Katherine Dunham Dance

American dancer and choreographer Katherine Dunham is one of the most famous African American dancers of all time. She strived to expose the awareness of the African Diaspora through her choreography. Her dance technique shows a collection of many cultures since she herself was a very cultural ethnic person. Dunham’s work has brought a great influence in the world of dance. Her hard work is still honored and appreciated to this day.
Katherine Dunham was born on June 22, 1909 in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. She fell in love with dance and theater as a child, but didn’t have the opportunity to explore her interests until moving to Chicago in 1928. Her older brother, Albert Dunham Jr., invited her to join the Cube Theatre. There she met members of the
Dunham and her company then toured the West Coast and United States. During this period of national touring, Dunham became active in civil rights causes. She constantly battled housing segregation on tour and at one point threatened to sue the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago for racial discrimination. In 1944, she gave a speech to the audience in Louisville, Kentucky in which she stated that she would not return to the city until the theater was integrated. Dunham also channeled her activism into the Katherine Dunham School of Dance (later the Dunham School of Dance and Theatre, and then the Dunham School of Cultural Arts), which operated from September 1945 to February 1954 in New York City. The School had an interracial, international faculty and student body, which Dunham touted as a model for racial egalitarianism. The school also served to disseminate the Dunham Technique and give black dance a status in the performing arts world. Several aspects of the Dunham Technique would become integral to both modern and jazz dance in America: isolations of the head, shoulders, torso, and hips, an increased freedom of movement of the pelvis and spine, an emphasis on percussion, and the concept of polyrhythm in the