Categotry Archives: Artists

Katherine Dunham, a multicultural dancer-choreographer who established one of the first self-supporting all-black modern dance groups in the United States, died on May 21. Cause of death was not released. She was 96.
Born and raised in Illinois, Dunham began taking dance classes as a teenager. She performed in several productions at the Cube Theatre, a local playhouse her brother Albert Dunham Jr. helped to establish, and danced her first leading role in the 1933 ballet “La Guiablesse.”
Dunham earned a bachelor’s degree in social anthropology at the University of Chicago in 1936. One particular lecture on cultural anthropology inspired her to begin viewing dance as more than an art form, but as a cultural symbol. Inspired by these new ideas, Dunham started studying the anthropological roots of dance. She earned a Rosenwald Foundation Fellowship, and used the money to study native dance in Haiti and Jamaica. Once the villagers in these Caribbean nations felt comfortable with her, Dunham was invited to attend several sacred dance rituals. At one of these ceremonies, she viewed the Myal dance, which is based on the belief that the dead can back to life. Dunham would eventually adopt Haiti as a second home and become a priestess of voudon (voodoo).
Known as the “matriarch of black dance,” Dunham added her African-infused dance steps to Metropolitan Opera’s production of “Aida” and to the Broadway musical “Cabin in the Sky.” She also choreographed several films, including “Carnival of Rhythm,” “Stormy Weather,” “Mambo” and “The Bible: In the Beginning.”
In the spring of 1938, she formed the Katherine Dunham Dance Company in New York. The renowned Dunham Dancers performed all over the United States and toured 57 countries on six continents. In a time when the color of her skin led to discrimination, Dunham fought back by suing hotels and restaurants that wouldn’t cater to her dancers. She refused to allow her company’s productions play at segregated theaters and even choreographed “Southland,” an hour-long ballet about lynching.
Dunham opened schools in Paris, Stockholm and Rome, but thousands of students studied at her New York studio, including actors Marlon Brando, Eartha Kitt and James Dean. There they learned the “Dunham Technique,” which combines African movements with the classic elements of ballets and modern dance. This technique is still taught at colleges all over the U.S., and at prestigious dance companies, such as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
After serving as an advisor to the cultural ministry of Senegal in the late 1960s, Dunham moved to East St. Louis, Ill., a predominantly black town that suffered from povery and high crime. Determined to bring arts and hope to the area, she taught at Southern Illinois University and opened the Katherine Dunham Centers for the Arts and Humanities, a school and community center that provided free classes in dance, drama, foreign languages, social science, woodcarving and African hair-braiding. Dunham’s center also offered martial arts training to help young, black teens channel their anger.
Dunham and set designer John Thomas Pratt were married for 49 years. After his death in 1986, she was plagued with health problems and poverty. Former students and celebrities helped keep her from living on the streets, but no matter how much she struggled, Dunham was always aware of other people’s problems. In 1992, she went on a 47-day hunger strike to protest U.S. government’s policy of repatriating Haitian refugees.
For her social and artistic contributions, Dunham received numerous honorary doctorates, the National Medal of the Arts, the Albert Schweitzer Prize and France’s Legion d’Honneur. In 2000, the Dance Heritage Coalition named her one of “American’s Irreplaceable Dance Treasures.” The Katherine Dunham College at the Library of Congress features nearly 1,700 documents and videos that document her career. Her life was also chronicled in the biography, “Katherine Dunham: A Dancing Life” by Joyce Aschenbrenner, and in her 1959 memoir, A Touch of Innocence.”
• Listen to a Tribute From NPR

As a writer and photographer for National Geographic magazine, Thomas James Abercrombie was paid to travel to the ends of the earth and take pictures of some of its most awe-inspiring sights.
The Minnesota native earned a degree in art and journalism from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. He broke into the news business as a staff photographer for the Forum newspaper in Fargo, N.D., and the Milwaukee Journal. In 1956, Abercrombie landed a job as a correspondent for the National Geographic and set off on a life of adventure. Over the next four decades, he shot pictures of deserts, quake-ravaged towns, geishas and African natives, wrote stories from every continent and befriended peasant and prince alike.
In 1957, the publication sent him to Antarctica, where he won a lottery to become the first reporter to visit the South Pole. Before he could take off, however, the plane froze, leaving Abercrombie stranded in the frozen wasteland for nearly three weeks. He finally made it to the pole, and set up an all-night exposure of the sky to show the stars making concentric circles.
Known for putting his own life at risk to get the perfect shot, Abercrombie’s exploits became the stuff of legend. He took stunning underwater photos during a dive with Jacques Cousteau. He survived a plane crash while trying to cover a civil war in Yemen. He fell off a yak in Afghanistan and nearly plunged into a 1,000-foot chasm. On an assignment in the Himalayas, Abercrombie nearly died from typhoid and had to amputate the toes of a pilgrim after gangrene set in. A scar across the bridge of his nose marked the time he got knocked off the top of a mountain cable car in Venezuela, but was rescued by a Swiss guide who caught him by his belt and hauled him back to safety.
One of Abercrombie’s favorite shoots involved climbing up 5,000 feet of vertical rock and ice to take pictures from the top of the Matterhorn. Soon after reaching the summit and viewing both Italy and Switzerland, a squall drove him back down to the picturesque town of Zermatt.
His most famous story, however, ended up costing the National Geographic a fortune. Back in the mid-1960s, Abercrombie took an assignment in Alaska. He learned to fly, bought a Cessna 180 and took off for the northernmost state. Once there, Abercrombie purchased pontoons for the aircraft, shot his photos and flew home. He then expensed the whole experience to the magazine. The company reluctantly paid for it all, but Abercrombie helped out by selling the plane and giving the proceeds back to his employer.
Although he was fluent in German, English, French, Spanish and Arabic, Abercrombie was frequently described by friends as a man’s man, one who could ride a camel, smoke a pipe and write off AK-47s on his expense report as “auto insurance.” Married to National Geographic photographer Lynn Abercrombie for 53 years, Tom and his wife often worked on assignments together.
Abercrombie won the 1954 Newspaper Photographer of the Year award and the 1958 Magazine Photographer of the Year award; he was the first photographer to win both honors. After retiring, he taught geography at George Washington University and spent his spare time building a skipjack by hand. His life and work were chronicled in the documentary “White Tiger: The Adventures of Thomas J. Abercrombie,” which was shown at the New York Film and Video Festival in 2004.
Abercrombie died on April 3 of complications following heart surgery. He was 75.
• Watch a Trailer for “White Tiger”
• View Posters of Abercrombie’s Work