Katherine Dunham

Katherine Dunham was an American dancer, choreographer, anthropologist, and educator who brought African and Caribbean movement traditions into concert dance and developed a widely taught technique.

Ludmilla Speranzeva: A Russian-born dance teacher who trained Katherine Dunham in ballet and modern dance in Chicago. Speranzeva gave Dunham foundational training before she developed her own approach.
Modern dance: A concert-dance tradition that developed outside classical ballet, emphasizing individual movement styles and new choreographic forms. Dunham adapted modern dance while expanding its movement vocabulary and cultural sources.
Dunham technique: A dance-training system combining movements from African and Caribbean traditions with ballet and modern dance principles. Dunham codified her movement research into a teachable technique.
Black dance: Dance forms and practices created, performed, and sustained by Black communities across diverse histories and settings. Dunham helped establish Black cultural sources as central to concert dance.
Journey to Accompong: Katherine Dunham's 1946 book about her field research among Maroon communities in Jamaica. The book records the Caribbean research that informed her artistic practice.
Talley Beatty: An American dancer and choreographer who performed with the Katherine Dunham Company before establishing his own career. Beatty was among the dancers Dunham trained and brought to prominence.
African dance: A diverse range of dance traditions from African societies, shaped by distinct histories, music, and social practices. Dunham studied African-derived movement traditions and incorporated their forms into choreography.
Katherine Dunham Company: A dance company founded by Katherine Dunham that toured internationally and presented works drawing on African and Caribbean traditions. The company brought her choreography and repertory to audiences around the world.
Cultural appropriation: The adoption or use of elements of one culture by people or institutions associated with another, often amid unequal power relations. Dunham's work raises questions about how artists research, interpret, and stage cultural traditions.
Las Americas: A 1938 dance work by Katherine Dunham drawing on dance traditions of the Americas. This early work shows her effort to bring regional cultural forms into concert dance.

Linked from 6 pages