Katherine+Dunham

February 5th 2009
====My book is about Katherine Dunham and this book is by Barbara O'Connor. You might not know much about her or anything about her. But she is important because she is a wonderful dancer and she opened her own dance school called the Dunham Dance Company.==== . Katherine Dunham has opened so much businesses like her company Dunham Dance Company, and Habitation Leclerc. She also has won the NAACP Lifetime Achievement Award and the Presidential Medal of Arts. She recieved recognitions of her contribution to dance. She recieved the Albert Schweitzer Music Award. Katherine got credit for paving the way for the famous Dance Theatre of Harlem. She had turned attention to the Dunham Fund for Research and Development of Cultural Arts which is now called Katherine Dunham Centers for the Arts and Humanities. Katherine was a very helpful child she helped her aunt at her beauty salon. Also, Katherine noticed little things that left a big impressions. She never brought home marvelous report cards home like her brother Albert did. Katherine was a very athletic girl when she entered high, she played basketball and ran track but what she really loved was the Terpsichorean Club which is a performing group that put on dances and musicals. She loved to watch dances she would always think in terms of rhythm. Katherine opened a dance company in 1930. She named it Dunham Dance Company and her group was called the Ballet Negre' which stands for black ballet. Then she wanted to learn anthropology so she went to Dr. Redfield's class. When she learned anthropology she went to four islands. She went to the West Indies, Jamaica, Martinique, and Haiti and out of them all she liked Haiti the best. She brought back to her home not just material things but dances too. She came back and showed her students. She was the dance director of //Pins and Needles. Had a show called Tropics and Le Jazz Hot:From Haiti to Harlem// and a folk ballet //Br'er Rabbit// and //de Tah Baby.// She was an expert to oversee dances in //Padron My Sarong//. She was in movies llike //Stormy Weather, Star Spangled//