Martha Graham, “Picasso of American Dance,” and Katherine Dunham, “Matriarch of Black Dance”: Exoticism and Nonwhiteness in American Dance

2013 ◽  
pp. 87-116
Author(s):  
Caroline Joan S. Picart
Keyword(s):  
Martha Graham ◽  
Black Dance ◽  
Katherine Dunham

Dent, Nancy Lima (1919–2013)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyne Clare
Keyword(s):  
Modern Dance ◽  
The Political ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
Dance Teacher ◽  
Dance Company ◽  
Katherine Dunham ◽  
Jose Limon ◽  
Critical Reviews

Nancy Lima Dent helped to establish modern dance in Toronto. She initially studied with Rita Warne and Boris Volkoff, and later was a student of modern dance luminaries Doris Humphrey, José Limon, Martha Graham, Charles Weidman, Pearl Primus, and Katherine Dunham. Starting in 1946, Dent worked as a performer and choreographer with the Toronto-based Neo Dance Theatre (renamed the New Dance Theatre in 1949). In 1960, Dent established her own dance company, the Nancy Lima Dent Dance Theatre. The company received positive critical reviews for their performances in prominent Toronto theaters including Hart House Theatre and the Centre Stage Theatre. Dent participated in three Canadian Ballet Festivals and she helped to found the Festival Evening of Modern Dance Festival in 1960. The festivals were well attended and critics noted that Dent’s choreography was especially engaging. In general, her choreographies highlighted personal expression, drew upon several modern dance techniques, and grappled with the political and ethical questions of her day. Dent was also a highly appreciated dance teacher who taught in various Ontarian cities for diverse types of students. She presented dance on television, and while recovering from an injury, she served as an effective administrator in various industries.

scholarly journals Dancing the Black Atlantic: Katherine Dunham’s Research-to-Performance Method

AmeriQuests ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Halifu Osumare
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
Performance Ethnography ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
Black Dance ◽  
Caribbean Culture ◽  
Katherine Dunham

Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) was one of the great dancer/choreographers of the 20th century. As a trained anthropologist and author, her unique contributions formed a marriage between dance and ethnology that developed the archetype of the scholar-artist. I explore her research-to-performance methodology that trail-blazed what has been analyzed by Caribbeanist VèVè Clark as "performance ethnography." Dunham explored Afro-Caribbean culture and dance, as well as her own African American culture. The essay demonstrates how she did this specially in her writings on the Jamaican Moroons and the Vodou of Haiti, recontextualizing the latter in her famous 1945 "Shango" dance work. In the process, Dunham danced the Black Atlantic well before that trope was even conceptualized, and dignified black dance forms of the Americas.

Dancing in Europe

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Halifu Osumare
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Black Woman ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
Nordic Region ◽  
Dance Company ◽  
Katherine Dunham ◽  
Dance Companies ◽  
The Times

This chapter explores the unique positionality of being a black woman in Europe in the late 60s. This social position is further complicated with being a contemporary dancer trying to survive in Spain, France, and the Netherlands and finally Copenhagen, Denmark, and Stockholm, Sweden. The author forms a Danish modern dance company with another American dancer in Copenhagen and, together, they help create a dance “revolution” for the times. She ends up teaching jazz dance in a major ballet academy in Stockholm, where she is also able to continue her own training with former members of the Katherine Dunham and Martha Graham dance companies. The author also investigates the influence of Dunham’s Technique on the Nordic region of Europe.

Dancing in Blackness

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Halifu Osumare
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Black Dance ◽  
Black Arts ◽  
Community Dance ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Lincoln Center ◽  
Katherine Dunham ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Multicultural Arts ◽  
Arts Activism

Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir explores a black female dancer’s personal journey over four decades across three continents and numerous countries. The author situates herself in the 1960s Black Arts Movement in the S.F. Bay Area, the dynamics of being a black woman dancing in Europe in the late 1960s, and dancing professionally in New York City in the early 1970s, while participating in racial inroads into important arts venues like Lincoln Center. She recounts friendships and collaborations with major artistic figures like Katherine Dunham, Ntozake Shange, Rod Rodgers, Diane McIntyre, Donald McKayle, Dr. Kwabena Nketia, and many others. She explores dancing in Ghana for almost a year, the inspiration for her return to the Oakland Bay Area in the late 1970s to help create the city’s black dance scene while being an adjunct dance lecturer at Stanford University. She also considers how her arts activism helped to engender more cultural equity in the arts nationally. She remembers the 1980s national multicultural arts movement and regional community dance activism, including her own national dance initiative, Black Choreographers Moving Toward the 21st Century. Finally, she ponders her self-reinvention in her 50s into a noted black studies and hip-hop scholar in academia.

Black Dance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasmine Johnson
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Rock And Roll ◽  
Black Dance ◽  
Black Artists ◽  
Lindy Hop ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Dances ◽  
Collective Experience ◽  
Katherine Dunham ◽  
Josephine Baker

Black dance is both an aesthetic and historical category. When the term first appeared in the late 1960s, it referred to dance forms grounded in African Americans’ collective experience, but over time the term "black dance" has come to encompass both vernacular (social) and theatrical (stage) dance created by African-descended peoples in the United States and around the world. From the Cakewalk to the Charleston to the Lindy Hop to rock and roll dancing, twentieth-century social dances emerged first within black subcultures and then circulated broadly within dominant cultures. Over the same period, black artists commanded the international dance stage, from Bert Williams and George Walker to Josephine Baker to Katherine Dunham to Alvin Ailey. In everyday life and on the concert stage, black dance is a constitutive dimension of modernism.

John Cranko's Antigone (1959): A Ballet Lost and Found

2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Henrietta Bannerman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Jean Racine ◽  
World War ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
Detailed Consideration ◽  
Lost And Found ◽  
The Many ◽  
Tragic Drama ◽  
The Relationship

John Cranko's dramatic and theatrically powerful Antigone (1959) disappeared from the ballet repertory in 1966 and this essay calls for a reappraisal and restaging of the work for 21st century audiences. Created in a post-World War II environment, and in the wake of appearances in London by the Martha Graham Company and Jerome Robbins’ Ballets USA, I point to American influences in Cranko's choreography. However, the discussion of the Greek-themed Antigone involves detailed consideration of the relationship between the ballet and the ancient dramas which inspired it, especially as the programme notes accompanying performances emphasised its Sophoclean source but failed to recognise that Cranko mainly based his ballet on an early play by Jean Racine. As Antigone derives from tragic drama, the essay investigates catharsis, one of the many principles that Aristotle delineated in the Poetics. This well-known effect is produced by Greek tragedies but the critics of the era complained about its lack in Cranko's ballet – views which I challenge. There is also an investigation of the role of Antigone, both in the play and in the ballet, and since Cranko created the role for Svetlana Beriosova, I reflect on memories of Beriosova's interpretation supported by more recent viewings of Edmée Wood's 1959 film.

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