KATHERINE DUNHAM
June 22, 1909 - May 21, 2006

"When you have faith in something, it's your reason to be alive and to fight for it."
-- Katherine Dunham
The Legacy


Black dance in its exalting and spirit-enhancing role in African life and in its utilatarian but also redemptive role in the folk life of the Diaspora is one of the great creations of the human spirit.

Katherine Dunham realized this greatness and interpreted it for those who lay beyond the nuclear dimensions of this art, those who had lost that inheritance, or who had it only in truncated and fragmented form, as well as for those of other cultural origins for whom it was not a legacy.

In so doing she took up the mission of Black dance and has been its greatest protaganist.

Richard Long, Ph.D.

Long, Richard, "Dance Dimensions"  Grown Deep:  Essays on the Harlem Renaissance, FL:  Four-G Publishers, 1998.
@2005 - 2007 www.katherinedunham.org   All Rights Reserved.
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Dunham Institute-Atlanta, Inc. | P.O. Box 361780 | Decatur, GA  30036-1780
Founded in 1989
The Katherine Dunham Dynamic Museum
1005 Pennsylvania Avenue | East St. Louis, IL
The  museum was first established in Alton, Illinois in 1967 by Miss Dunham and her late husband, John Pratt.   The first museum established in East St. Louis opened in 1969 as the Dynamic Museum.

In 1977, Miss Dunham moved her collection of African, West African, and South American art to East St. Louis, IL to the two-story English Regency Townhouse formerly owned by Judge Maurice Joyce.  This landmark building appears on the Illinois Historic Register, and is located within the Pennsylvania Avenue Historic District registered with the National Trust for Historic Preservation. 

Background
The Dunham Technique
Born in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, Katherine Mary Dunham was destined to achieve world-wide influence through her artistry, her scholarship, and her respect for her African background.
Supported by a Rosenwald Fellowship, she completed groundbreaking work on Caribbean and Brazilian dance anthropology as a new academic discipline. 

In 1931, Miss Dunham established her first dance school in Chicago, IL.
East St. Louis, IL -- The Land of Katherine Dunham
A Tourist Attraction
One of Miss Dunham’s lasting legacy is her development of one of the most important pedagogues for teaching dance – Dunham Technique – that is highly acclaimed throughout the world. 
East St. Louis is situated in a fertile valley gouged out by the Mississippi River in the geologic past and named the American Bottoms by pioneers.

Sprawling fanlike from the river, the city is almost superimposed on the vast village site of a prehistoric people whose mounds dot the plain four miles northeast; while a few miles to the southwest, almost obliterated by industrial expansion, are vestiges of old Cahokia, which was settled by French missionaries in 1695.

Many were called, but few were chosen . . .

For those interested in furthering their training in the technique, listed below are those who trained extensively with Katherine Dunham personally and were mentored by her, and/or were avid students of her first line proteges:

  • Masters

Make no mistake with Dunham, it is "what you know" that matters.  Either you know it, or you don't.

Katherine Dunham's Private Residence
532 N. 10th Street | East St. Louis, IL