The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Katherine Dunham

una move set and says funding for this program has been provided by the station and other public television stations and by grants from exelon corporation allied chemical corporation and the

corporation for public broadcasting ms billie jean king's an economically depressed area he's been seeking and at those of you of a certain age may remember katherine dunham is a

glamorous performer with a knack for turning her research on black pants and a theatrical excitement for those of you too young of saint katharine dunham enter a day here she is on a nineteen forty nine hollywood movie cause all neil's but nikko she danced in several hollywood films in the forties and fifties but most of her career was on the stage and broadway audiences katherine dunham was most famous for dance reviews which she choreographed and starred in whatever career was spent abroad the katherine dunham dance company visited sixty one countries over the years and was an enormous success wherever it appear particularly in europe katherine dunham has spent a lifetime straddling separate worlds the academic world of the university of chicago where she received her masters degree in anthropology

and the theatrical and dance world where she gained such a claim she grew up war and black in and around chicago and went on to become a close friend of intellectuals artists and heads of state from all over the world as a choreographer she was one of the first to make black dancers visible as trained disciplined arts a decade ago she gave up her international tourism of dance world of new york to work in the st louis tonight a look at what this extraordinary woman has accomplished in the community that just about everyone had written all charlayne hunter gault visited katherine dunham in east st louis and its report this is the gateway arch in st louis is my new men to the promise of the midwest with other symbols around here that stand in stark contrast just across the river and the tracks is east st louis illinois a symbol of all that is wrong with america's urban centers decay poverty high unemployment to name a few and is here the katherine

dunham chose to establish our mind began to denim museum is her latest gift to rethink what what what will you will you will you really africans here to explain their culture to american blacks these two musicians aron a visit from senegal a country where katherine dunham has close ties to katherine dunham

hasn't really committed her arteries st louis she's become a permanent resident for the past ten years she's lived in this house in the heart of the ghetto across the street at the high school and used since it was burnt out during the riots in the late nineteen sixties ever since she arrived in the st louis to become director of the performing arts training center of southern illinois university this modest house has been her home base here she is surrounded by white works in them into those gathered during her travels she says her memorabilia on the nearest thing to a permanent home she's ever has sales came from africa and then just no no a lobster denies the main topic than some of the other sales are from selling bonds but for all her interest in art in black culture catherine done this

first and foremost involved with dance as a performer choreographer and teacher and for ten years now she and former members of her dance troupe had been teaching a new generation that done and take me it's been the point the dome technique evolved from the stones' anthropological studies in the caribbean there she tracked down the dances brought from africa about black slaves she then took the movement's she found in haiti in other islands and reworked them into the dance main street the result is a kind of dancing that is strongly written a sensual and jazzy this is what she's been performing and teaching to students throughout her career the class is a nice thing but with all that to students at southern illinois university and are free to any member of the

community who walks through the door i asked ms dunham about advanced technique and this is a lie it is a series of exercises their eyes today len with mars

on the way out of one of the dangers of this is a hard place to ask people to come and once they do they want women and they haven't liked for its high because we're seventy thousand people no worries there were no other people in the city as i write those with happy to be here it's going to pass a master drummer and choreographer of what dr during his years at saint louis he's taking kids who never saw an african drum unchanging to be superb musicians this thing is

right is running is one example of what happened then and calls her magazines regular industry is into the arts another worker magnus classes in the martial law school used to offer man bands with fabian to silva teaches the class in a version of african martial arts still alive in his native land he teaches iraqi year i became as only cultural force in this city of seventy thousand school has been able to tap the talent pool that was just waiting to be discovered the monday stevens has done has created the junior troupe in ages six to thirteen will perform to local audiences

and teacher and director of the junior company is ruby street sometimes in class at the end of claire's when i have located sometimes we would go up and let them i'm imagining that they wouldn't maybe animals you know they relate to animals so i'd say different things at that in my account amy james is only problem according to rubio who always wants to one of the original balance didn't lose anything with his gallery geddes she began soon after school got underway in the late nineteen

sixties when the city was often in flames today she is a communications major in college and a mother of two teenage children thank you it's been that way kansas is

means to be a member of a local game called imperial awards woody and his friends who he says they use to steal cars and smashed windows he's been studying for three years now and people still believe michael has a bright future as a dancer twenties ready new york a lot fatalism tries lot he's been through

well we really st louis michael green and other members of the performing arts training company gave a performance at the evansville campus of southern illinois university and one of the pieces they performed with a section of a new full length work and the unintended shearing was more than it's called chess roots of a culture and the section begins with a candidate and the a ha ha ha ha ha

it's been a pretty weak in the polls at the

peak of the people who critiqued the polls because you can speak a piece of the pie in the past week

the pope and katherine dunham is now in our studios in new york ms dunham those he say below seventy special mean for you now after ten years there's a third since it's a city that i have grown to not only loved that need and so often people ask me why i am than i find myself looking for such excuses as oh well my archives are actually very tightly in carbondale illinois and i find that sometimes

i say it's because the first polio program asked me to go there sargent shriver as we'd go and see what i could do a cultural arts i think the truth of the years that it's a matter of synchronization i have been in most countries of the world and it's coming directly from africa and i saw immediately i was supposed to be three months in he's think those finishing the book and i saw immediately the need the youth there and the need of the city to find some sort of identification beyond burning buildings in and interesting industry going oh well they say you know that it's a depressing place these pressing plates of whatever depress you yes yes it has depressed me sometimes it feels as though i'm not making the progress that i would like to hand it has its problems

economic serious economic problems political problems and we have done with our program there anything moratorium the socialization we can change very much the economics of the city that we can help to give people an outlaw and we can help to prepare them to take their places in in other places of the world which we call our socialization prayers frequently any particular things that you could cite that you're particularly proud of in terms of the socialization the process if you feel it you've contributed to their nice angles yes i'm very proud of the year the history of people who have left the center who have graduated for instance from our center and the average school campus of the university and we're now in broadway plays are in other shows and summer with noon the offer and so forth i'm very proud of that

and i'm also proud of those who have chosen academic careers who've gone ahead with everything from our biology to pre medical to business administration or whatever but they have been sent out into these fields by us what effect do you think katherine there are times when i think it has had a devastating effect on the times when i am discouraged and when i feel the drain of a constant it negative influence that one can find it i have another thing that i say in that is that my first education was the university of chicago i live every day and you cut through that negative atmosphere that this opens the racing world cup world by forming a dance company by having really

important classes in the branson the university that's a nice thing for those like taking people out of the city itself into other areas of their environment and the world we see the effect of this on single individuals and actually on whole groups of deep and i think that the last thing that we got establishing a museum in the city has been extremely important in identification in pride giving which everyone needed i keep showing that quite a number of years in haiti we have a house they're both looking to the american even going to want to do anything i'm thankful i i think that they're both in their own way under developed countries places at my main interest was really what i drew from haiti it was in the study of global boom in the study of the

dancers of haiti and there's certain ways that meant a great deal to me so that i was actually receiving more than giving well i try to learn more as a lot to learn and i haven't finished yet what the full bloom i think i probably won't in this one lifetime she has be a nurse so often thought of as black magic and cultures and they're searching for me it's a religion and it always has been a dozen proselytize but why it's very works in its effectiveness that has the entire country is part of the old dieudonne from way it made voodoo i don't live here and i don't like it because it's been used so

misused and more durable of those events west african pronunciation anyway with your training and five no matter all i can know sometimes when i'm unsure of where i stand with of all do that is blue ivy league and how much i believe i can always them turn to to being a scientist those train in anthropology and get a little relief from that they had to work together very well and how did you managed to sustain your relationship with the haitian government which have been identified with economic turbulence than political repression i think for the most part it has tended to my own business you know i never entered into the politics of haiti although one one book that i have written

deals with three presidents that i knew there's a yes but i have never interfered with their politics they know better than i do what the country needs and how they can achieve it for you and you're there working on a book which is based on the correspondence so between you and art of the late art historian bernard berenson is that the number one on your agenda right now for the future and it is as far as writing goes i feel that i owe a debt to grandparents and for ten years we corresponded the last ten years of his life and so i read in one of his books not long ago that he wished that he had kept his letters because he felt that in his letters you probably revealed more of himself they did and his essays and his other writing down that it seemed almost like

a direct message to me because i kept his letters and i kept the letters that i wrote him and i think the book needs work it needs solo bridging of course these are just letters almost album space unless you know why they were written but he always said to me i wish you would be my eyes i have to travel as far as i can travel vices between the ages of eighty seven and ninety seven and he wrote this to me and that he said for instance what do you think of the heroines or how do you feel about it mark or things like that and i enjoyed answering him and the band in turn he criticized my writing which is a great help and who does the same thing applied deriding you think you've revealed a lot in those letters about yourself of mendota been revealed elsewhere in your writing i think gary hilton found more than i intended to it i look over and now and then i don't know how

i feel about publishing them without a little editing you've been a dancer and a writer an anthropologist a writer among many many many other things what do you want people to think about when they see or hear the main road works in paris magazine asked what i would like for an epitaph and i said she tried and i think that i would like for people to feel it would ever of these endeavors i went into what i was doing it with my total self curious thing of synchronization yes i have thank you very much opium was showing that by canadian will be a vacuum on it and your moral thank you and goodnight transcript send one dollar

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