what college did katherine dunham go to

Did Katherine Dunham go to college?

The University of Chicago1936Joliet Junior CollegeJoliet Central High SchoolKatherine Dunham/Education

Did Katherine Dunham open a school?

Dunham continued to tour extensively from the late 1940s through the early 1960s. She choreographed for film and television, and she opened schools in Paris, Stockholm, and Rome. She then returned to Haiti to live, research, and write.

What was Katherine Dunham famous for?

Katherine Dunham was an African-American dancer and choreographer, producer, author, scholar, anthropologist and Civil Rights activist. She had one of the most successful dance careers in Western dance theatre in the 20th century and directed her own dance company for many years.

What age did Katherine Dunham start dancing?

1922. In high school, Katherine Dunham joins the Terpsichorean Club and begins to learn a kind of free-style modern dance based on ideas of Jaques-Dalcroze and Rudolf von Laban. At fourteen, to help raise money for her church, she organizes a "cabaret party." She is the producer, director, and star of the entertainment ...

What year did Katherine Dunham go to college?

Academia and anthropology. After completing her studies at Joliet Junior College in 1928, Dunham moved to Chicago to join her brother Albert at the University of Chicago.

Who is the first dancer?

Graham danced and taught for over seventy years....Martha GrahamBornMay 11, 1894 Allegheny (later Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania, U.S.DiedApril 1, 1991 (aged 96) New York City, U.S.Known forDance and choreography4 more rows

Did Katherine Dunham receive any awards?

Kennedy Center HonorsKatherine Dunham / AwardsThroughout her distinguished career, Dunham earned numerous honorary doctorates, awards and honors. She was the recipient of a Kennedy Center Honors Award, the Plaque d'Honneur Haitian-American Chamber of Commerce Award, and a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

What was Katherine Dunham dance technique?

A performance of the Dunham Technique involves the merging of polyrhythmic dance styles in continual motion. Katherine Dunham was the first to combine the individualistic dance movements of Caribbean and African cultures with European-style ballet.

What is a forced arch in jazz?

forced arch: Weightbearing position of the foot in which the heel is lifted and the knee is bent with extreme metatarsal dorsiflexion.

Why did Katherine Dunham go on a hunger strike?

KATHERINE DUNHAM, the choreographer and dancer who brought the black dance heritage to a wide public, has gone on a hunger strike to protest the United States Government's policy of sending Haitian refugees back to their homeland.

Which forerunner's career took off in Europe because her work was more accepted there?

Dance History; The Forerunners of Modern DanceQuestionAnswerThis pioneer's dance career took off in Europe where her work was more accepted. She is considered to be the Mother of Modern Dance.Isadora DuncanSix of this artist's trained students became known as the Isadorables.Isadora Duncan13 more rows

How did Katherine Dunham influence jazz?

Katherine Dunham (1909–2006) brought African dance aesthetics to the United States, forever influencing modern and jazz dance. She was instrumental in getting respect for Black dancers on the concert dance stage and directed the first self-supported Black dance company.

Why did Katherine Dunham start dancing?

At an early age, Dunham became interested in dance. However, she did not seriously pursue a career in the profession until she was a student at the University of Chicago. During her studies, Dunham attended a lecture on anthropology, where she was introduced to the concept of dance as a cultural symbol.

How did Katherine Dunham influence jazz?

Katherine Dunham (1909–2006) brought African dance aesthetics to the United States, forever influencing modern and jazz dance. She was instrumental in getting respect for Black dancers on the concert dance stage and directed the first self-supported Black dance company.

How did Katherine Dunham grow up?

Born on June 22, 1909 in Chicago, Dunham grew up in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a small town outside of Chicago. She first began formally studying dance at the age of nineteen, while studying anthropology at the University of Chicago. In 1935, Dunham spent ten months investigating the various dance cultures of the Caribbean.

Who was an important pioneer of jazz dance?

Jack ColeBoth the Father of Jazz Dance Technique and the Father of Jazz Dance, Jack Cole worked to combine modern dance techniques with jazz style. Jack Cole was the first to create a set technique that was shown on stages and on the big screen during the 1940s and 1950s.

Who is Katherine Dunham?

Legendary dancer, choreographer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham was born June 22, 1909, to an African American father and French-Canadian mother who died when she was young. At an early age, Dunham became interested in dance. However, she did not seriously pursue a career in the profession until she was a student at the University of Chicago.

What was Katherine Dunham's dance company?

In 1940, she formed the Katherine Dunham Dance Company, which became the premier facility for training dancers. Alumnae include Eartha Kitt, Marlon Brando and Julie Belafonte. Dunham is credited with introducing international audiences to African aesthetics and establishing African dance as a true art form. Called the “Matriarch of Black Dance,” her groundbreaking repertoire combined innovative interpretations of Caribbean dances, traditional ballet, African rituals and African American rhythms to create the Dunham Technique, which she performed with her dance troupe in venues around the world. Her many original works include L’ag’ya, Shango and Bal Negre. She also choreographed and appeared in Broadway musicals, operas and the film Cabin in the Sky.

What is the Dunham technique?

Called the “Matriarch of Black Dance,” her groundbreaking repertoire combined innovative interpretations of Caribbean dances, traditional ballet, African rituals and African American rhythms to create the Dunham Technique, which she performed with her dance troupe in venues around the world.

Who is Katherine Dunham?

Katherine Dunham, pseudonym Kaye Dunn, (born June 22, 1909, Glen Ellyn, Ill., U.S.—died May 21, 2006, New York, N.Y.), American dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist noted for her innovative interpretations of ritualistic and ethnic dances. Meet extraordinary women who dared to bring gender equality and other issues to the forefront.

What was Katherine Dunham's first work?

Tropics (choreographed 1937) and Le Jazz Hot (1938) were among the earliest of many works based on her research. Katherine Dunham in Tropical Revue, 1943. Dunham was both a popular entertainer and a serious artist intent on tracing the roots of black culture.

Who is Katherine Dunham?

July 15, 2019 by Lily Cooper in [ Performing Arts & Digital Arts ] Katherine Dunham was an African-American dancer and choreographer, producer, author, scholar, anthropologist and Civil Rights activist. She had one of the most successful dance careers in Western dance theatre in the 20th century and directed her own dance company for many years.

What was Katherine Dunham's influence on dance?

Katherine Dunham’s influence is still strong within the dance world. Rose remarks, “Much of Ms. Dunham’s work was related to intercultural communication, socializing through the arts and form and function.” When she danced, she stripped down those cultural barriers and brought people together through the love of dance.

What is Dunham's approach to dance?

Rose says, “Dunham’s approach to dance is polyrhythmic.”. In classes, they regularly use more than one drummer, therefore having multiple beats overlaid in the same exercise, which requires dancers to develop critical listening skills.

What is the Dunham Technique?

Albirda Rose, the former director of the Dunham Technique Certification Board says that having a spiritual awareness and focus is invaluable in approaching the technique , “Really, the three most important things to bring to a Dunham class are an open mind, body, and spirit.”

When did Katherine Dunham open her school?

In 1945, she opened the Katherine Dunham School of Dance and Theatre in New York City. The curriculum included courses in dance, drama, performing arts, applied skills, humanities, cultural studies, and Caribbean research.

What is Katherine Dunham known for?

Katherine Dunham, an American dancer and choreographer, was a trendsetter in African-American modern dance. She performed a confluence of both the cultures and combined classical American ballet with African rhythms to create an exciting new dance style. After losing her mother at a young age and going through a series of challenges in her personal life, she finally found freedom in college. With a keen interest in dance and literature from an early age, she delightfully accepted the fellowship to study the dances of the Caribbean Islands, where she spent 18 months. Upon her return, she completed her graduation and then decided to pursue a career in dance. She formed a dance troupe and performed on various platforms including Broadway musicals and movies. She also continued refining and teaching her techniques to transmit that knowledge to the next generation of students. She was also a social activist and continued to fight against racism and injustice all around the world throughout her life. She 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. She was a groundbreaking visionary and her legacy of spirited dance, cultural acceptance, and social justice lives on.

What was the Dunham technique?

It was a mixture of the ethnic dances of the Caribbean with classical American ballet and theatrical effects.

Who is Katherine Dunham?

Katherine Dunham. (1909-2006) By Halifu Osumare. Katherine Dunham was a world famous dancer, choreographer, author, anthropologist, social activist, and humanitarian. Born in 1909 during the turn of the century Victorian era in the small town of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, she became one of the first dance anthropologists, ...

Who was Katherine Dunham's husband?

The success of the dance company was also due to her artistic collaboration with her brilliant designer husband, Canadian John Pratt, who was the costume and set designer for the Katherine Dunham Dance Company.

What is the Katherine Dunham technique?

It was during this period of the school that the world famous Katherine Dunham Technique, a modern dance style that combines Caribbean folk movement with ballet in the inimitable Dunham modernist approach, was born.

How many ballets did Katherine Dunham create?

During this period, she created a repertoire of over 100 ballets for concert, Broadway, nightclubs and opera. During the dance company’s touring years, she instituted The Katherine Dunham School of Arts and Research in New York City in 1946, and later expanded to The Katherine Dunham School of Cultural Arts in 1952.

What was Katherine Dunham's contribution to the concert stage?

She translated her vision of dance in the African diaspora, including the United States, into vivid works of choreography that show a people’s culture.

What is the Dunham philosophy?

Yet it is the Dunham Philosophy, dance as a “way of life,” that created the next stage of her life: the application of her technique and philosophy to community development in the economically depressed black community of East St. Louis.

Where is Katherine Dunham's art and humanities center?

Today, the Katherine Dunham Center for the Arts and Humanities (KDCAH) is the non-profit organization that oversees the institutions and cultural work that she started in the Southern Illinois region. The PATC, Institute for Intercultural Communication, The Katherine Dunham Children’s Workshop, and the Katherine Dunham Museum, today are all housed in East St. Louis. KDCAH is administrative guardian of these programs, as well as the Annual Katherine Dunham Technique Seminar that takes place at Washington University each summer. When asked why she chose East St. Louis and Haiti as homes, after living in the greatest cities throughout the world, she simply said, “I always go where I am most needed.” Katherine has always tried to make a difference and in the process has become one of the world’s great humanitarians.

Where did Katherine Dunham go to college?

Having attended a junior college in Joliet, Illinois, Katherine Dunham follows her brother Albert to the University of Chicago. She attends a lecture by Robert Redfield, a professor of anthropology who specialized in American Indian and African cultures.

What club did Katherine Dunham join in high school?

1922. In high school, Katherine Dunham joins the Terpsichorean Club and begins to learn a kind of free-style modern dance based on ideas of Jaques-Dalcroze and Rudolf von Laban. At fourteen, to help raise money for her church, she organizes a "cabaret party.".

Why did Katherine Dunham go on a hunger strike?

Katherine Dunham begins a hunger strike to focus international attention on the plight of Haitian refugees seeking asylum in the United States who , under the orders of President George Bush, were being sent back to Haiti. After forty-seven days, she ends her fast after concerns for her health are voiced by exiled Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and others.

What did Dunham advise Speranzeva?

Speranzeva advises her to forgo ballet, to focus on modern dance, and to develop her own style.

Where did Katherine Dunham start her dance school?

Dunham opens her first dance school, the Negro Dance Group, in Chicago. With Speranzeva's help, it survives a rocky start and Dunham's subsequent absences when she was engaged in anthropological fieldwork. Katherine Dunham and her students. Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, So.

Who is Katherine Dunham's brother?

She spends her early years there in the company of her brother, Albert Jr., who is six years older than she. They become devoted to each other. A studio photograph of Katherine Dunham in the 1920s. Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis.

Who did Dunham study with?

In Chicago, Dunham begins to study ballet with Ludmilla Speranzeva, who had come to America with a Franco-Russian vaudeville troupe known as the Chauve-Souris. Speranzeva, one of the first ballet teachers to accept black dancers as students, introduces Dunham to the Spanish dancers La Argentina, Quill Monroe, and Vicente Escudero. Dunham also studies ballet with Mark Turbyfill and Ruth Page and, through Vera Mirova, is exposed to East Indian, Javanese, and Balinese dance forms.

What is Katherine Dunham known for?

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.

How old was Katherine Dunham when her mother died?

Dunham 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 Dunham'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 dry-cleaning business that met with little success, further embittering him, since he had received 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."

What is the Dunham technique?

The result was an entirely new art form, called the "Dunham technique." It has also been referred to as "Afro-Caribbean dance."

Why did Albert Dunham's mother die?

When Dunham was three years old, her mother died after a lengthy illness. She had owned property in Chicago, but it was sold to pay off her grown children's debts and her doctor bills. Albert Dunham, who had been working as a tailor, could no longer afford to keep his house in the mostly-white suburb of Glen Ellyn and was forced to sell it. This created a rift between him and his wife's grown children that would last for years.

What is the name of the book that Dunham wrote?

Dunham, Katherine. A Touch of Innocence. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1959.

Where did Lulu Dunham live?

Dunham and her brother, Albert Jr., went to live with their father's sister, Lulu Dunham, in a tenement slum in Chicago, while their father tried to make a better living as a traveling salesman. Lulu Dunham worked as a beautician and sometimes her relatives would baby-sit Katherine while Albert Jr. was in school.

Where did Dunham discover dance moves?

Dunham wanted to discover exactly what that common denominator was and which dance moves had come from Africa. She spent 18 months in the Caribbean, documenting its various dances.

Where was Katherine Dunham born?

Katherine Dunham listed her birthplace as Chicago, but there is reason to believe she actually was born in Glen Ellyn. In a 1986 interview, however, she claimed her birthplace as Joliet, Illinois, in 1910. That date is a bit slippery also. Not that it matters; Dunham's body of work in so many fields is timeless.

Why did Dunham travel to the Caribbean?

Dunham made her journey to the Caribbean to find evidence for her belief that the dances of American urban blacks, which she had witnessed in the '20s and '30s , had roots in the Caribbean and Africa, roots that were hidden through assimilation. She sought to find that connection and bring it to the world at large through dance.

Who was the woman who put the soul back into dance?

For more than half a century she did just that. While others labored to achieve technical perfection and virtuosity—George Balanchine, Martha Graham, and Doris Humphrey, for example—Dunham searched for and put the "soul" back into dance for African Americans and white modern dancers alike. Discipline and respect for technique are hallmarks of Dunham-trained dancers, but they apply those factors to a dance style that is creative, emotional, and immersed in the culture from which it comes.

Who Is Katherine Dunham?

Social Activism

What Is The Dunham Technique?

Dunham’s Legacy

GCU and The Dunham Technique

• At Grand Canyon University, Katherine Dunham is celebrated for her impact on dance and her achievements. Her theories and philosophies shape a culture of inclusion inside our dance department. Professor Keita, the director of the dance department at GCU, is one of thirty-five certified teachers internationally of the Katherine Dunham Technique. If ...

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