Katherine Dunham
Welcome to the publication, “Representations.” This is a project designed to bring the perspectives of a wider variety of groups to the forefront of the anthropology classroom. To celebrate Black History Month, we are covering the accomplishments of 28 Black anthropologists across 28 days. Learn more about our project; read on for the amazing accomplishments of Katherine Dunham.
To learn about another anthropologist who fused cultural research with dance, read about Pearl Primus.
Katherine Dunham or the “Matriarch of Black Dance’’ as many called her, was a revolutionary African American anthropologist and professional dancer. Dunham was exceptional in her field as she incorporated her anthropological research into her own dance career by showcasing the beauty and power behind global dances from various African and Caribbean cultures. This work challenged the negative cultural misconceptions surrounding dances from the African diaspora in the era of segregation.
Born in 1909, Katherine Dunham was raised in Chicago where she attended the University of Chicago and went on to become “one of the first African American women to attend this university and earned bachelor, masters and doctoral degrees in anthropology” (The Katherine Dunham Centers for Arts & Humanities). While she was pursuing her degrees in anthropology, Dunham also became a student of three different accomplished individuals, Ludmilla Speranzeva, a ballet teacher; Mark Turbyfill, a poet turned dancer; and Ruth Page, an American Ballerina. After her graduation from the University of Chicago, she founded the Negro Dance Group, which marked the beginnings of her inspirational and incredibly revolutionary career as both dancer and choreographer.
Katherine Dunham was invited to go to the Rosenwald Foundation after her incredible performance in ‘The Negro Rhapsody.’ Because of this, Dunham gained access to funding and was able to finance anthropological research which contributed to her knowledge and performance of dance (The Katherine Dunham Centers for Arts & Humanities). With this funding, Dunham spent her next two years in the Caribbean studying all facets and aspects of dance as well as the meaning and culture surrounding each particular type of dance.
Although she spent much of her time across various Caribean islands, Dunham felt a particular personal connection in Haiti. In her autobiography, An Island Possessed, Katherine Dunham recounts the time she spent in Haiti and how she became “possessed” by Haiti, the Haitian people, and their history and culture. Not only does her book take the reader through many of her experiences in Haiti (some of which are particularly harrowing), but it also highlights how Voodoo beliefs traveled from the African continent and evolved over time to impact modern Haitian culture. One of her field research trips involved observing a death ritual for a Bokor, or a Haitian Voodoo religious leader. Dunham describes the deceased Bokor as “ a very old man, wise in the knowledge of feuilles, or herbs, poisons, gris-gris.” (p.27 Dunham).
Dunham also reflected extensively on her first-hand experiences with the racial divide in America and offered her research to clarify the disparities that influenced the lives of many.
Dunham’s time in Haiti as well as the other regions in the Caribbean helped her to conduct valuable anthropological research in which she wrote scholarly essays from and less dense magazine articles under the moniker K.Dunn ( The Katherine Dunham Centers for Arts & Humanities). Along with her research, she learned many different dance styles and forms and then later applied it to her dance career.
In the article “Between Primitivism and Diaspora: The Dance performances of Josephine Baker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Katherine Dunham” by Anthea Kraut, she writes how these African American Women helped to change the view of African culture as “primitive” to more complex representations of the African diaspora, which is far more nuanced than Western ideals were willing to accept during the 1930s. Productions like Tropical Revue, Bal Negre, and Caribbean Rhapsody all “depicted the transformations of black dance forms as they moved from the Caribbean to the United States.” (P. 447 Kraut) and were all based on her anthropological fieldwork as well. Something interesting to note about her productions is that she would not just incorporate Black forms of dance and movement but also eurocentric dance forms (due to her background in ballet and modern dance) which created a combination of both “Afrocentricity and hybridization” (P. 447 Kraut). Amidst all of her incredible success on Broadway as well as internationally, she also gathered all of her ideas of dance and culture into a dance technique, aptly named the “Dunham Technique” and then opened a dance school in the mid-1940s (P. 447 Kraut).
It is no question that Katherine Dunham was an incredibly influential dancer that revolutionized modern dance, but she was also known for pushing back against poverty and racism. As an advocate for racial equality, Dunham would always refuse performances at segregated venues and was very involved with domestic and international rights issues ( The Katherine Dunham Centers for Arts & Humanities). After her death in 2006, Dunham remains immortalized in the world of dance and anthropology for her contributions in both fields and was named America’s irreplaceable Dance Treasure in her final years of life (The Katherine Dunham Centers for Arts & Humanities).
Bibliography
Dunham, Katherine. Island Possessed. University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Katherine Dunham — Katherine Dunham Biography, 2011, kdcah.org/katherine-dunham-biography/.
Kraut, Anthea, “Between Primitivism and Diaspora: The Dance Performances of Josephine Baker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Katherine Dunham.” Theatre Journal Volume 55, issue 3 (2003) pages, 433–450. JSTOR
Edited by Brian Pierson and Amanda Zunner-Keating of Los Angeles Pierce College.
