Collection Items

  • Article
    Rites de Passage As a trained anthropologist, Katherine Dunham was well aware of Arnold van Gennep's seminal study Les rites de passage (Paris, 1909). It was van Gennep who established the term rites de passage as the term anthropologists use to define the category of rituals that mark the passage of a person through the life cycle, from one stage to another over time, from one role...
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    Notes on Dunham's Work Top of page Skip to main content Library of Congress Search Everything Audio Recordings Books/Printed Material Films, Videos Legislation Manuscripts/Mixed Material Maps Notated Music Newspapers Periodicals Personal Narratives Photos, Prints, Drawings Software, E-Resources Web Archives
    • Date: 1938
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    Mambo Silvana Mangano and Katherine Dunham in the 1955 Paramount Pictures production of "Mambo." Courtesy of Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis. In 1954 Katherine Dunham and her company were in the cast of Mambo, an Italian-American film produced by Carlo Ponti and Dino de Laurentiis for Teatri della Farnesina, Rome, and Paramount Pictures, Hollywood. Directed by Robert Rossen, it has original music by Dave Gilbert,...
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    L'Ag'Ya Katherine Dunham in the ballet "L'Ag'Ya", which premiered in 1938. Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis. Katherine Dunham's first full-length ballet debuted at the Federal Theater in Chicago on 27 January 1938. It was inspired by an event during her Caribbean field trip in 1935-1936 when she witnessed and filmed the ag'ya, the fighting dance of Martinique. Dunham herself devised the scenario,...
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    Carib Song Billed as "A Musical Play of the West Indies in Two Acts and Thirteen Scenes," Carib Song opened on 27 September 1945 at the Adelphi Theater in New York. The playbill included the following credits: "Book by William Archibald. Music by Baldwin Bergersen. Lyrics by William Archibald. Book directed by Mary Hunter. Choreography by Katherine Dunham. Production staged by Katherine Dunham and Mary Hunter....
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    Barrelhouse Katherine Dunham in a c.1950s photograph of "Barrelhouse." Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Choreographed by Katherine Dunham in 1938, Barrelhouse (also known as Barrelhouse Blues and Florida Swamp Shimmy) is one of the first of what she would come to call her Americana works. Based on the Shimmy from the Florida Gulf Coast, Dunham once explained that...
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    Southland A dramatic ballet in two scenes, Southland had a scenario and choreography by Katherine Dunham, music by Dino di Stefano, and sets and costumes designed by John Pratt. The ballet was premiered in the Teatro Municipal in Santiago de Chile, in January 1951. In the program notes to the ballet, Dunham wrote: "This is the story of no actual lynching in the Southern states...
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    Aida In the early 1960s Katherine Dunham was commissioned to provide choreography for a new production of Aida at New York's Metropolitan Opera. One of Giuseppe Verdi's greatest works and certainly one of the grandest of grand operas, Aida had its premiere at the Cairo Opera House on Christmas Eve 1871. It tells the story of a love triangle in ancient Egypt: Radames, a captain...
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    Cabin in the Sky Katherine Dunham in the 1940 Broadway hit production of "Cabin in the Sky". Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Billed as "A Musical Play (Fantasy) in Two Acts, Nine Scenes," Cabin in the Sky opened on 25 October 1940 at New York's Martin Beck Theater. The playbill on opening night included the following credits: "Book by Lynn Root....
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    Bal Nègre Katherine Dunham in "Bal Negre", 1946. Photographer, Vandamm Studio. Courtesy of Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Katherine Dunham devised Bal Nègre as a revue to showcase her company of dancers, singers, and musicians. During a nine-month tour of the United States, the running order of numbers on the program changed frequently,...
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    Shango A staged translation of a Vodun ritual, Shango premiered on 27 September 1945 as the finale to act 1 of Carib Song, "a musical play of the West Indies" that opened at the Adelphi Theater, New York. The author of the play, William Archibald, included the following note in the show's playbill: "The lives of West Indian natives often find expression in dances that,...
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    Stormy Weather Katherine Dunham in the 1943 Twentieth Century Fox Picture "Stormy Weather." Still from "Stormy Weather" courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox. All rights reserved. Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale Filmed with an illustrious all-black cast, Stormy Weather was released by Twentieth Century-Fox in 1943. Directed by Andrew L. Stone, it is a story of song-and-dance man Bill Williamson (played by...
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    Tango Katherine Dunham in "Tango." Photographer, Basabé, Dorien. Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Originally choreographed as a part of Jazz in Five Movements, which premiered in Paris in 1948, Tango was performed as an independent work, with an entirely different character, in Buenos Aires in 1954. It was danced in anger and protest against the political situation that...
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    Katherine Dunham Timeline
    • Date: 1909