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One-Woman Revolution Katherine Dunham
Dance Magazine, August, 2000 by Wendy Perron
ALL ROADS lead to Katherine Dunham. Well, not all. But sometimes it seems to be so. Jazz dance, "fusion" and the search for our cultural heritage all have their antecedents in Dunham's work as a dancer, choreographer and anthropologist. She was the first American dancer to present indigenous forms on a concert stage, the first to sustain a black dance company, the first black person to choreograph for the Metropolitan Opera. She created and performed in works for stage, clubs and Hollywood films; she started a school and a technique that continue to flourish; she fought unstintingly for racial justice. She could have had her own TV show called Dance Roots.
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Dunham, 91, is in Manhattan, where she is working on an autobiography, Minefield, while undergoing physical therapy for her surgically replaced knees. Surrounded by former dancers, friends and a bright-eyed two-and-a-half-year-old goddaughter, she regales them with stories, songs and warm-hearted joking.
The young Katherine Dunham studied ballet with Mark Turbyfill of the Chicago Opera and the Russian dancer Ludmilla Speranzeva. When she was only 21, with Turbyfill's help, she formed the short-lived Ballet Negre. Soon after, she started the Katherine Dunham Dance Company, which was based in Chicago during the early years. Carmencita Romero, who danced with Dunham from 1933 to 1941, said the company performed a mix of cultures even then: "We did Russian folk dances with full skirts, Spanish dances influenced by La Argentinita and Carmen Amaya, and plantation dances like Bre'r Rabbit an' de Tah Baby."
In 1935, Dunham, under the aegis of a Rosenwald fellowship, traveled to the Caribbean to research African-based dances. She returned in 1936, having passed rigorous initiation rites to become a mambo--a vaudun priestess. She soon choreographed pieces that reflect Haitian movements, for instance, the yanvalou, in which the spine undulates like the snake god, Damballa. But more than that, she absorbed the idea of dance as religious ritual. She has said, "In vaudun we sacrifice to the gods, but the top sacrifice is dance." Shango (1945), which depicts such a sacrifice, hypnotized audiences during the Alvin Alley American Dance Theater's celebration of Dunham in 1987.
Dunham also focused on American dance forms: "I was running around getting all these exotic things from the Caribbean and Africa when the real development lay in Harlem and black Americans," she says. "So I developed more things in jazz." Her revue, Le Jazz Hot (1940), included vernacular forms like the shimmy, black bottom, shorty george and the cakewalk. That same year, Dunham collaborated with George Balanchine in choreographing the Broadway musical Cabin in the Sky. She recalls, "He took an Arab song and taught it to me for a belly dance." About their collaboration, she confesses, "He was a help, but I was pretty adamant about what I wanted to do. We had a wonderful time together."
In 1943, the international impresario Sol Hurok presented Dunham's company in Tropical Revue at the Martin Beck Theater on Broadway, adding Dixieland jazz musicians to boost its commercial appeal. The show became a hit, enjoying a six-week run, unusual for such a revue. Dunham was a glamorous performer, and it is rumored that Hurok had insured her legs for a million dollars. In an interview with biographer Ruth Beckford, Dunham demurred, saying the amount was a mere quarter million.
Dunham opened a school in New York in 1945. Dana McBroom-Manno, who was a student there and later danced with Dunham, describes the Dunham technique as modern with an African base. "You use the floor as earth, the pelvis as center, holding torso and legs together. You work for fluidity, moving like a goddess, undulations like water, like the ocean. High leaps for the men. You elongate the muscles, creating a hidden strength. We use both parallel and turned out, so it's easy to go from Dunham into any other technique. The isolations of the hips, fibs, shoulders that you see in all jazz classes were brought to us from the Caribbean by Miss Dunham. Also, she [talked about] Indian chakra points (in yoga, points of physical or spiritual energy in the body)." Romero, who has taught dance history at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, emphasizes the spirited. "In Africa, all dance is based on animals, plants, the elements of the universe. The Dunham technique gives you a feeling of release and exhilaration by letting the body go."
The Dunham school, in the Times Square area, thrived for ten years. Its thirty teachers offered classes in ballet, modern (Jose Limon was one of the modern teachers), "primitive," acting, martial arts and more. Among its students were James Dean, Arthur Mitchell, Butterfly McQueen and Doffs Duke. Donald Saddler, recently reminiscing, said Marlon Brando would come and play drams. Sometimes jazz bassist and composer Charles Mingus would come with a group of his musicians and play for classes.
Out of the school came a student group, directed by the legendary Syvilla Fort, that included Julie Belafonte, Walter Nicks and Peter Gennaro. This group performed at schools and benefits. Belafonte--who met her husband, Harry, though one of these performances--recalls: "We were taught the rhythms of the movements with drums and with song in other languages; for instance, Portuguese and Haitian patois. In class anyone could break into song at any time."
