Katherine Dunham

Dancing Queen

Who was Katherine Dunham?

Katherine Dunham was a dancer, choreographer, author, educator, anthologist, social activist, and creator of the Dunham Technique.

In 1921 a short story she wrote when she was twelve, Come Back to Arizona was published. In 1928 she graduated from Joliet Central High School; where she played baseball, tennis, basketball, ran track, served as vice president of the French Club, was on the yearbook staff, and joined the Terpsichorean Club. At just fifteen Dunham organized, The Blue Moon Café – a fundraising cabaret – to raise money for Brown’s Methodist Church, where she gave her first public performance. She also opened a private dance school for young black children – while still in High School.

As stated by Encyclopedia, in 1931, at the age of 21, Dunham formed a group called Ballets Negre: one of the first black ballet companies in the United States. By 1933, she opened her first dance school, Negro Dance Group and taught young black dancers about their heritage. Her dance career officially began in Chicago when she joined the Little Theater Company of Harper Avenue. She performed as a guest artist with the ballet company of the Chicago Opera, in Ruth Page’s: La Guiablesse (The Devil Woman). The Opera opened with in 1933, in Chicago, with a black cast and Page dancing the title role. The following year the production was repeated with Dunham in the lead, and students from Dunham’s Negro Dance Group in the ensemble.

In 1935, Dunham received funding from the Julius Rosenwald and Guggenheim foundations to study dance culture in Jamaica, Trinidad, and Haiti. The result of the trip was Dunham’s Master thesis: The Dances of Haiti. Following the trip, Dunham returned to Chicago in the late Spring of 1936, and was awarded a bachelor’s degree. Ph.B., and bachelor of society by August. She was one of the first African American women to attend the University of Chicago and earn those degrees. Having completed her studies as an undergraduate, she revived her dance ensemble, and traveled to New York with them to take part in A Negro Dance Everything. They also performed at the Goodman Theater and the Abraham Lincoln Center in Chicago. After her company’s successful performances, she was chosen as dance directory of the Chicago Negro Theater Unit of the Federal Theater Project.

In 1945, Dunham opened and directed the Katherine Dunham School of Dance and Theatre near Times Square, in New York City. Her dance company was provided with rent free studio space for three years by and admirer and patron, Lee Shubert.

Katherine Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers in African American and European theater during the twentieth century. She choreographed more than ninety individual dances throughout her career and has been called the ‘Matriarch and Queen Mother of Black Dance’.

On May 21st, 2006, on her 97th birthday, Katherine Dunham passed away in her sleep due to natural causes.

---

Books

*Kids*

• Katherine Dunham: A Biography | Ruth Beckford

*Adults*

• Katherine Dunham: Dancing a Life | Joyce Aschenbrenner

• Katherine Dunham: Dance and the Africa Diaspora | Joanna Dee Das

• Island Possessed | Katherine Dunham

• A Touch of Innocence: A Memoir of Childhood | Katherine Dunham

---

Source(s)

1. "Katherine Dunham 1910 (?)." Encyclopedia, 23 May 2018, https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/dance-biographies/katherine-dunham