Dunham technique
Katherine Dunham (1909-2006), an American dancer, choreographer and anthropologist, researched dance in Caribbean countries including Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique and Trinidad in the 1930s and 1940s. Drawing on that fieldwork, she developed in the 1940s a technique that fuses Afro-Caribbean dance with ballet and modern dance, with a grounded relation to the earth.
Classes move from breathing and barre work to isolations of single body parts, then floor progressions, often to polyrhythmic drumming. The technique is taught at the Ailey School and elsewhere, and at the East St. Louis Center for the Performing Arts of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, which Dunham founded in 1967 as the Performing Arts Training Center and which offers Dunham Technique and drumming.
Sources
- Katherine Dunham Technique - Wikipedia
- What is Dunham Technique? - Cumbe Center
- All You Need to Know About Dunham Technique - Dance Spirit
- Katherine Dunham exhibit - SIUE East St. Louis Center for Performing Arts
Organisations connected with this dance
Listed as references; being listed is not an endorsement by or of the organisation.