In Loving Memory of Katherine Dunham

A book for 5th graders

Katherine Dunham was born on June 22, 1909 in Joliet, Illinois to Albert Millard Dunham and Fanny June Taylor. She began dancing early on and also had a passion for writing. At 12, Dunham published a poem in a magazine edited by W.E.B. DuBois. She moved to Chicago in 1928 to study ballet with Ludmilla Speranzeva and eventually enrolled at the University of Chicago. She became interested in anthropology and won a fellowship to study in the Caribbean in 1935. While there, Dunham examined the dance rhythms particular to Jamaica, Martinique, Trinidad, and Haiti. She learned to perform voodoo rituals, the rumba, and other primitive rhythms she later integrated into modern dance forms.

Dunham revolutionized American dance in the 1930's by going to the roots of black dance and rituals transforming them into significant artistic choreography that speaks to all. She was a pioneer in the use of folk and ethnic choreography and one of the founders of the anthropological dance movement.