Katherine Dunham on the French Stage
(No Repeat of La Revue Nègre)
In one of those surprising coincidences that seem to carry meaning
beyond a simple accident of timing, the French press announced last
spring, just a few days apart, the death of choreographer Katherine
Dunham and events to honor the 100th anniversary of the birth of
Josephine Baker. Born in 1912, Katherine Dunham was six years younger
than Baker. She studied ballet with the Russian dancer Ludmila
Speranzeva, and by 1930 she had created her own dance company, the
Ballet Nègre. She made her professional début in 1933 in Ruth
Page's "La Guiablesse," a work based on Antillean folk themes. She took
courses in anthropology at the University of Chicago and in 1935 and
1936 went to the Caribbean on a Julius Rosenwald fellowship to study
regional dance forms on most of the islands. In 1937 she staged
"L'Ag'Ya," a Martinican fighting dance in a fishing village, for the
Federal Theater Project in Chicago, and was chosen as the artistic
director of the Negro Unit. She also appeared there with the Duke
Ellington orchestra at the Sherman Hotel. It was in Chicago that she
created her first ensemble choreographies. She premiered cabaret-style
dances on African American themes, such as "Barrelhouse Blues" and
"Cakewalk," as well as ethnic dances such as "Rara Tonga." In 1939,
Warner Brothers produced Carnival of Rhythm, a short film
dedicated to her work in which she introduced Brazilian dance themes and
the famous "Batucada."
In February 1940, Dunham choreographed "Tropics and Le Jazz Hot: From
Haiti to Harlem" for performances in New York. That same year she
collaborated with George Balanchine to create the dances for the
Broadway musical Cabin in the Sky. In Hollywood she met the
painter John Pratt, who became her husband and the designer of most of
her productions. In 1943, she presented Tropical Revue on
Broadway, which included her major successes, a suite called "Plantation
Dances" and a long work called "Rites of Passage." This last piece was
daringly sexual in its theme, especially in its representation of
fertility rites, and was banned in Boston. Dunham also had a gift for
picking original folk dances that she then imbued with a tremendous
theatrical vitality. Within the space of a few years, she produced the
Broadway musical Carib Song (1945), which included the number
"Shango," with its strong intimations of voodoo; and a revue, Bal
Nègre, in which she intended to take dance "out of the
burlesque to make it a more dignified art."[1] At that point the "Dunham
School" was presenting the most striking elements of black dance.
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