Katherine Dunham

S = Standifer
D = Kathryn Dunham
T = Ms. Taylor
P = Mr. Pratt

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Kathryn Dunham - Part 1

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This is June 6, East St. Louis, Illinois, at 532 N. 10 Street, at the home of Ms. Katherine Dunham.

S Ms. Dunham, could you tell us a little about this place, maybe a little about this room, and maybe introduce us to you through your home?
D Well, in the first place, to my right is my husband, John Pratt, who lives here much of the time and some of the time he is at another branch of the University at Carbondale. But, when I came to East St. Louis I didn't think I was going to live here for 12 years, but that's the way it happened. I came from Africa and I had been a technical advisor to President .... in Senegal. I came to East St. Louis from Africa and found things in such condition that I felt I should stay here if I was going to do something about the business of development of human potential that I didn't need to run around to other countries of the world. That that was right here. Certainly there was enough to do and having been born in Chicago it helped me a great deal to settle in East St. Louis.

S What specifically, what is your assignment, what place are you working with, are you with the University, or a university in the area?
D Yes, I am. I came here as an artist-in- residence and then both my husband and I were employed by the University. I as a Director of the Performing Arts Training Center, and he as a consultant in its art and and costume department, design department. I developed the Training Center, I think probably you may have seen some of our performance, I don't know. We have done a number on television, a number in theatres and universities and so forth. But I don't call it, it is no t the Katherine Dunham Co., it shouldn't be confused with. not with the one that we toured the world with. It is a company that has grown out of East St. Louis, grown out of the Training Center of East St. Louis and this is what I want it to be.

S Are these, then, primarily local talent or talent that, maybe come to the area to study with you and at the University?
D Yes, I'd say that aside from a few master teachers that we have had over the years, this has been a completely local talent development. But people have started to come now from Chicago, we have a number of students from Chicago and different places of the country and even in the world. We have a large Sengolese following, we have Asians and Cubans and just you name it, here studying with us. The company itself has developed out of the Training Center is using the choreography of the former Dunham company and developing its own choreography too.

S Now you mentioned earlier in our pre-interview conversation that there was one program aired in April of this year. Can you tell me something about that and whether or not any of the people that are studying with you now participated?
D Yes. In January of this year the Public Broadcasting System asked me if I would do something for their Dance in America Program. Actually, our correspondence had started a little bit before that. But I was in Hait i at the time and the director and his assistant and some of his crewmen came to Haiti to look over our place and see how they could use what is know as residence Katherine Dunham, how they could use that as a background for some of my early beginnings in Haiti. We have a wonderful scene of the vordum, or voodoo as it is called here, that was taken right on our place and it is 100% authentic. After that they wanted to see something of what we were doing right now with members of the performing arts training center. And that something proved to be a reconstruction of a number called .... It is a rather extensive ballet and we went to New York to rehearse for it, using I would say, Z/3 people from East St. Louis and 1/3 former Dunham dancers. One of them came from Sweden ballet and they came from different places and joined us to do this ballet. So PBS worked it into one kind of, I would say, a documentary of the very sources of my choreographic development and then showed one big number that we had done.

S What was your role aside from dancer, or choreographer, that is, did you have any production responsibilities or directorship.
D For this particular filming, yes. I worked very closely, I worked closely with the producer, cameramen, photographers, and so forth right through the whole thing. My actual credits were, I don't remember, I think choreographer and something, I am not sure. My husband did the costumes. They were very good people to work with, because they didn't feel that they could get what they wanted unless they had my total cooperation, which was good for me because I could then begin to resume my life of producing.

S Well, I asked that question because more and more in my work with PBS many of the blacks, especially younger blacks, are very interested in having not only artistic control but other controls having to do with production, the directorship of the programs, and, frankly, I am delighted to see that particularly since people such as yourself have done such a great deal in the whole spectrum of this.
D Yes, well I think the director and the cameraman were very wise to come down to Haiti before the actual filming because they won my confidence, and at that moment I was so involved in working side by side with them that I didn't particularly worry about what my position was, you know. I mean there have been times when I have been maybe upset because I did have to do more directing or producing than I thought I should do, but that is not true in the case of PBS. We worked right along with each other and conferred. They didn't do anything without discussing it with me and vice versa.

S Is there going to be a follow-up or anything of that sort to this program? Is there any discussion about that?
D I think so. I was in a meeting with the National Endowment for the Arts not long ago and we talked about what we might do in the future. It means that I am here in East St. Louis now and I will be pinned to decide which piece of work should be put on film, develop it here and then perhaps the final rehearsal, as we did this time, in New York, and the filming in Nashville, Tenn.

S So, in essence, this production was taped on location in a variety of places aside from Haiti itself?
D Yes, it was Haiti, rehearsals were in New York, a lot of the technical planning was in our New York rehearsals and then the filming of the big ballet in Nashville.

S Since you mentioned that your husband did a great deal of the work having to do with the costuming, maybe you could reintroduce him to us and I would like to ask him some specific questions or perhaps you may even ask him, if you would like, in reference to his role and responsibility.
D I think it is terribly important that he should give us some of his ideas about how he feels about working for the kind of things I am doing now. You know this isn't theatre like it used to be.
P No, it isn't.

S Can you tell us something about the costumes, your role in this recent production., for example?
P In the recent production, well the ballet has been done for many years and the costumes have been amazingly enough many of them are still in quite good condition from the original position. Those costumes are 40 years old and are still quite sturdy. They were made of iron which was very practical for a touring company and I reconstructed the ones that were Missing. I didn't do the scenery. The scenery that we had we still have it around, but it wasn't large enough to use for the television filming in Nashville because they were using a cyclorama. But I have worked with Ms. Dunham in the theatre since we first met, which was in the days of the Federal Theatre where I was a supervisor in the costume department and Ms. Dunham was engaged to do a ballet.

S Do you recall the name of that ballet?
P Yes, it was called. . .

S What does that mean?
P It is a fighting dance with.... and its concern is a sort of 18th century story of a love between simple village people and then a village in appears. It is a rather sad story and he challenges the fiancee-,you might say, and the villain gets a charm from a witch doctor and manages to hypnotize Ms. Dunham with it and then she goes dancing with the villain and then they get into a fight with her lover and the man who desires her. Her lover is killed at the end of the story.

S Was Ms. Dunham performing in that ballet or is this one that she had choreographed?
P No, that was one that she always performed in. I don't think that anybody else could after .... very dramatic ballet and she is a very interested..... girl creation of Ms. Dunham.

S What year was it that you met Ms. Dunham and you finally married her ?
P In 1938. A long time ago.

S Did you marry the same year?
P No, we were married in 1941, but we had worked together intimately for the intervening time.

S So if you were married in 1941 that is really only one year after her first appearance in New York with the American Caribbean Dance Group.
P Yes, one year after she appeared in a broadway musical, Cabin in the Sky. That went on the road and I went with her. I had done the dance costumes for that and then Cabin in the Sky closed in California and at that time Ms. Dunham reassembled her own personal dance company and bega n touring the country.

S Now, when you say reassembled prior to that time
P Well, she had been in Cabin in the Sky, but she had done some performing in New York previously to that. And I had something to do with those too because t at was right after she left the Federal Theatre and she appeared on would now be off-broadway with an enormous success.

S What theatre was this?
P And from that, I believe that was 1939.

S Do you recall the theatre that she performed in at that time?
P Yes, the Winthrup Theatre.

S That is no longer probably, it is off broadway?
P I think it still exists, I am not sure. I don't remember what street it was on.
D I think it was 48th street.
P No, it was not that far up town. 44th or 45th between 6th and 5th avenue.

S Now we have digressed a bit from the original show that we were just talking about, the Dance and American Theatre, and let us get back to that just for a moment. The costuming, the basic idea for the costumes, particularly those that were more recent in original design, how did they come to you, how did you happen to come up with the designs that you used?
P Well, I have always been a sort of dynamic sort of designer. I have always worked with the choreographer who then also worked with, I like clothes that move, that is what I am interested in. So I always work directly and intimately with Ms. Dunham on putting together clothes that seem to be dynamic.
D - I think also John had a great feeling, as far as I am concerned, a great feeling for the areas that served me most. A great feeling for the tropics, for the colonial and it -is just like the opening scene in the PBS which was after photographs had been made of Haiti itself. The opening scene was a .... which was the, you might say, the slave version of the French....
P Yes, 18th century. But we were committed with that before that time because we had worked together in.... which was a sort of 18th century Martinique reconstruction of the dancers which the French had brought to Martinique.

S This flare that you mention, I notice in many of the critics, one in 1940, 43 and on up into 46, people like Todd in the New York Times and Herald Tribune have made remarks about the splash of color, the sense of rhythm, the sense of theatre that accompanies a Dunham production and they expect that. So you were working with her
P I always had great osmosisism.
D Fortunately, it was not a matter of competition. It was a matter of being able to work together, kind of a cohesive feeling because without his costumes I wouldn't have known how to accomplish what I saw in my own mind's eyes for choreography. And then seeing our choreography and knowing the background of it I am sure helped my husband a great deal with what he designed for us.
P Of course.

S With such ideas do you find, however, that sometimes you have champaign tastes on beer income, knowing full well what productions cost?
P I was well known in the business for, you know, being very good at cutting corners but turning out a production that was very rich indeed, and it was. I don't mean it was.... but I am an extremely frugal theatrical designer.
D Yes it is. It is very interesting how when you think of the money that is spent on the great ballets, you know the really big ballets, like $500, 000 .... the other night from the American Ballet Theatre. When you think of that and you think that we have to use whatever we could personally because we didn't have any backers at all, our company has been unsubsidized and we had to use whatever we could personally get against our coming appearances from our manager in order to clothe the new material we were going to show. And this has always been the way with our productions, they are self-financed. They couldn't have been done unless we had a designer who recognized these things and knew how to use every scrap of material.
P And use it over again.

S Did you have adequate budget for your PBS production? I mean there is never an adequate budget, that is a stupid question.
P I made the costumes, I had nothing to do with the scenery because, as I explained, our scenery was too fragile and small for the setting and I don't know what their budget was, but it was a very modest budget.
D I would say for the kind of thing that we were showing, the budget was sufficient. I think that if we ever began to show something, one of our big ballets like. . . which I hope we will show, Southland, those things, that the budget would certainly have to be expanded to meet our needs. But we were using, fortunately, we had on hand costumes, a certain number of them from.... Some had to be added and some had to be remade and then as in.... as we were speaking of in Haiti, we had not done that before in exactly this form and we had to have costumes for it.

S So this production was, would you say, a collage of dances and things that you had used before, or the story beneath them. You mentioned the reuse of costumes
D You see it didn't really have a story. You would have to look at it from the point of view of someone interested in the background of my life and, therefore, Haiti itself. was also photographed, some of the streets, some of the mountains, rivers, streams, etc. were photographed before talking with me about how I felt about Haiti. Then the camera went to our.... which is a voodoo temple and saw a serious ceremony, a real ceremony. Now.these were costumes which some of them had to be replaced simply by usage, but their original design was almost entirely Haitian and they had had a great deal of help from my husband and these were costumes that more or less were. The big designing thing came in the Cobra Dance where we didn't have and then again some reconstruction of .... costumes.

S Let's move in a sort of chronology of Dunham activities, Dunham production, and now that we know that your husband was right there on your left or the right, I am sort of making a joke about what you said earlier, in either case he halloes around you. He mentioned, for example, the 1940 appearancE two years after he had-met you and a year before you married. This was the American Carib Dance Production. This was your first appearance on broadway? I mean in terms of your company?
P Tropical Review

S Tropical Review was in 1943.
Dunham: Tropical Review was some time later.

S Right, 1943. 1 was going to get to that next, but I was thinking about 1940.
D 1939 was Tropics and the jazz hops and I know that date because I just spoke to Agnes DeMille on the phone and she is doing a new book which is dance and history of dance in America and she reminded me of certain dates that I had even forgotten. The Windsor Theatre was 1939 and in the same year we did Cabin in the Sky.

S Was Todd Duncan in that? I just spoke to him two weeks ago.
D - He was DeLaud and Ricks. . . was the devil. That was a wonderful production.

S Now you mention the Tropical Review which was at the Dex Theatre on broadway. This was 1943. Could you tell us a little about this. This was your second, third appearance with your company on broadway?
D We had been in the Windsor Theatre for this amazing 13 Sundays, or weekend performances there, two shows on Sunday. After that we appeared in Cabin in the Sky and following that we appeared in Tropical Review.

S Would you consider the Tropical Review a professional success, all that you wanted? I know the public and the critics were very kind and very, not generous, but I thought overwhelmingly good to you because it obviously was a smash hit, but how did you as the performer
Ms. Dunham; I recognized it as a smash hit because, for one thing, the minute Saul Hurok decided to use us I knew that we must be something because Hurok would never touch anything that wasn't a smash hit. So we were presented at the Martinbeck Theatre by Saul Hurok.
P We had been in concert before that, after the closing of Cabin in the Sky so we were there until the beginning of the war in 1941, until Pearl Harbor anyway. Then we did some touring up and down the West Coast.... The first time was with Meyer Levin and Williams....
D That was about two or three performances

S So you really began under Saul Hurok's management prior to 1946? I had assumed that with.... with.... he presented you at that time in broadway I know.
D He first presented us in Tropical Review.

S That was in 1943.
D Yes, we probably had these, as my husband said, smaller engagements and smaller tours. I am sure we did and we were very thankful to the friends who helped to present us, but it was really Saul Hurok who took over the whole thing of making the company a nationwide success.
P He, with Ms. Dunham's help naturally. Tropical Review was put together in New York during the war time. I was already in the Army by then and I used to come up from base camp in Virginia every weekend and work on the costumes.

S Oh, I see, so you weren't around as close as you would like to have been because Uncle Sam had part of your body
P No, I was in the army for three years and during that period you played Tropical Review and then you did....

S In 1944-45 you did Carib Song.
P Yes.
Ms. Dunham; Yes.

S I notice I read somewhere that this was one of several that Ed Sullivan had either co-produced or what I am not sure. Can you clarify? What did Ed Sullivan have to do with Crib song?
D I don't think Ed Sullivan had anything to do with Carib Song.

S The reason I asked that is that I had read that some of the critics had pointed out that it was spoiled by the plot but the dancing and choreography as such was excellent but the plot was rather dismal and as such it was ....
D Frequently producers have partners that they never let the public know about. I don't know if Ed Sullivan had, but before that we were in a little thing that Billy Rose did and Ed Sullivan may have had something to do with that. 7 Rs or something. We did a short three or four numbers in that. But I don't know as far as Ed Sullivan goes. I have been on shows with him but whether he was one of the producers I don't know.

S What basically was the plot of Carib Song?
D It was Trinadadian and I thought it was so amuzing because some of the critics criticized the Trinidad English, very British pronunciation that we all had to learn to learn the part and I felt that this was so dismal. This wonderful achievement of being able to do the Trinidad plot and setting and bring the atmosphere in by speaking the language. Anyway, the show was the story of a woman who had married an older man and they were building their house in a small village and all the neighbors are helping, and they have their festival for the house building. The woman falls in love with'141% , just a sort of fly by night person, just to go through the story, and actually she has a child, she doesn't have a child I mean she is supposed to have a child that is probably his and the gossip which was so very Trinidadian. It was written by a man named Archibald who was from Trinidad himself. The women at the waterfront would gossip about the woman. She was gradually ostricized for her affairs with this young man and finally the woman is killed by her husband when he finds out that it is probably true that the child she is carrying is not his. It had a thing about it. It had the folklore of Trinidad mixed in it. We opened with a scene at someone's funeral which rather set the tone in a way and the singing was come and sit by the body and that kind of thing and at the washer woman scene there was a long kind of calypso thing of talking about what a woman has a right to do and what she doesn't and then there is a scene in the woods, a shangle scene, what they would call a voodoo scene there. We are doing some of that even now. We do one of the numbers from the show called shangle, even after all these years. So that, for me, was a great thing because I was in love with the West Indies and I liked the authenticity with which Trinidad was presented but the critics could have cared less.
P They thought she was.... Well, the language didn't sound like Porgy and Bess because.... Cabin in the Sky. Shangle was a wonderful number. That is the only thing I, I never saw Carib Song, except for shangle when it was itself reconstructed after I cameback.

S In 1962 Bambush was presented on broadway of course and you had quite a mixture, well an unusual mix of a cast with the gospel singers, Rocklands, and of course your own people. Of course the critics said they felt they could have done without the other individuals, they just wanted more and more of the Dunhams. Did you feel like the gospel singers and other groups after, in retrospe+1 were superfluous? Obviously, you didntt at the time because you did it, but as you look back how do you feel?
D No, we don't resent singers, gospel singers. We may not have had so many, but I think the main problem is a very obvious one, I had been out of the country for so long that I was not aware of the intense feeling between Israel and the Palestinian people or the Jewish people and the Arabian people and when we came in I thought that all of America would be happy to see this group stand by the King of Morocco, whom Ihappen to know.
P ....and other cultures and so forth and so on.
D That is quite different. I always did as long as Id kept to the West Indies and, I suppose, Iceland, it would have been all right. But New York theatre is supported by a very heavy Jewish audience and they were not at all happy. I finally learned after the halocaust that some of our big problem had been the presentation of these 14 people from.... as a strong opening arrangement in our.... desire to reach out into other cultures found it's fulfillment in a producer who wanted to have things of other backgrounds that would fit into ours definitely for a show. I thought producing new ballets, which I did a wonderful ballet called the Diamond Thief, which was South African in its story. But the thing that I think really did us in on broadway was not only that the Cuban whole fiasco Bay of Pigs happened about half way through our first week.
P People stayed at home.
D Yes, they stayed at home to look at TV. That and then I couldn't understand this thing of the sale of tickets because whenever we hit New York there was always, we had no problem with our first, say, six weeks. Maybe after that we'd have to have something done. But I now, looking back over it, I had been away and I was really naive about any problem or possible problem between the Jewish population of New York and the fact that we had an Arab, Muslim, North African, country sending people to do, they did about 20 minutes of the first act. And that was because King Hassan II, I had met when-'he was a young man when we were in Morocco and he used to iove to listen to our drums and join in on them and so forth and so on, so when we went in search of material for this new broadway show I thought immediately of Hassan. We went to Morocco and were received and we saw a number of dancers, musicians and so forth and ended up with a small company of Moroccan dancers and I don't think that we went down so well with a New York audience.
P Well, I am still naive. I wasn't aware of that then. The to-do in Israel with the Arabs is....

S Could you think too that maybe your public'. as you know it is a very unforgiving and fickle group. Do you think they might have felt that they were slapped in the face, thbA you disappointed them, you weren't doing what you usually do.
D Sure. I know I had the same thing happen in Paris. We had maybe the greatest success of any company that I know of in Paris and after two or three years I wanted to do this same number.... that we did for PBS, so we did it and Paris had always considered us their darlings. You know, they thought we were sort of semi-colonial and we just belonged to them. I had never yet shown them the side of me that is academic. They hadn't seen me as an anthropologist or anyone interested in the academic side of the theatre. So, when we did a new show in Paris that had.... some of the critics were really inferiorated. They said our goddess has left us, why doesn't she come back. Why does she do these thing s which are purely intellectual and so forth and so on. I was really hurt. I was terribly upset and had a luncheon meeting at Maxins with all of the outstanding critics to try to explain to them why I would do such a thing. That I really hadn't let them down but that they simply didn't know me. They didn't realize the other parts of me there were and this is what happened in New York. People had not thought of the possibility of other cultures being a part of our, I would say African, black African, exotic, ethnic, you call it what you will, but a part of our interest so when it came in with such a bang and great publicity, 14 royal dancers from the Court of Hassan II, I couldn't have done anything about it. Right today, if I crossed the Gauza Strip it would create the same kind of thing. That's what happened and I didn't know it. About a year later someone said to me well don't you know what you did and I said no, what did I do. You brought Muslems, Arabs into New York theatre which is notoriously supported by its Jewish public.

S Well, I heard that same type of comment from one of your fans a few weeks ago. I was interviewing Andy Kirk the old jazz man conductor who is still at Local Musicians #80Z and he said that in those days Ms. Dunham came in and disappointed us. We wanted to see the old Dunham, just like a pianist always playing one type of tune. But then there was a little man sitting in the corner and he said I don't think you know what the old Dunham really was. She is multidimensional. How dare you expect her to be just one thing. So I think you

P She never was. In Tropical Review where there was a change all the time, there were many new numbers put in and numbers taken out and that was certainly true where ever we went.... to London and Paris and by that time we had three complete changes of show actually.

S Let me ask both of you to maybe just name off numbers of people who have really become even more famous in their own right that you have worked with or they have worked for you and that you remember having designed.a costume for. Godfrey Holder
D Yes, they come in streams. We moved them to our school. For instance, like Marlong Brando learned the bongos and Jeffrey Holder

S Did he do Aida with you?
D No, he didn't do Aida with me, but he had been at our school and he had done some teaching there and so had Arthur Mitchell., Shelley Winters. . . . I named someone just last night, James Dean, who is dead now, and I had forgotten about. There was a long long list of these people. Many of them were there when I wasn't there. I was on tour. Then others were there, Jose Ferrer.

S Eartha Kitt?
D Yes, she was in our company.

S Has her style changed very much? I saw her in Timbuktu in Detroit. I guess I was a little bit unforgiving because I expected something different from Eartha. I am guilty too.
D I saw her twice in Timbuktu and we talked about it. What should I say, the real Eatha Kitt is there. The Eatha Kitt that may have done certain things in our show like in the Richard Buckle book there, I'll show it to you.
P Eatha Kitt was discovered really because Ms. Dunham called her and Orson Wells ....

S That is she in the middle there. What number is that from?
D That is a Dunham exercise in our school.

S I see, thank you. What were you saying, she was discovered how?
P She arrived in Paris in the Katherine Dunham company and from there her birth began with Orson Wells, who was very taken with her and that was when she thought the company was in Paris.

S You mentioned in the 40's now I know that Shuffle Along came out in 1921 and then I'm Just Wild About Harry was revived in 1948.
D We revived it, I'll bet.

S Oh, really. How did you happen to revive it? That is interesting.
D Norma Cecil
P I had always admired her enormously.

S We are going to see another picture here of Ertha Kitt. Oh, that is a good one. Who is that man with her?
D Oh, his-name is Jessie. It is horrible, I can't think of his other name. Jessie, a beautiful tenor voice and he and Ertha Kitt are singing.

S Is that from one of the shows that
D Yes, it is from our show

S see.
P This is one of the shows that went to London. This of course is by Richard Buckle.
D He speaks so much of that you can just do what you want to.

S Tell me more about the reason you think you revived I'm Just Wild About Harry?
P It started when Ms. Dunham realized the glories of that flaming youth period, but it was still going on practically.

S Are these the scenes from.
D Yes.

S I see most of the men in your dances, they are always very muscular. I know music men are muscular dancers. It is nothing like N....that I just saw, who is delicate. Did you see that Ms. Dunham?
D This is a nice.... picture.

S What is this book that we are looking at?
D It is a book by Richard Buckle, who is an Englishman who fell in love with our show and did as much as he could from
P Richard Buckle is a distinguished.... graduate to this day. I don't remember what he does now but he is very important in the London theatre, ....and artistic light.

S Had you done some other things that he had been involved with before in your costuming?
P No
D This is Ford. You probably know her. She taught for
years
in our school and was in our company.

S Yes. What is this Ms. Dunham?
D ....Ford. These are exercises.

S Oh, I thought these were scenes. So when you are doing these various exercises you put them in full dress?
D This is a scene from our second company. We had an experimental group.

S How many companies have you had, say, since 1940.
D Well, it is hard to number them because they change one at a time until you

S When you have those numbers of companies, did you still design for all of those companies. They could use the basic design?
P I believe so. I can't think of any

S You would get the credit?
D Carib Song is the only one
P Carib Song is the only one because I was in the army. I didn't even know it was on until it was closed.
D This was our Bombash that caused me so much trouble.

S And which was recently revived on the. . Now this is the handbill from Bombash?
D That is the program. It shows his majesty 4-8-gan II.
P He was very taken with Ms. Dunham when he was still Prince Hussein

S Did that go over very well with Ms. Dunham's husband?
D Oh, not that way.
P I have always been a good friend of the King.

S Sometimes I have green eyes so I ask that question. It probably reflects my own insecurity more than yours, I am sure. Where is home for you, Ms. Dunham, and as a girl where did you spend your childhood, and did any of those influences of your childhood influence what you are doing now?
D My childhood was in Joliet, Ill., and I would say that whatever I have been able to do in East St. Louis in terms of understanding people and their needs and so forth is because of a Middle West background. I went to the University of Chicago.

S In anthropology, no less.
D Yes, and for a while that was home. Then I went to the West Indies and fell in love with Haiti. And on and off that has been home for the past 40 years really.

S How long have you owned a home there? You gave it a name which sounded very romantic a few minutes ago.
D Well, the whole property is known as LaClare, named after General LaClare who has an establishment there. And I have divided the property so that one half is docile LaClare and the other half is the residence Katherine Dunham.

S Would you repeat that, it is so marvelous?
D Katherine Dunham's residence, the residence of Katherine Dunham. And that is where you will find me as much of the time as I can get there because it is such a beautiful place. Haiti has, if you want to find it, more beauty than any of the other islands in the Caribbean that I know. I certainly know that our place is beautiful and I am happy to call it home, and I am also happy to call East St. Louis home, you know. I will never call Chicago home again. I don't feel it. I don't like it, and I wouldn't live there.

S Is East St. Louis good to you?
D Yes, very.

S How?
D They let me know through their sororities, their small groups, their mayor's office, their governor's office, in every way they can. When we go to the museum you will see the citations I have from this area. In every way they let me know that they are happy that I am here and that we do have an influence on this city because it is a malnourished city like so many of those that we call deprived. I look on it in some ways as I look on parts of Africa, just underdeveloped or malnourished, whichever way you look at it and this gives me a great deal to hope for to work toward to try and change. And I think we have done it. I think we have done a lot toward changing the image of East St. Louis to itself and to the rest of the country.

S Have you made money, well, out of your career first of all?
D I have made-a lot of money but I have spent a lot of money in the career. We have not had a subsidy so that to keep a company of 50 going over, say, 30 or 40 years, you can imagine what it is like because when there were not engagements the company still had to live and we might set up our base in Morocco, Monte Carlo or we might set up our base in Spain or in Haiti or in Vienna, Paris, or wherever we have an interval in performing. We would set up a base, work on costumes, redo certain things, rehearse, and then start touring again, but if these intervals became too long, it was quite a drain on the royal treasury as you could imagine. But finally in 1960 in Vienna I thought this is rediculous, I can't do this any more. We can't travel to the iron curtain countries from Vienna because it just wasn't done in those days so we separated for a while and then met again after I had been in Haiti, the company, we met again to rehearse in California for Bombash. We did the Bombash and finished it in 1962 and then, well you are talking about money, so you see what these intervals mean in terms of people and their needs and that is where whatever I have made has always gone for that sort of thing.

S I asked that question too because some people consider East St. Louis a ghetto, a slum area, as they would consider Detroit. I say this in the same way because you have to go to Detroit and Detroit consists of many_parts. Perhaps East St. Louis does too. But I see here the glamorous Katherine Dunham living here, or is it because she is able to go in and out at will and also be a symbol to the youngsters here in East St. Louis, but it is strange that I would see sort of like a rose in a bunch of weeds.
D If this were roses you know roses among roses it is easy. But when you see our museum I think you will get another picture of why it is important for me to be here. I am sure you will. But I could never live a nonproductive life and I feel that I have lived a productive life as far as I want to in terms of this company that I have for so many years. Now developing something else is a new kind of productive life for me and I appreciate it.

S I am going to ask both of you about three more questions and then we will go and see the museum that you have mentioned.
P First, I would like to say that Ms. Dunham.... very important.... has one of the distinguished symbol heads of Southern Illinois University because, after all, she was hired at Southern Illinois University.

S I am curious also because at the University of Michigan, I am a full professor at the University of Michigan, and many of us people who have been there for a long time, us old heads are beginning to worry about retirement. Not worried about it, I say worried about it in the sense that they are thinking of cutting out certain kinds of benefits because of Social Security being depleted, etc. , etc. Do you ever worry about retirement? You are probably within about maybe 10 years of retirement.
D You are really generous. No, I don't because I feel that the University here recognizes a certain need for me. When I speak of that I speak of East St. Louis and Edwardsville, the main university, near us, and I think that they are happy to have me here in some capacity. Also, in the case of retirement, I believe that I would retire at least 2/3 of the time in Haiti and 1/3 here.

S It is interesting to see that, and I am glad that you mentioned this. I interviewed Mary Lou Williams just a fe w weeks ago and she is at Duke University and she does very much as you do, she has an apartment in New York she travels and does concerts here and there. But she too lives in a black neighborhood. She is a symbol there in .... But I asked her and I'll ask you the second of our three questions. Both of you. If you live another minute you get older, and it is quite obvious that you are older than you were when I saw you Z5 years ago and I fell in love with you immediately. I never thought I would be sitting here and interviewing you even though I had met you and talked with you ....
D Is that how long it takes?

S Underline that. But my question to both of you is one that I have asked anyone, and I have interviewed over 50, and if you will be a performer, is your art getting better as you are getting older, its better but you are doing less because you can't do as much, and does your performance medium, you as a dancer, for example, Mary Lou Williams, as a pianist, Dizzy Gillespie, as a trumpet player, do you find that nature makes it impossible to do certain things that you would prefer to do and as such old age is "not satisfying? " It is a hard question but I have asked this of everybody.
D Well, I have certainly been able to recognize physical limitations, but I recognized them also while I was performing. I had certain physical limitation that made me change the choreography for myself or made me more interested in choreography only rather than dancing. I have never been a person who wanted to just dance. I have always been interested in developing people and developing for other people, so I find that age has nothing to do with this. I find also that I have more time to decide whether or not I am going to be a writer, I have done a great deal of writing. Maybe I'll do some more, I certainly hope so. But I find that my creative field is nourished here in East St. Louis in a way that it might not be in New York, Chicago, or Paris even. My own creative field and myself as I know myself coming from a Midwestern area and again if you call East St. Louis a ghetto I don't know whether that is the right term for it or not but it certainly is malnourished, a little area of East St. Louis. I would say that I find more possibility to express what I want to do, which is develop people and help humans to become secure in themselves and less alienated. I find that is a great challenge here that goes on endlessly.

S What advice would you give to the dancer, particularly in the theatre and movies, who has made it. They are not a star, but they have made it and they are beginning to get frightened that if their bodies are not as tight and if they can't do as much they won't get the job, they won't get the work because their bodies will not respond to their demands that the brain, what kind of advice would you give them?
D Well, I think that that is a serious thing. It is hard to convinece an individual who is going to the top that they should be very careful about the possibilities of aging. Now I am thinking about physically. I think that physically a violin player has to be careful of his hands. A dancer is in a total production. A dancer has to be careful of everything, a finger, a toe, or this or that or the other. So a dancer is constantly aware of his body and I would say continue this awareness, don't think you are going to go on forever because you are not and begin to plan something that will compensate as you reduce your capacities to leap or turn on this or that or the other, begin thinking of something else. And so many dancers paint. I used to paint. I started again recently. While I was dancing, while, I was very busy with my career start something else that makes use of your creative ability because if you don't you will die inside as a person.

S So you are saying redirect your energies.
D Yes. A creative person has to create. It doesn't really matter what you create you know. If such a dancer wanted to go out and build the cactus gardens where he could, in Mexico, let him do that, but something that is creative has to go on.

S Thank you. The other question to you, sir, is how have you been able to survive 40 years, I say survive and I am a married man, I have a very attractive wife, how has it been? I know it has been a wonderful marriage, but how has it been also the marriage to Dunham the wife, the woman, the housewife, but also Dunham the star, knowing full well that you are part of both sides of her life.
P I always refer to Dunham the woman. I don't care whether as an artist or as housewife. Happily, I think it is a difficult role to be married to someone who is in the same, more or less, profession as you are, the marriage is inclined to be stormy and all, but I just admired Ms. Dunham as the person when I first met her.
D I know that. I think I can answer that. I really think that aside from admiring my talent you really admire me as a person and as a woman because sometimes I have given my husband a manuscript to read, a book we will say, that has turned out to have fantastic rave reviews and he'll tell me it is no good, I don't think this is going to be any good so on and so forth. Well, if I didn't know him as well as I know him I would be terribly depressed and sore. But as I see it now this was scattering somehow dispersing myself so that for him there was less left of me for how he wanted me. So now it is quite all right with me if I don't write, if my time isn't taken up with this, that, and the other, and I am happy to know that my-husband regards me as a woman and a person.

S This obviously mutual respect, because that is what Ms. Dunham has just said that not only does she like you also as a person, and I think it is an important thing to like. She said something about like a few seconds ago. We can love someone but sometimes we can also dislike someone we love. There is a subtle difference. So obviously you like each other, which is good and it has evidently helped to keep your marriage together. You are something of an anomally you know in theatre, being married to the same person for....
D Forever.

S Yes, so I think to see two happily, beautiful people married in theatre at this time is quite interesting. Very, very interesting and I think just to see you on camera like this will say a hell of a lot to a lot of -wonderful people. Thank you very much. It has been wonderful talking to both of you.

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Kathryn Dunham - Part 2

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S We are in the office of Ms. Dunham and could you tell.... and what this place is, Ms. Dunham?
D Right now we are in my private office at the Katherine Dunham Museum. It has been open I think for about three years now and we have a collection, as you saw downstairs., of African art and memorabilia.... We hope to be able to change the display perhaps every two years. We are a little late this year.

S You have adequate enough acquisitions already to
D Yes, we have enough for another two displays.

S Do any of these displays travel?
D We hope they will travel. We want them to. All of these things are a matter of funding, but we want them to travel.

S Do you have subsidy currently?
D We have a small amount of subsidy from the National Endowment for the Arts, and that helps us but it is not directly to the museum. It is to the Dunham Fund which works on a number of planning and programs in the area.

S Are their admissions or in terms of the community, the community can come in at any time when it is open?
D We have had no admission yet. We have a group of friends of the museum who try to raise, if they can, periodically something to help us. Of course, the main thing about a building like this is its upkeep. It needs central heating and it needs central air conditioning and it costs a great deal to keep up a building of this size.

S But I notice just in walking around what minimal funds you have it is in excellent condition. It is a beautiful place so evidently the people who are in charge of it must do this with love because....
D They do. We have a board of governors made up of businessmen
and bank executives from the city who helped us get the money to put the building in condition. Miss Stoffall, you met here earlier, my assistant, has put up the money for buying the building on a mortgage and then the directors have put up the money for refurbishing the building.

S If someone wanted to contribute to the Dunham Museum, what direction should they have in order to do this?
D I think they should write directly to the Dunham Fund at our address, at 532 N. 10th St. , East St. Louis, Ill. , 62201. And we'd be very happy for donations of any sort.

S I believe if it is more than $Z5 it is tax deductible, isn't it?
D Yes, this is a non-profit. The Dunham Fund is non-profit.

S What about if someone should find in their attic, their grandmother's closet or hope chest different kinds of memorabilia, would you like to have that
D Yes, we would. We don't intend to always keep this necessarily African oriented. Originally I had hoped to have African American Indian of this area, and the Appalachian of this area, but at the same time, just as we have the Haitian room, we will always have room for another exhibit. Things that are of interest or important to us.

S Are you ever interested also in exchanging exhibits, say between the Eva Jessie Collection at Michigan, the Morlin collection at Howard. If they wanted to have a sort of interchange, are you interested in something of that sort?
D Yes, I think we would be. It would be a matter of how we could handle the insurance and transportation and that sort of thing.

S Finally, do you have a staff who could cooperate in developing a proposal for such a traveling exhibit between black collections?
D I know what you mean, and we don't really have a staff that could do that, but I think it is going to have to be done. We may have to request some foundation aid to do that.

S Let me volunteer right now. I work with OEO and HEW as a proposal reader.. I would be delighted to help you do that. And since I am the director of the Jessye Collection, please feel free to call on me and I would be happy to help you do that.
D Yes, it would be wonderful for us to have that sort of help.

S I know those funds are available and they are especially available to collections of this kind that are very good collections but because of the financial problems associated with it very few people are able to enjoy the quality of it. Please feel free to ask and you can get me at Michigan. Why don't we walk around, maybe to the other room. Is there anything in this office you would like to show us? I have been looking at this gorgeous picture by the fireplace.
D I think it is quite wonderful. I was in Japan at that time and the picture was taken by I think Life Magazine. Yes, they used it actually. It must have been 1957 or 58. In front of this very famous brown buddha.

S Were you doing a show at the time there?
D No. I was writing. I was finishing Touch of Innocence.

S I can't help but notice the number of awards and honors that you have here. Could you maybe tell us about two or three that are your most prized? I am sure all of them are, but if you could chose a few.
D I am very happy about the one from the State of New York, Department of State., Albany, that gave us a certificate of incorporation for our foundation which was the very beginning of my efforts to try and collect some sort of aid in running this research school that we have now. Then, of course, the Republic of Iiti. I have a grand officer given me by Dr. Nuvalier. It is funny one of the little things that I really enjoy is this, in appreciation to your loyal service to the Hollywood Canteen. I believe that that would be probably about 1939 or 40.

S Hollywood Canteen, was that one of the army canteens that I read so much about, the stage door canteens?
D Yes, we used to entertain for them.

S And Betty Davis was the person who was president evidently at the time.
D I guess so.
Prof. When was that presented to you?
D In San Francisco. It must have been about 1940-41.

S I guess unique things like that really makes life almost a bowl of cherries sometimes.
D Yes. Then, of course, I have these later, well I got last year, I think, three out of five honorary degrees. Dartmouth is here. The University

S The Alva Ali Dance Title, what is that?
D That was a dance award.

S Wasn't Alvan Ali one of your students?
D Yes, he used to come to our school. He was both a student and a teacher there. There is Westfield State College, Brown College. I have actually five honorary degrees.

S Here is something from the American Society of Composers and Publishers. I must say, Ms. Dunham, that of all the people I have interviewed and I have interviewed about 17 so far, all of whom are very prominent and whose names you would immediately recognize, other than you and Professor Undine Moore, I haven't seen near this ma ny awards. I am sure they have accomplishments but this is
D Well, our problem is getting ours framed and getting them up. We have a certain number that haven't gone up yet. They will.

S Thank you, why don't we move into the conference room and have a brief chat.
We are now in the Conference Room of the Katherine Dunham Museum and I have just asked Ms. Dunham to tell us a little bit more about her childhood because most of us are nosey really. We want to know what makes Katherine Dunham Katherine Dunham and I am still old-fashioned enough to believe that mommy did it, or pappa did it, or I did it in spite of both of them, so Ms. Dunham, how would you respond to that? Did momma do it, or did you do it in spite of both of them or what?
D That is sort of a hard question for me because I really don't know. I know as the older I grow the more I see the influence of my family on my life. I didn't always see it. I was born in Chicago. I come from a small town, I went to school in Joliet, Ill. It was up to our parents, my brother was living then, and the two of us were their only children. It was up to my parent's to see that we had our education in a town that, I would say, hadn't yet realized what racial prejudice was but actually knew and practiced it on occasion. See to our education and try to bring us into some kind of a social life which in our case meant going to Chicago and visiting relatives. I think that what we are doing here in East St. Louis, such a thing as getting this museum set up has to do with my feeling that some people simply don't have what they need so frequently outside the home. I feel that offering the classes that we do and the academic instruction as well as ambiance and opening this museum for the enjoyment of the younger people of the city, is equally important to me as my career with the company was. I certainly feel that that career was a great career because it inspired so many many people, literally hundreds of people to follow a new kind of life and to realize that they could make out and advance their own professional and private and social lives. That is one aspect of my life, one aspect of what I am all about. The other aspect is a thing like this museum which is a concrete material evidence of my feeling that particularly a minority people, black people in this instance, should have recognition for themselves and their backgrounds and their relationships with other people in the world and thus lose some of their alienation. This, the museum has certainly stood for in this town. I'd say that anyone who is going to start a minority program and try to think in terms of a big library and some small kind of museum and I think that this sort of thing along with what you know already about my career as a dancer, theatre producer, this just about makes up the complex of Katherine Dunharn.

S Did you have any difficulty with the black youngsters turning in on themselves to the exclusion of other cultures so far as in the 60s and early 70s....
D Oh, yes.... from 67 on when they started reacting here itwas touch and go of anything outside the culture of these young black peoplewas brought into our orbit. What they wanted to know more about was Malcolm Xand the black things and everything that was black and could be expressed. Sowe spent a certain amount of time doing musical contatoes and plays and poetryand that sort of thing. It was just black, early black.

S Well, this has fortunately turned around now with such a rnulti-ethnic flow that we have in this country where now the kids are becoming even more eclectic but they are more intelligent now because they know more about themselves
D Yes, that is very true but to me it is like simply making a revolution going back to the affair in Miami or what is going to be done about the other people coming into this country and needing to be supported by Cubans and Viet Nam people and so forth and so on. It has always been the habit of the U. S. to do something about refugees that you could imagine and it has been certainly well expressed by black people that this is upsetting. So that I don't know that we have really solved anything. What we have done is give the young black person a better education so that he can make his own evaluations and we'll see if we come up with something that needs violence or doesn't need it.

S This is an unplanned question, but I was in Miami when the first boatload of Cubans came. Ironically, on the same day, a boatload of Haitians came in. As you know., there has been a dual treatment of the Haitians and the Cubans. The Cubans being accepted as potential citizens and the Haitians being accepted as potential deportees. Being a quasi-Haitian yourself having been down there for a long time and having property there do you have any opinion that you would like to share with us?
D I certainly think there should be a more equalitarian attitude toward refugees. I think this country has to decide do you take every. . . that comes in because it is useful to you politically or various other reasons and do you refuse Haitians because it is not useful to you to have them in. You know this is the whole thing. It is one of those undecided attitudes that we in the U. S. are famous for and I think the Haitian episode is not over. Its going to have to be treated with because I think American black people are not too happy that these of all people that have come in are refused an equal treatment. I think, however, there has to be some analysis of who are these Cubans who are coming in. We don't know. Not to my knowledge. We don't yet know who are they and exactly why they are coming. Are they political refugees or are they just simply people who need to have more jobs which is true over practically the whole world. That doesn't mean that the U. S. is going to be able to take care of all of those. So I think it has to be studied and it has to be brought, I think it is being brought to the attention now of the people concerned, I don't know whether it is State Department, what people are concerned, but brought to their attention that you cannot take in 2, 000 Cubans and send away 170 Haitians. You have to give a reason for this and that is rather startling when you realize that we do not have diplomatic relationships with Cuba.

S This is very interesting. I hope that whoever becomes President I mean it seriously, in November could hear your appraisal, which I think has a clarity about it, it strikes right at the heart of the matter. You certainly speak in the way I feel about it and many of my peers who are black feel the same way and I just thank you for saying that. Let me ask you one last question and we will close out for today. I haven't asked you a thing about Pearl Primus. I would like to know what if any kinds of performances that you had to do of her work or her of your work or any type of relationship that might have interflowed, that might have gone between Dunham-Primus artistic endeavors.
D Well, I think that as far as one person knowing another that we can say we know each other and each one respects the other, but I think that as far as some relationships between our choreography, our work., our plans, or intentions I don't think that exists. I think that Pearl Primus is chiefly African oriented. I think she has done a great job in bringing this to the American public. Whereas my work has been much more Caribbean and eclectic. That is not really.... to express my feelings as a human being. I am interested in people and where they come from happens to have fallen wit hin an area of African .... Otherwise I would say my interest is not to reconstruct or present from an anthropo gist point of view African material and I admire Pearl Primus for this because that seems to be her intention. I am more interested in what can I do creatively with the material that comes from these backgrounds that I am interested in.

S I think you are quite fortunate. I know Ms. Primus initially I think intended to be a teacher and you were in anthropology, but to have an anthropologica background and do what you did ultimately with the Caribbean, African, AfroAmerican and the whole eclectic field of dance you had a kind of pre-training, maybe a little bit academic certainly, but I think you didn't go into it with a lot of hit and miss. As a result you came out with an artistic object that will be respected and admired for years. Your students of course reflect the eclecticism the multiculturalism that you stand for and most people my age, I am 41, and I know the people I know who are dancers and I have a lot of friends who are on broadway and were in shows like Chorus Line, The Whiz.. and lots of other things. When they speak of you they never speak of Caribbean or just African or what, they speak of dance, art. I think that personally makes me feel good because it means that an artist who has the world as his or her playground, if you will, can never be restricted to one form even though she wants to endeavor to at least be good in one area but she produces. I think you produce and your students show that.
D I consider that a great compliment.

S It has been a pleasure talking to you today. It was wonderful being in your home and meeting your majestic husband. I think he has the most exquisite face I have ever had the privilege to photograph. After talking for a while there we found out we knew a lot of places, him being in the Canadian area and so on and I hope you will ask me to do some work for this museum, for Katherine Dunham, for our future.
D I will and I think that one of our aids, Ms. Ruth Taylor would like to know more about that. If we can get help for the museum we must.

S Thank you again. You have been gracious. You have been everything and more that I could have expected.

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Kathryn Dunham - Part 3

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S I need to prepare for every eventuality. Ms. Ruth Ann Watkins Taylor, Community Service Coordinator for the University of Southern Illinois and Assistant to Ms. Dunham. Ruth, could you tell us a little about the kinds of things you have to do in your role as Assistant to Ms. Dunham?
T Community service coordinator part is with the performing arts training center which is a part of Southern Illinois University in East St.Louis.... initially began working with older people in the community but the developing public was done under the development program. .all kinds of things, cultural, communication activities that she has been found todo here, using Dunham technique in a modified way so that older people can continue to be active even while not having as much control of their physicaluse of their bodies. . . .

S This is very interesting. One of the, as you perhaps know, the most respected place in gerontology is the University of Michigan, the School of Gerontology for which I do work periodically and I am doing some work with them this fall. Is the Dunham Foundation or the Dunham organization have the chronicled or outlined some of these techniques that you have just mentioned?
T Yes, but unfortunately we haven't been in a position, we have not had as much support as we might have had for that kind of activity.

S Support from whom, or from what. What kind of support?
T I suppose primarily from the University that we are affiliated with. While there is interest in gerontology programs, there is a beginning gerontology program. For some reason there has not been enough interest to really fully support the work that Ms. Dunham has done in that area here. I think Ms. Dunham is probably one of the people who led the entire country in doing this kind of work National Council on Aging

S What are some of the specific techniques that you use or that are used?
T What happens is that Dunham technique, isolations, for instance, are used as a part of Dunham technique, but it is used with the people seated so that you do some of the very same exercises that say a dancer does in class in Dunham technique warm ups, but you do it seated for the most part. It can build up into, well Ms. Dunham has built it up to do like choreographic patterns, based on that. Even it graduates until a fuller.... We have done square dances for instance that are built from, we have done with the exercises and isolations. .

S Could you give us an example of one of the things that are done as the person is seated,?
T I'll give you an example of mutual care. Actually.. ..well one thing that was done was what Ms. Dunham called mutual grooming, I think. It simply meant that old people among themselves let's say for instance we worked at a place like a high rise for old people in the community here. What Ms. Dunham tried to do was to help them to be able to do certain things mutually, for themselves in a group. Like, say, one lady would help another lade with what Ms. Dunham calls the touch point, it is like a massage, based on a technique that she learned in Japan. But it is the kind of thing that they can do for one another once they were taught the basic kinds of things they could do then they could do it on an on-going basis for one another. The other thing was simply staying interested in themselves as people so that maybe even doing one another's hair or nails or whatever that kind of idea. Again, maintaining an interest in living or maintaining an interest in yourself.

S Do you ever get any calisthenics or motion body movements for greater awareness of one's body at that age. You have a lot of ambulatory bedridden people that we deal with at Michigan anyway and the stationary exercises which would be maybe just up and down or whatever, that a dancer usually seems to know naturally to do. Do you ever use any of those types of activities?
T I think so if I understand what you are saying. Yes, I think that is part of the whole idea.

S So it does become a physical self -involvement type of thing that is a physical body movement? Are these classes?
T It is kind of difficult to talk to you about it. You should see it.

S That is why I asked you if you could give us a demonstration.
T I'll tell you one. One thing that we start out with that is kind of basic is the process of just sitting and standing up. We would start normally from a standing position and just make sure that for instance your chair that we feel it against the back of your legs and then kind of leaning over a little and in a more sure way easing yourself into a seat. And then rise in the same way. Again, it is a kind of exercise as well as a practical kind of tool.

S What other facets of your job, for example the part that you are responsible for here at the museum that you might discuss.
T Probably as far as my role as Assistant to Ms. Dunham at the University, a small part of my time has been assigned to the museum and that has been primarily in doing things like helping to organize.... which I haven't been able to do very much of lately, but another aspect.... helping to maintain it.

S You are the curator, or who is the curator?
T We don't have a curator yet.

S Who does the work of getting things in shape, displaying, developing the exhibits ?
T Ms. Dunham has had primary direction for the Dunham exhibits with assistance in consultation with Mr. John Pratt. Also David Pratt, Ms. Dunham's brother-in-law. Right now.... have done Mr. Pratt does when he is able to and as he is able to. We have some assistance from a young man, a graduate student in anthropology who works part time in the museum. We have had a young man from Senegal who has done some work with us here in.... but we have a part time staff of volunteers from the University and the community who just have enough interest to keep things going.

S Does the University take responsibility for some of the activities of the museum....

END OF INTERVIEW