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
inspirational knowing littles
In knowing how to overcome little things, a centimeter at a time, gradually when bigger things come, you're prepared.
funny husband persons
I am happy to know that my husband regards me as a woman and a person.
partners producers knows
Frequently producers have partners that they never let the public know about.
husband would-be rave
Sometimes I have given my husband a manuscript to read that has turned out to have fantastic rave reviews and he'll tell me it is no good. Well, if I didn't know him as well as I know him I would be terribly depressed.
productive-life years want
I could never live a nonproductive life and I feel that I have lived a productive life as far as I want to in terms of this company that I have for so many years.
careers people kind
I certainly feel my career was a great career because it inspired so many many people, literally hundreds of people to follow a new kind of life and to realize that they could make out and advance their own professional and private and social lives.
husband eye knowing
Without my husband's costumes I wouldn't have known how to accomplish what I saw in my own mind's eyes for choreography. And then seeing our choreography and knowing the background of it I am sure helped my husband a great deal with what he designed for us.
african-american rooms american-indian
We don't intend to always keep this necessarily African oriented. Originally I had hoped to have African American Indian of this area, and the Appalachian of this area, but at the same time, just as we have the Haitian room, we will always have room for another exhibit.
thinking forever words-of-wisdom
Don't think you are going to go on forever because you are not and begin to plan something that will compensate as you reduce your capacities to leap or turn on this or that or the other, begin thinking of something else.
beautiful justice black
We weren't pushing Black is beautiful. We just showed it.
dance hurt ifs
If you dance, you dance because you have to. Every dancer hurts, you know.
art garden dancer
A creative person has to create. It doesn't really matter what you create. If such a dancer wanted to go out and build the cactus gardens where he could, in Mexico, let him do that, but something that is creative has to go on.
thinking talent admire
I really think that aside from admiring my talent you really admire me as a person and as a woman.
dance dancing people
I had certain physical limitations that made me change the choreography for myself or made me more interested in choreography only rather than dancing. I have never been a person who wanted to just dance. I have always been interested in developing for other people.