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What was Katherine Dunham dance style?
Katherine Dunham was the first to combine the individualistic dance movements of Caribbean and African cultures with European-style ballet. She further fused anthropological research into the realm of dance artistry by uniquely including social and cultural rituals into public performances.
Was Katherine Dunham a jazz dancer?
Her style of jazz dance, known as “Dunham Jazz” flourished with the evolution of Dunham Technique, and her work as an educator positioned her as a pioneering force in the evolution of jazz dance.
How did Katherine Dunham influence dance?
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.
What is Katherine Dunham's most famous dance?
Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers in African-American and European theater of the 20th century, and directed her own dance company for many years. She has been called the "matriarch and queen mother of black dance."...Katherine DunhamOccupationModern dancer, choreographer, author, educator, activist5 more rows
What was Katherine Dunham well known for?
Born in 1909 in Chicago, Katherine Dunham is an American dancer-choreographer who is best known for incorporating African American, Caribbean, African, and South American movement styles and themes into her ballets.
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
What did Katherine Dunham struggle with?
Social Activism Dunham spent much of her career standing up for those who did not have a voice. In the mid-1940s her company was on tour in the racially segregated South. She refused to hold a show at a theatre after learning that the African American residents were not allowed to get tickets for the performance.
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.
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.
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.
Who did Katherine Dunham influence?
Katherine Dunham introduced African and Caribbean rhythms to modern dance. The schools she created helped train such notables as Alvin Ailey and Jerome Robbins in the "Dunham technique." Death came for Dunham this week. She was 96.
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?
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.
Who were the young songwriters in the 1960s?
New York City 1960s overview. At the start of the decade, Paul Simon, Neil Diamond, and Lou Reed were among the hopeful young songwriters walking the warrenlike corridors and knocking on the glass-paneled doors of publishers in the Brill Building and its neighbours along Broadway.
Who is Katherine Dunham?
Katherine Dunham was a legendary anthropologist, dancer, choreographer and social activist who transformed the art of modern dance by combining ethnic influences with stunning dance technique. Here is her story.
Did Katherine Dunham dance?
Born on June 22, 1909, Katherine Dunham did not initially consider a career in dance. She did, however, grow up as both a rebel and an artist. She performed in her local Methodist Church, and at the age of eight, she shocked the elders of her church with her performance of inarguably non-religious songs.
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.”
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.
Who was James Dean's dancer?
In one famous photo, James Dean is seen dancing behind Eartha Kitt, who was a member of Dunham’s company. She has a long list of accomplishments that stretch further than just performance.
Who was the first black dancer?
Katherine Dunham founded the first American black dance company and opened her own school of dance in New York in 1944. In 1946 the school’s name changed to the Katherine Dunham School of Arts and Research to reflect that the curriculum included the arts, languages and the humanities. On top of it all, she became the first black choreographer ...
Overview
Educator and writer
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 an admirer and patron, Lee Shubert; it had an initial enrollment of 350 students.
The program included courses in dance, drama, performing arts, applied skills…
Early years
Katherine Mary Dunham was born on 22 June 1909 in a Chicago hospital. Her father, Albert Millard Dunham, was a descendant of slaves from West Africa and Madagascar. Her mother, Fanny June Dunham, who, according to Dunham's memoir, possessed Indian, French Canadian, English and probably African ancestry, died when Dunham was four years old. She had an older brother, Albert Jr., with whom she had a close relationship. After her mother died, her father left the child…
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.
During her time in Chicago, Dunham enjoyed holding social gatherings and inviting visitors to her apartment. Such visitors included ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, Robert Redfield, Bronisław Malinowski, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Fred Eggan, and ma…
Ethnographic fieldwork
Her field work in the Caribbean began in Jamaica, where she lived for several months in the remote Maroon village of Accompong, deep in the mountains of Cockpit Country. (She later wrote Journey to Accompong, a book describing her experiences there.) Then she traveled to Martinique and to Trinidad and Tobago for short stays, primarily to do an investigation of Shango, the African god who was still considered an important presence in West Indian religious culture. Early in 193…
Dancer and choreographer
Dunham's dance career first began in Chicago when she joined the Little Theater Company of Harper Avenue. In 1928, while still an undergraduate, Dunham began to study ballet with Ludmilla Speranzeva, a Russian dancer who had settled in Chicago, after having come to the United States with the Franco-Russian vaudeville troupe Le Théâtre de la Chauve-Souris, directed by impres…
Social activism
The Katherine Dunham Company toured throughout North America in the mid-1940s, performing as well in the racially segregated South. Dunham refused to hold a show in one theater after finding out that the city's black residents had not been allowed to buy tickets for the performance. On another occasion, in October 1944, after getting a rousing standing ovation in Louisville, Kentucky, she told the all-white audience that she and her company would not return because "…
Personal life
Dunham married Jordis McCoo, a black postal worker, in 1931, but he did not share her interests and they gradually drifted apart, finally divorcing in 1938. 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. Pratt, who was white, shared Dunham's interests in African-Caribbean cultures and was happy to put his talents in her service. After he became her artistic …