katherine dunham

Katherine Dunham, Dance Pioneer, Dies at 96
May 22, 2006

NEW YORK (AP) — Katherine Dunham, a pioneering dancer and choreographer, author and civil rights activist who left Broadway to teach culture in one of America’s poorest cities, has died. She was 96.

Dunham died Sunday at the Manhattan assisted living facility where she lived, said Charlotte Ottley, executive liaison for the organization that preserves her artistic estate. The cause of death was not immediately known.

Dunham was perhaps best known for bringing African and Caribbean influences to the European-dominated dance world. In the late 1930s, she established the nation’s first self-supporting all-black modern dance group.

”We weren’t pushing `Black is Beautiful,’ we just showed it,” she later wrote.

more from the n.y. times

and from the library of congress

this lady is one of the reasons
i’m able to do west african dance (www.balafon.org) in the US.