Key Dances

L’Ag’Ya - 1938

L'Ag'Ya is Dunham’s first full-length ballet. It was inspired by an experience she had while doing research in the Caribbean, where she witnessed and filmed the ag’ya, which was a fighting dance of Martinique that included drum accompaniment.  The dance consists of five parts: Ouverture, Market Scene, Pas de Deux, Zombie Scene, and Festival Scene.  The dance conveys love, revenge, and the competition among men for the pursuit of an attractive woman, whom Dunham played herself.  In the dance, Dunham combined ballet, modern dance, traditional folk, and social dance forms from Cuba and Brazil.

Tropics and le Jazz Hot: From Haiti to Harlem- 1939

Dunham strived to portray human connections through history and culture as her dance incorporated influences from the West Indies, Cuba, Mexico, and early black American social dances like the Juba, Cake Walk, Ballin’ the Jack, and Strut.  She also combined the folk material with lavish costumes, imaginative settings, and orchestral arrangements.

Shango - 1945

Shango is based on West African Voodoo religious practices combined with Catholic elements.  Dunham portrayed the trance-like state in Voodoo religions when a spirit is invited and possesses the body.  Katherine Dunham incorporated elements from the Trinidad, Haiti, and Cuba.  In the dance, a chicken is sacrificed to the gods, symbolizing the sacrifices that survived in the Caribbean islands.  Dunham played the leader of the Shango dancers.

Always looking to educate and entertain audiences, Dunham said, ''What I tried to do...is take the meaning and the feeling and the intensity of the things that were portrayed and prepare them with a well-trained company so that they would convey to the audience the full meaning of that particular ritual or act.''

Barrel House Blues - 1950

This dance is described as a “Florida Swamp Shimmy”.  Katherine Dunham heard the song “Barrelhouse Blues” in a barbeque shack and began to swivel her hips.  Her flirtatious pivots were considered raunchy and humorous. Barrel House Blues conveyed a sexuality and playfulness that was very novel at the time. The swiveling of the hips displays a signature movement of the Katherine Dunham technique.

Rites of Passage-1955

This dance addressed the human and cultural experiences with biological destiny.  It conveyed birth, reproduction, and death.  The dance consisted of the following four parts: Puberty, Fertility, Death, and Women’s Mysteries. 

In the 1955 Broadway playbill, Dunham left the quote, “The rites herein represented do not refer to any one particular society, neither do they pretend to represent the enaction of a realistic ceremony. They have been created in an effort to present, at least partially, the deep emotional interest which every primitive community feels in the individual and to expose the intense personal experience which accompanies every profound change."

Southland - 1951

Expressing her deep anguish for the issue of lynchings, Dunham said, “Though I have not smelled the smell of burning flesh, and have never seen a black body swaying from a Southern tree, I have felt these things in spirit . . . Through the creative artist comes the need . . . to show this thing to the world, hoping that by exposing the ill, the conscience of the many will protest. . . . This is not all of America, it is not all of the South, but it is a living, present part." Dunham deeply identified with and sympathized with this issue of blatant inequality as she revealed the issue on stage.

Southland tells the story of a black man being falsely accused for raping a white woman and being lynched as a result of it.  This dance conveyed her passion for activism, education, and equality.  She addressed the issue on stage as a means to provoke thought and questioning.  Although Southland was banned from America, it was performed in Chile and Paris receiving mixed reviews.  Critics accused her of conveying a message that was “un-American”.  Because the U.S. was in the Cold War at the time, Dunham was not favored by the U.S. State Department, denying her of government funding towards her dances. 

Other

• Katherine Dunham starred in Hollywood musicals, such as 1943's Stormy Weather

• Dunham also choreographed dances such as Aida (1963) at New York's Metropolitan Opera and The Magic of Katherine Dunham (1987) for the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater.