Rebel Among Rebels

So many of Dunham's dances were based off of real rituals, and real everyday everyday activities that the people of the Afro-Caribbean Islands participated in. Certain dances can refer to very specific places and in some cases rituals of that specific place. For example, L Ag’ Ya was based on a ritual done in Martinique, which is based off of a wrestling match.

Katherine Dunham also participated in the creations of other works, one in particular with George Balanchine, who staged her in Cabin in the Sky, which was a modern rendition of the legend of Faust.

Woman with a Cigar

As described in Katherine Dunham: A Dancing Life by Joyce Aschenbrenner, the program for the show Tropical Revue was the outcome of a routinization and therefore became a model for later Dunham shows for the Company. Dramatic ballets like “Rites de Passage” and “L’Ag’Ya” were presented in the “chauve souris” tradition, which is stated to have the “finale consisting of Americana dances like plantation dances, spirituals, and American popular or social dances…”

Dunham’s innovational technique is like no other. According to Aschenbrenner, “…it was Katherine Dunham who introduced a systematic technique incorporating African movement; she and her company launched a series of dance programs that changed the course of modern dance and provided opportunities for black dancers.”

LINKS:

http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/18/32933586/Katherine-Dunham-Technique

http://books.google.com/books?id=KyhaD14Za40C&dq=Woman+with+a+Cigar+dunham&source=gbs_navlinks_s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab6KWufcCUw

"A creative person has to create. It doesn't really matter what you create. If such a dancer wanted to go out and build the cactus gardens where he could, in Mexico, let him do that, but something that is creative has to go on." ~Katherine Dunham

Dunham's Lineage

Katherine Dunham did not start dancing until her teens, and she had humble dance beginnings. In 1922 at her high school in Chicago, she joined a club where she was exposed to the techniques and ideas of Rudolf Laban and Jaques-Dalcroze and learned a free-style of modern dance movement. In 1928 Dunham began to study with Ludmilla Speranzeva, a dancer who came to America with a French/Russian Vaudeville group. She was one of the first ballet instructors to also accept black students. She exposes Katherine Dunham to movement styles of Spanish dancers (Argentina) while also giving a solid ballet background. She studies with Vera Mirova who teaches her movement styles of the Orient including Javanese, Indian, and Balinese. Dunham was also a student of Mark Turbyfill and Ruth Page.

This is a picture of Ludmilla, Dunahm's ballet teacher...

Katherine Dunham was also greatly influenced by her field research trips to the Caribbean; she studied in Haiti, Cuba, and Jamaica to name a few. There she immersed herself in the culture and was able to learn the dances of the people.

When she returned to the United States, she immediately began working on a movement vocabulary that fused the cultural movement traditions of the islands and those of modern and ballet. Because she had such a solid foundation in ballet and modern movement she was able to create a unique and innovative style, which eventually evolved into her own “Dunham Technique,” which is still taught today. I can say from personal experience, it kicks your butt.

LINKS:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200152685/default.html;jsessionid=7C6D72413093D9C47752634602F7CA16

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/freetodance/biographies/dunham.html

http://www.nndb.com/people/372/000117021/

"I really think that aside from admiring my talent you really admire me as a person and as a woman." ~Katherine Dunham

What She Stood For

Katherine Dunham was very affected by civil rights throughout her whole life. On the home front in America, she was discriminated against because she was black, and unfortunately in other countries as well. She was a political activist in her own right and used her own medium for it. For example, she was on her way to performance in the South. When she arrived to the theater, she learned that the local black residents were not allowed to purchase tickets to her show, and she refused to go on. Another example was a performance in Tennessee; she had a wonderful acceptance by the crowd and even got a standing ovation. She quieted the audience down and stated that she would not return unless the city was desegregated and blacks were allowed to sit in the theatre with everybody else.

Dunham also was an advocate for Haiti, the island where she lived and studied for many years. Haiti has always been a center of political turmoil and unrest. Even at the age of 82 in 1992, Dunham went on a near 50-day hunger strike to protest the United States’ recent decision to “repatriate” Haitian refugees.

Katherine Dunham was also a big arts education advocate. She built her Performing Arts Training Center amongst the rough neighborhoods of East St. Louis in the late 60’s. She built it in hopes of bringing a new avenue of opportunities to the local poor community, when she could have easily built a more lucrative studio in a posh neighborhood. Her focus was to expand and aid in urban development.

Now, these might not all have been single events or trends, but they were on-going struggles of her people, and she did what she could to help fight for their rights.

LINKS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vyx6ue7K6o

http://www.kdcah.com/index.html

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200152685/default.html;jsessionid=7C6D72413093D9C47752634602F7CA16

"I used to want the words 'She tried' on my tombstone. Now I want 'She did it.'" ~Katherine Dunham

Introduction

Hey There!

I have never done a blog before, so here goes:

This post and the next will be talking about Katherine Dunham, one of the most influential dance artists in the young history of Modern Dance.

I have been interested in Dunham ever since I was younger. I think mostly because my mother was very into her work as well. My family comes from Cuba, and Dunham spent many years over in that area studying local and native dance and then fused it with ballet and modern dance techniques.

I feel like I have a strong connection to her work, and why not take the opportunity to study about her some more. "In 1930, she [Dunham] founded an ensemble that visited more than 50 countries on 6 continents." I think she hasn't had the kind of recognition in the dance world that she should have. "Dunham's dual role as a sensuous performer and scholarly anthropologist..." I loved how Katherine Dunham was both a performer and anthropologist. She really took advantage of her knowledge in both worlds and combined them to make one amazing technique that enraptured audiences for years.

-Quotes in my post are from an obituary in the St. Louis Dispatch that marked her Centenial

LINKS:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Dunham

http://www.black-collegian.com/african/dunham9.shtml

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/k/katherine_dunham.html

"I certainly feel my career was a great career because it inspired so many many people, literally hundreds of people to follow a new kind of life and to realize that they could make out and advance their own professional and private and social lives." ~Katherine Dunham