Gyrating hips, fast feet, high stepping, and magnificent moves, are characteristics that belong to the great African-American dancers of history’s past. Famu’s Black Archives Museum has a vast collection of African-American artifacts including a variety of pictures of dazzling African-American dancers. These dancers Katherine Dunham, Martha Graham, and Bill “Bo jangles” Robinson exemplify black beauty, style, and grace.Katherine Dunham was born in Glen Ellyn, Illinois on June 22, 1909, to Albert and Fanny Dunham. Katherine was a great dance teacher. Later in her career she was able to get together her own dance company. In February 1940 the Katherine Dunham Dance Company opened at the Windsor Theatre, west 48th Street, with Dunham’s own Tropics and Le Jazz Hot. The show was a phenomenal success. Following that show many newspaper companies were amazed and wanted to inter view Mrs. Dunham. Katherine Dunham was indeed on her way to the top. From that night her name and her dances took her behind the footlights of the world’s greatest stages. Her unique and stylistic perfection were the forces that propelled her toward that magic moment when the dance, dancers, and cultural story became one. Soon after the success, and offer came to the Dunham’s Dance Company to take part in an all-Negro musical entitled Cabin in the Sky. The salary offered of three thousand dollars a week was an amount this company never dreamed of making. Dunham’s role was Georgia Brown, and for the first time she had the opportunity not only to dance, but also, to sing and act as well.Martha Graham was born in a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pa. She became a leading dancer and choreographer, and she also pioneered a movement called Modern Dance. Martha Graham defined dance as “making the interior landscape,” and she used the entire body in dance movement to reveal the inner, true feeling of the charact...
