Miss Albert Millard Dunham Jr. This is Me

Education

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1. 1. News & Analysis This Month - Supplement

   www.wehaitians.com/may%202006% - [Cached]

   Published on: 6/16/2006   Last Visited: 6/16/2006

   Her father, Albert Millard Dunham, was a descendant of slaves from Madagascar and West Africa. Her French Canadian mother, Fanny June Taylor, died when Miss Dunham was young.
   ...
   Always interested in the theater, Miss Dunham shocked neighbors when, at 15, she announced she would stage a "cabaret party" to aid a Methodist Church. Later, she confessed that she had scarcely known what "cabaret" meant.
   
   Miss Dunham attended Joliet Junior College and the University of Chicago, where she received bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in anthropology.
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   The following year, Miss Speranzeva helped Miss Dunham establish the Chicago Negro School of Ballet and a company, the Negro Dance Group, which evolved into the Katherine Dunham Dance Company.
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   Over the years Miss Dunham spent much time in Haiti and in 1961 established a medical clinic there.
   
   In the United States, she worked with the Federal Theater in Chicago, where she met John Pratt, an artist and designer to whom she was married from 1941 until his death in 1986. He also managed her career. They had a daughter, Marie Christine Dunham Pratt, of Rome, who survives Miss Dunham.
   ...
   Miss Dunham took her Negro Dance Group to New York in 1937 but did not attract wide attention there until 1939, when she choreographed "Pins and Needles," a satirical revue produced by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.
   ...
   Miss Dunham began an association with Southern Illinois University in 1964 when she choreographed Gounod's "Faust" at the university's Carbondale campus. In 1967, she moved to its Edwardsville campus and founded the Performing Arts Training Center in nearby East St. Louis. She did more than offer courses there. Her collection of African and Haitian art became the basis for the community's Katherine Dunham Dynamic Museum, which opened there in the late-1970's. She also counseled disadvantaged young people, and her colleagues noted that she could calm the angriest of them through the sheer power of her presence, making her ordinarily soft voice even softer , yet always firm , as the counseling session proceeded.
   
   Miss Dunham was also the author of many books, some published under the pseudonym Kaye Dunn.
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   Miss Dunham remained relatively active in her last years. On May 11, she appeared at the Morgan Library in Manhattan for a screening of "Oprah Winfrey's Legends Ball," an ABC special, being broadcast tonight, celebrating Ms. Winfrey's personal heroes, Miss Dunham among them. She was resplendent in a robe that seemed a cross between moiré silk and kente cloth.

2. 2. CASA INDABA MESSAGE BOARD: R,I,P, Katherine Dunham

   www.casaindaba.net/ciboard/mes - [Cached]

   Published on: 5/23/2006   Last Visited: 5/31/2007

   Her father, Albert Millard Dunham, was a descendant of slaves from Madagascar and West Africa. Her French Canadian mother, Fanny June Taylor, died when Miss Dunham was young.
   ...
   Always interested in the theater, Miss Dunham shocked neighbors when, at 15, she announced she would stage a 'cabaret party' to aid a Methodist Church. Later, she confessed that she had scarcely known what 'cabaret' meant.
   
   Miss Dunham attended Joliet Junior College and the University of Chicago, where she received her bachelor's degree, going on to a doctorate in anthropology there.
   ...
   The following year, Miss Speranzeva helped Miss Dunham establish the Chicago Negro School of Ballet and a company, the Negro Dance Group, which evolved into the Katherine Dunham Dance Company.
   ...
   Over the years Miss Dunham spent much time in Haiti and in 1961 established a medical clinic there. In the United States, she worked with the Federal Theater in Chicago, where she met John Pratt, an artist and designer to whom she was married from 1941 until his death in 1986. He also managed her career.
   ...
   Miss Dunham took her Negro Dance Group to New York in 1937 but did not attract wide attention there until 1939, when she choreographed 'Pins and Needles,' a satirical revue produced by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.
   ...
   Miss Dunham began an association with Southern Illinois University in 1964 when she choreographed Gounod's 'Faust' at the Carbondale campus. In 1967, she moved to its Edwardsville campus and founded the Performing Arts Training Center in nearby East St. Louis.
   
   She did more than offer courses there. Her collection of African and Haitian art became the basis for the community's Katherine Dunham Dynamic Museum, which opened there in the late-1970's. She also counseled disadvantaged young people, and her colleagues noted that she could calm the angriest of them through the sheer power of her presence, making her ordinarily soft voice even softer - yet always firm - as the counseling session proceeded. Miss Dunham was also the author of many books, some published under the pseudonym Kaye Dunn.
   ...
   Miss Dunham remained relatively active in her last years. On May 11, she appeared at the Morgan Library in Manhattan for a screening of 'Oprah Winfrey's Legends Ball,' an ABC special, broadcast on Monday, celebrating Ms. Winfrey's personal heroes, Miss Dunham among them. She was resplendent in a kente-inflected robe set off with a large paisley scarf.
   ...
   Miss Dunham was one of the first American artists to focus on black dance and dancers as prime material for the stage. She burst into public consciousness in the 1940's, at a time when opportunities were increasing for black performers in mainstream theater and film, at least temporarily. But there was little middle ground there between the exotic and the demeaning everyday stereotypes.
   
   Ms. Dunham's dance productions were certainly exotic, and sometimes fell into uncomfortable clichés.
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   But though Miss Dunham's academic credentials as an anthropologist were impeccable, including a doctorate from the University of Chicago, it was her gift for seduction that helped most to pave the way for choreographers like Donald McKayle, Talley Beatty and Alvin Ailey, who were the first wave of what is today an established and influential part of the larger world of American modern dance.
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   Ailey's first encounter with her, as a newly stage-struck boy in his mid-teens, says a great deal about Miss Dunham's appeal. Intrigued by handbills advertising her 1943 'Tropical Revue,' he ventured into the Biltmore Theater in downtown Los Angeles, his hometown, where it was playing.

3. 3. www.blogofdeath.com

   www.blogofdeath.com/archives/0 - [Cached]

   Published on: 6/8/2006   Last Visited: 11/12/2007

   Dunham earned a bachelor's degree in social anthropology at the University of Chicago in 1936. One particular lecture on cultural anthropology inspired her to begin viewing dance as more than an art form, but as a cultural symbol. Inspired by these new ideas, Dunham started studying the anthropological roots of dance. She earned a Rosenwald Foundation Fellowship, and used the money to study native dance in Haiti and Jamaica. Once the villagers in these Caribbean nations felt comfortable with her, Dunham was invited to attend several sacred dance rituals. At one of these ceremonies, she viewed the Myal dance, which is based on the belief that the dead can back to life. Dunham would eventually adopt Haiti as a second home and become a priestess of voudon (voodoo).
   
   Known as the "matriarch of black dance," Dunham added her African-infused dance steps to Metropolitan Opera's production of "Aida" and to the Broadway musical "Cabin in the Sky." She also choreographed several films, including "Carnival of Rhythm," "Stormy Weather," "Mambo" and "The Bible: In the Beginning."
   
   In the spring of 1938, she formed the Katherine Dunham Dance Company in New York. The renowned Dunham Dancers performed all over the United States and toured 57 countries on six continents. In a time when the color of her skin led to discrimination, Dunham fought back by suing hotels and restaurants that wouldn't cater to her dancers. She refused to allow her company's productions play at segregated theaters and even choreographed "Southland," an hour-long ballet about lynching.
   
   Dunham opened schools in Paris, Stockholm and Rome, but thousands of students studied at her New York studio, including actors Marlon Brando, Eartha Kitt and James Dean.
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   After serving as an advisor to the cultural ministry of Senegal in the late 1960s, Dunham moved to East St. Louis, Ill., a predominantly black town that suffered from povery and high crime. Determined to bring arts and hope to the area, she taught at Southern Illinois University and opened the Katherine Dunham Centers for the Arts and Humanities, a school and community center that provided free classes in dance, drama, foreign languages, social science, woodcarving and African hair-braiding. Dunham's center also offered martial arts training to help young, black teens channel their anger.
   
   Dunham and set designer John Thomas Pratt were married for 49 years.
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   For her social and artistic contributions, Dunham received numerous honorary doctorates, the National Medal of the Arts, the Albert Schweitzer Prize and France's Legion d'Honneur. In 2000, the Dance Heritage Coalition named her one of "American's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures." The Katherine Dunham College at the Library of Congress features nearly 1,700 documents and videos that document her career.