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Greetings African & Diaspora Dance Community,
Thank you to each and every one of you who came out and supported our efforts to honor the late Katherine Dunham in such amazing & beautiful force! Our class on June 3rd was 60 people strong!
In a passionate discussion that ensued after this incredible event, members of Jean's class community have emphatically decided that
ONE CLASS IS NOT ENOUGH TO ENCOMPASS THE GREATNESS OF KATHERINE DUNHAM'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO OUR LIVES.
We were also unanimously disturbed by the paucity of events, memorials, etc. in the Greater Boston area.
Therefore, by the power vested in us as vital members of the dance community & as life artists... Whereas, we definitively proclaim the life work of Katherine Dunham an invaluable historical event of undisputed artistic and humanistic integrity....WE PROCLAIM THE MONTH OF JUNE TO BE HEREAFTER DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF KATHERINE DUNHAM.Jean will continue to honor this in his classes June 10, 17, & 24. Please feel free to continue to wear white and to bring offerings to a small alter that will be constructed at the beginning of each class. It would be wonderful if the community continued to bring memories, reading materials, photos or other media to spread awareness and educate the community about Dunham's life and art. Please see the original tribute class description below for more information.
Please help us in supporting this venture to venerate a cornerstone of our community.
Peace to all,
Darya Pinton & Jean Appolon
********************************************************************************************
Tribute Class Description:-In honor of Katherine Dunham's life's accomplishments;
-In honor of her conviction of the integral place that African dance and drum arts has in American arts and culture;
- & In continuation of her stead-fast mission to heal and educate through the profound wisdom of African diaspora arts;Jean Appolon will dedicate his Haitian dance classes to Katherine Dunham's memory- SATURDAYS, JUNE 3- 24, 1:30-3:00PMat The Dance Complex
536 Mass Ave. Central Sq., Cambridge
(
www.dancecomplex.org), $13 per student
Please arrive in a timely fashion wearing white clothing. Please also bring: your positive energy, artwork, poetry, photos, food/drink offerings, voices, songs and prayers to add to an alter constructed at the beginning of the class in Dunham's memory (sorry, we can not burn any materials in the alter).We will invigorate the alter with our bodies, instruments, voices and positive intentions during class. *********************************************************************************************
Obituary of Katherine Dunham:
> Katherine Dunham, Dance Pioneer, Dies at 96 >
> By JACK ANDERSON
>
> Published: May 22, 2006
>
> Katherine Dunham, the dancer, choreographer, teacher and
> anthropologist whose pioneering work introduced much of the black
> heritage in dance to the stage, died on Sunday at her home in
> Manhattan. She was 96. Her death was confirmed by Dr. Glory Van Scott,
> a friend and former Dunham dancer. Miss Dunham also had homes in East
> St. Louis, Ill., where she ran inner-city cultural programs for
> decades, and in Port au Prince, Haiti.
> Skip to next paragraph
>
>
> Katherine Dunham in the Broadway musical "Cabin in the Sky" in 1941.
>
> Related
> An Appreciation: How Katherine Dunham Revealed Black Dance to the World
> Enlarge this Image
>
>
> Katherine Dunham in a publicity photo, ca. 1937.
>
>
> By creating popular and glamorous revues based on African and
> Caribbean folklore, Miss Dunham acquainted audiences, both on Broadway
> and around the world, with the historical roots of black dance.
>
> In the late 1930's she founded the nation's first self-supporting
> black modern dance group, one that visited more than 50 countries on
> six continents. Her achievements came at a time of widespread racial
> discrimination, which she fought against, refusing to perform at
> segregated theaters on tours of the South.
>
> "We weren't pushing 'Black is Beautiful,' we just showed it," she once
> wrote. One of her works, "Southland," depicted a lynching.
>
> Miss Dunham also became attached to Haiti and its culture, first
> arriving there as a young anthropologist. She later became a priestess
> of the Vaudun religion. In 1992, at the age of 82 and suffering from
> arthritis, she staged a much-publicized 47-day hunger strike to
> protest the United States's repatriation of Haitian refugees.
>
> In East St. Louis, she found talented young people living in one of
> the nation's most destitute areas and turned them into dancers.
> Describing her work there, she said, "It is our aim here to socialize
> the young and old through 'culturization,' to make the individual
> aware of himself and his environment, to create a desire to be alive."
>
> Miss Dunham was a recipient of some of the most prestigious awards in
> the arts, including the Presidential Medal of the Arts, the Albert
> Schweitzer prize (presented at a 1979 gala at Carnegie Hall), Kennedy
> Center Honors and membership in the French Legion of Honor.
>
> In her dance technique, Miss Dunham emphasized the isolation of
> individual parts of the body. Some of her concepts continue to be
> taught at modern-dance schools across America. Her work was an
> important influence on Alvin Ailey, among other contemporary
> choreographers.
>
> George Balanchine cast Miss Dunham in a major role in "Cabin in the
> Sky," a Broadway musical starring Ethel Waters that he staged and
> choreographed in 1940. She then went to Hollywood and danced in and
> choreographed the movies "Carnival of Rhythm" (1941), "Star-Spangled
> Rhythm" (1942) and "Stormy Weather" (1943), among others. It was in
> the 40's that Miss Dunham developed the fast-paced shows for which she
> was celebrated. "Tropical Revue," successfully produced on Broadway in
> 1943, later toured the nation to much acclaim. Its sensuality also
> drew complaints, and it was cut, and finally closed, in Boston. But as
> the dance historian Margaret Lloyd noted, the censors "ordered out not
> the silly vaudeville bits, not the occasional leer or calculated
> animality, but the solemn, sacred 'Rites de Passage' " � a
> coming-of-age ceremony that was one of Miss Dunham's most serious
> pieces.
>
> Miss Dunham was born on June 22, 1909, in Glen Ellyn, Ill. 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. Her father then married Annette Poindexter, a
> schoolteacher from Iowa, and moved his family to predominantly white
> Joliet, Ill., where he ran a dry-cleaning business.
>
> 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. She also studied dance in Chicago with Ludmilla
> Speranzeva and Mark Turbyfill, a choreographer and poet, with whom she
> established the short-lived Ballet N�gre in 1930. Ruth Page, a
> prominent Chicago choreographer, cast her in "La Guiablesse," a ballet
> based on Martinique folklore that was performed at the Chicago Civic
> Opera House in 1933. 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.
>
> She did her anthropological in the Caribbean as a graduate student in
> 1935, receiving a Rosenwald Fellowship to study traditional dances in
> Jamaica, Martinique, Trinidad and Haiti, where she became close to
> Haitians and took up the Vaudun religion. 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.
>
> Her popular appearance on Broadway as Georgia Brown in "Cabin in the
> Sky" at the Martin Beck Theater led to Hollywood and her celebrated
> revues of the early 40's. Later revues included "Carib Song" (1945),
> "Bal N�gre" (1946), "Caribbean Rhapsody" (1948) and "Bamboche" (1962).
> They consisted of brief, vivid numbers inspired by African, Caribbean
> or African-American dance forms.
>
> In 1945, she founded the Dunham School of Dance and Theater in New
> York. Until it closed a decade later, it offered courses in dance,
> acting, psychology, philosophy, music, design and foreign languages.
>
> After World War II, her dance company toured constantly, visiting more
> than 50 countries in 30 years. "Judging from reactions," she said at
> one point, "the dancing of my group is called anthropology in New
> Haven, sex in Boston and in Rome � art!"
>
> She also continued to choreograph in New York. In 1963 she became the
> first African American to choreograph at the Metropolitan Opera since
> 1934, startling audiences with her lusty dances for a production of
> Verdi's "Aida." Writing in The Times, the critic Allen Hughes said:
> "There is 'modern' in it, belly-dancing, the foot-stamping and
> hip-and-shoulder shaking of primitive African dancing and much more.
> All pure Dunham."
>
> 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. Her books including "Journey to Accompong"
> (1946), "A Touch of Innocence: Memoirs of Childhood" (1959), "Island
> Possessed" (1969) and "Dances of Haiti" (1984).
>
> 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 moir�
> silk and kente cloth.
>
> Earlier in the month she appeared at La Boule Blanche (the White Ball)
> at Riverside Church, an event organized by her friend Dr. Scott to
> celebrate the publication of an anthology of writings by and about
> Miss Dunham. The book, "Kaiso!," edited by V�V A. Clark and Sara E.
> Johnson, was recently released by University of Wisconsin Press. The
> title is a Calypso _expression meaning bravo.
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