Special Topics in Dance Research (335-0-21)

Topic

Katherine Dunham: Artist & Activist

Instructors

Rachel S. Russell

Meeting Info

Wirtz 201 Performnce Black Box: Tues, Thurs 1:00PM - 2:20PM

Overview of class

This hybrid studio-seminar course explores the life and work of Katherine Dunham. Katherine Dunham was an African American dancer, choreographer, anthropologist, writer, and political activist. Dunham came of age during the Chicago Renaissance collaborating with Black and white artists, and latter created a new dance technique based on her ethnographic research in the Caribbean. During the years surrounding World War II, she made a national reputation performing with her company on Broadway and on the Hollywood screen. Then, in the decades following the war, she traveled internationally with her company, her work implicitly and explicitly engaging the Civil Rights Movement and the struggle for decolonization. In 1965 Dunham settled in East St. Louis, where she trailblazed methods for using the arts to engage and uplift youth in the community. The class will combine Dunham-based modern dance classes and seminar discussions to fully engage with Dunham's work and life as an artist-scholar. Students in this course will encounter the full range of primary sources for dance studies—film and video, oral history and memoir, unpublished manuscripts and correspondence, exhibitions of visual material, and digital databases.

Class Materials (Required)

Required materials will be available on Canvas. No cost