An Essential Lesson: The Legacy of Katherine Dunham

On Wednesday night, I attended The Legacy of Katherine Dunham, a panel discussion hosted by Judith Jamison at the 92nd Street Y, co-sponsored by the Y's Harkness Dance Center and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Journalist Gil Noble (WABC-TV's Like It Is) moderated panelists including dance critic Zita Allen, dancer-choreographer Ronnie Aul, and dancer-activist Julie Robinson Belafonte as well as E. Gaynell Sherrod (dancer, educator, researcher and choreographer) and Dr. Glory Van Scott (whose long, varied involvement in the arts could keep me here typing hyphens and commas all day).

The evening was a gathering of the faithful with many former Dunham dancers, students, colleagues and associates in attendance. Both panelists and audience members shared warm reminiscences of a wise, formidable genius whose influence reached beyond Afro-Caribbean dance and beyond dance itself. The program was intended to raise awareness that Dunham's soul-deep, powerful movement technique is an endangered treasure, taught by uncertified instructors who, some speakers charged, are watering it down.

Yesterday, the celebration continued with a master class in Dunham technique taught by the Ailey School's Joan Peters, one of only three people certified by the Dunham Institute. Neighborhood residents, workers and other folks just passing by the Ailey building on Ninth Avenue and West 55th Street got an eyeful, stopping in their tracks to gawk through the glass enclosure of the first-floor studio. More than sixty dancers worked through the challenging warm-up and barre and charged across the floor in vigorous repetitions of movements while the supremely calm, authoritative Peters beat out a flawless rhythm with a carved wooden walking stick. The terrific drummers made it hard for me--one of a handful of mere observers seated inside the studio--to keep still.

I glanced around and took in the diversity of races, ages, body types, degrees of flexibility and levels of skill. As the students followed Peters's directions, I saw some movements that I was quick to label incorrect. I also saw a lot of movements that were different and yet wonderfully correct. There are a lot of ways to be wrong about a thing, but there are also a lot of different ways to be right.

Some students clearly got the movements wrong, and I might have stopped to fuss over each of them, although Peters did not. But, in so many other cases, the variety of interpretations of a movement or phrase proved to be inspired. Each of these students put his or her own flavor into it. Sometimes that looked like the natural effect of a body dancing in its own way, putting its own spin on things, and not necessarily the student's conscious choice. It looked beautiful--whole, healthy and, I realized, both true to the African spirit and, more broadly, very human. I relished this diversity that is so often shed from contemporary dance companies and choreography in an effort to create a supposed coherence and consistent tone.

(c) 2007 Eva Yaa Asantewaa