Born in Chicago on June 22, 1910, Katherine Dunham grew up there and in nearby Joliet. She early became interested in dance and while a student at the University of Chicago formed a dance group that performed in concert at the Chicago World╒s Fair in 1934 and with the Chicago Civic Opera company in 1935╨1936. On graduating with a degree in anthropology she undertook field studies in the Caribbean area and in Brazil, first with a team from Northwestern University in 1936 and then for nearly two years on a Rosenwald fellowship. By the time she received her M.A. from the University of Chicago, she had acquired a vast knowledge of the dances and rituals of the black peoples of tropical America. In 1938 she joined the Federal Theatre Project in Chicago and composed a ballet, L╒Ag╒Ya, based on Caribbean dance.
In 1939 Dunham was involved with the cultural studies program of the Federal Writers╒ Project and then became dance director for productions of the New York Labor Stage, including Emperor Jones and Pins and Needles. In 1940 she choreographed and appeared in the Broadway hit Cabin in the Sky. In the same year she formed an all-black dance troupe and staged Tropics and le Jazz Hot╤From Haiti to Harlem, a highly successful revue. Her Tropical Revue troupe toured regularly from 1943 and presented a number of original dance works, including Shango, Bahiana, Rites du Passage, Bal NÅgre, and, in forms inspired by the dances of Northern urban blacks, Flaming Youth 1927, Blues, Burrell House, Ragtime, and Floyd╒s Guitar Blues. She appeared with such major musical organizations as the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in 1943 and the Los Angeles Symphony in 1945 and later made numerous highly successful tours of the Americas and of Europe.
Dunham choreographed and starred in dance sequences in many motion pictures, including Carnival of Rhythm, 1942, Star Spangled Rhythm, 1942, Stormy Weather, 1943, and Casbah, 1947, and in such stage productions as Carib Song, 1945, and Windy City, 1946. From 1945 she directed the Katherine Dunham School of Cultural Arts in New York City, and in 1961 she opened a school in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where she had a home. She was choreographer for the Metropolitan Opera╒s 1963 production of Aida. In 1966 she was an adviser to the State Department on the World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, and in 1966╨1967 she was artistic adviser to the president of Senegal. A frequent lecturer in colleges and universities, she was artist in residence at Southern Illinois University and a founder and director of the University╒s Performing Arts Training Center in East St. Louis from 1967. She sought actively to involve local gang members in this program and to break the cycle of ghetto life through involvement in her school. She wrote numerous articles on dance, often under the pseudonym Kaye Dunn; two autobiographical books, Katherine Dunham╒s Journey to Accompong, 1946, and Touch of Innocence, 1959; and Island Possessed, 1969. In 1979 she was the recipient of the Albert Schweitzer Music Award, and she was a Kennedy Center honoree in 1983. She won the Capezio Dance Award in 1991. She made headlines in 1992 for her 47-day hunger strike protesting the U.S. government's policy of refusing entry to Haitian refugees, a fast she ended only at the request of exiled Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide upon his visit to East St. Louis.
