Katherine Dunham
Katherine Dunham
Katherine Mary Dunhamwas an American dancer, choreographer, author, educator, and social activist. Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers in American and European theater of the 20th century, and directed her own dance company for many years. She has been called the "matriarch and queen mother of black dance."...
ProfessionDancer
Date of Birth22 June 1909
CityGlen Ellyn, IL
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Aside from a few master teachers that we have had over the years, this has been a completely local talent development. But people have started to come now from Chicago, we have a number of students from Chicago and different places of the country and even in the world.
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I was in love with the West Indies and I liked the authenticity with which Trinidad was presented but the critics could have cared less.
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I wasn't concerned about the hardships, because I always felt I was doing what I had to do, what I wanted to do and what I was destined to do.
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You know, this isn't theatre like it used to be.
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The older I grow the more I see the influence of my family on my life. I didn't always see it. It was up to our parents to see that we had our education in a town that hadn't yet realized what racial prejudice was but actually knew and practiced it on occasion.
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We had maybe the greatest success of any company that I know of in Paris, and after two or three years I wanted to do this same number that we did for PBS, so we did it and Paris had always considered us their darlings.
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I'd say that anyone who is going to start a minority program to try to think in terms of a big library and some small kind of museum.
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A creative person has to # create .
museums air trying
We have a group of friends of the museum who try to raise, if they can, periodically something to help us. Of course, the main thing about a building like this is its upkeep. It needs central heating and it needs central air conditioning.
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I have actually five honorary degrees.
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My work has been much more Caribbean and eclectic. I am interested in people, and where they come from happens to have fallen within an area of Africa.
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Black people should have recognition for themselves and their backgrounds and their relationships with other people in the world and thus lose some of their alienation. This museum has certainly stood for that in this town.
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I don't think Ed Sullivan had anything to do with Carib Song.
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For the kind of thing that we were showing, the budget was sufficient. As we were speaking of in Haiti, we had not done that before in exactly this form and we had to have costumes for it.