| Summary: | Choreographer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham was born on June 22, 1909, in Chicago, Illinois. Her father was African American, while Dunham's mother was French-Canadian. Dunham became interested in dance at an early age but she did not seriously pursue a dance career until she was a student at the University of Chicago. Dunham began to study the African roots of dance and, in 1935, traveled to the Caribbean for field research. She returned to the United States in 1936, informed by new methods of movement and expression that she incorporated into techniques that transformed the world of dance. In 1940, she formed the Katherine Dunham Dance Company. Called the "Matriarch of Black Dance," her groundbreaking repertoire combined innovative interpretations of Caribbean dances, traditional ballet, African rituals and African American rhythms to create the Dunham Technique. Katherine Dunham passed away on May 21, 2006 at age 96.
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