?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
Dunham, Katherine (1909-2006) Large Archive of Material from her Attorney, circa 1951-1953. Two banker's boxes of files, approximately 3 linear feet of material consisting of a variety of documents shared between Dunham, her secretaries (mainly Margery Scott), her legal representatives (Martin H. Leonard & Lee Moselle), and hundreds of correspondents; the archive includes approximately 60 typed letters signed by Dunham, many with extensive edits and notes, all addressed to her legal representatives, many with lengthy post scripts; 40 signed documents, including contracts (with Decca Records, William Morris Agency, and others), and various other legal agreements; 84 signed checks; 31 black-and-white photos of Dunham and her company posing and performing; 7 negatives of stage performances; and a huge collection of retained copies of correspondence sent by Dunham to dozens and dozens of associates, family members, friends and representatives on every imaginable topic, along with the original letters sent to Dunham by many correspondents including her stepmother, Annette Dunham, her Aunt Lulu, professional connections, and more; other material in this trove relates to Dunham's school in New York, the purchase of her property in Haiti, expenses related to every aspect of her extensive European and American tours, all extremely detailed, including visas for non-American performers, receipts for the purchase of dance supplies, insurance, and dates of the performing schedule, along with correspondence from prospective venues, contract disputes and more; in all, an exhaustively detailed rendering of Dunham's professional business for this period as organized by her lawyers, with personal details as well, including legal documents related to the adoption of her daughter Marie-Christine; notes from Aunt Lulu and Annette Dunham with personal news and requests for financial help; descriptions of Dunham's medical issues, including a miscarriage; financial difficulties at the school and much more.
"During the 14 years from 1947 through 1960, choreographer Katherine Dunham spent over 5,000 days in approximately 190 unique cities over 433 trips on every continent but Antarctica. At various moments during that time, 189 dancers, drummers, and singers traveled with Dunham, performing over 166 pieces of active repertory in various configurations."
"In a 1994 essay, VèVè Clark [in Performing the Memory of Difference in Afro-Caribbean Dance: Katherine Dunham's choreography, 1938-1987, in History and Memory in African-American Culture, Oxford University Press, 1994) argues for the need to study Dunham in relation to the entanglement of multiple elements simultaneously, from Dunham's own travels to the touring of her productions, and from her own embodied learning to the transmission of repertory among company members. Dunham's approach to choreography drew from practices around the world, in a manner that Clark describes as a 'research-to-performance method' that enabled her to stage dance forms recreated from African diaspora memory' and teach audiences to see diaspora as both cultural and performative." (Quoted from Harmony Bench and Kate Elswit's Visceral Data for Dance Histories: Katherine Dunham's People, Places, and Pieces, in The Drama Review, Cambridge University Press, Vol. 66, No. 1, Spring 2022.)
