Le Jazz Hot, 1940.

Tropics, 1940.

(With George Balanchine) Cabin in the Sky, 1940.

Star Spangled Rhythm (film), 1942.

Stormy Weather (film), 1943.

Tropical Revue, 1943.

Carib Song, 1945.

Bal Negre, 1946.

New Tropical Revue, 1946.

Bamboche, 1962.

Aida, 1963.

Sources

Books

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

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

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

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

Periodicals

Connoisseur, December 1987.

People, March 30, 1992.

—Jonathan Martin