Celebrating Katherine Dunham

As part of its Heritage project, ADAD presented a weekend of Masterclasses and Oral History in honour of Katherine Dunham (1909 - 2006) Date: 28th and 29th October 2006 Location: Siobhan Davies Studio’s 85 St George’s Road London SE1 6ER

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Celebrating Katherine Dunham

By Laura Griffiths

Katherine Dunham: Choreographer, anthropologist, author and activist. She was a pioneer of African influenced modern dance. The technique she devised is a combination of ballet, modern dance, Caribbean and African dance. Her company’s 1948 tour of England was so successful it contributed to validation of African and Caribbean dance practices on the British stage.

The first in a series of workshops running in association with the ‘Black Dance in Britain’ exhibition indulged in a celebration of Katherine Dunham at Siobhan Davies’ Studios, London.

Katherine Dunham established her own dance technique, which pooled aspects of ballet, Caribbean, African and modern dance. Dunham largely contributed to the corroboration of Caribbean and African dance forms being performed on British stages.

Attendees were first welcomed by Michaela Leslie-Rule in an open class for 1.5 hours and the day culminated in an oral history interview with Othella Dallas; who opened a window into the life of the Katherine Dunham company in a lengthy interview and open debate. The event was enjoyed by twenty-five enthusiasts travelling along varying routes, nevertheless united in the significance of the day’s events. The experiences of the dancers who attended were layered and enriched as a result of the practical and narrative strands of the event.

Rule’s class embodied the isolations, strength and stamina exemplary of Dunham’s technique. The fundamentals of the technique and movements were introduced and Rule successfully explained the motivations behind the actions, enabling the dancers to expressively perform and own their movement. Rule emphasised the idea of beauty, and that the movement was an act of appreciating ones own beauty. The look of the movements on the body and what it is like to take the time to admire the self as it were. This was expressed as the dancers knelt on both knees and extended the hand through an unfolding of the arm, focusing on the hand as it extends away from the body. This action was also interpreted as a reflection of the serving hand echoing a history of slavery and exposing a contradiction through the implication of beauty and time, elements that were once restricted almost.

This movement was then extended through the development of the body in both level and rhythm. The dancers undertook a rigorous warm up, which initiated them into the use of polyrhythmic action and detailed gesture to follow in the main body of the class. The vocabulary taught by Michaela was thoroughly varied reflecting her eclectic experience, including Afro-Brazilian, Afro-Haitian dance forms and Dunham technique. Much of the movement required undulating actions and intricate footwork whilst travelling through space. The action also relied upon sharp contractions of the pelvis; the body’s centre provided dynamic texture, which took many of the participants to an increased understanding of the passion and reality behind the work of Katherine Dunham.