In Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora, Joanna Dee Das deftly maneuvers readers through newly available archival material, critical movement analysis, and dance historiography to present a nuanced, diasporic understanding of Katherine Dunham (1909–2006). Dunham has long been credited as the “mother of black concert dance,” whose syncretic choreography dazzled audiences worldwide. Because of the novelty of her movement and her global fame, scholarship on Dunham generally focuses on her innovation and legacy within dance performance. Katherine Dunham offers a significant addendum to the long-standing biographical and artistic narrative, namely, that throughout Dunham's storied career, the artist developed and embodied a black, diasporic ethos that extended beyond the stage and into her social justice work, her advocacy for racial equality through art. Das unravels Dunham's “apolitical” façade, revealing that, despite the artist's resistance to overtly politicizing her work, Dunham's oeuvre reflects a strategic, if not always consistent, awareness of how to leverage her talent, charm, and intellect to further her personal and artistic goals and her justice-oriented vision for the world.

Dunham's life in Chicago from 1928–1935, a period in which she became deeply involved with the New Negro Movement and developed her abilities as a dancer, is the subject of Das's first chapter. Inspired by the New Negro Movement, Dunham sought to create dance productions that upended racialized stereotypes in artistic representation. In her desire to counter racial stereotypes of blacks as “natural” movers but whose bodies were not “physiologically suited” to “disciplined” forms of dance, Dunham created Ballet Nègre in 1930 and, later, the Negro Dance Group. Das points to Dunham's performance in the New Negro Group's La Guiablesse (1934) as a critical moment in Dunham's career as a performer and in her diasporic consciousness. The piece, inspired by Martinican folk tales, was one for which Dunham received critical acclaim; the work also inspired Dunham to travel to learn dances from the African diaspora. Following her run with La Guiablesse, Dunham sought the support of prominent anthropologists at the University of Chicago to begin her research abroad.

Chapter 2 analyzes how Dunham's anthropological fieldwork in the Caribbean (1935–36) functioned to inform her personal and performative “politics of diaspora,” which Das notes, “emphasizes cultural ties, but … allows space for difference. … It also resists notions of cultural purity, recognizing that identity is always … subject to multiple influences” (2–3). Dunham's participation in and observations of dance allowed her to understand how the “form of a dance related to its function” while also showing how diasporic performance was fluid and could be refashioned to serve new purposes (45). Dunham used “scientific” methods to document, categorize, and analyze Caribbean dance to counter prevailing stereotypes that black culture and dance lacked history and purpose. Ultimately, Dunham's time in the Caribbean “deepened [her] understanding of the social, political, and aesthetic values of Caribbean dance, [and] she developed the firm belief that connection to African roots was vital to the advancement of black people throughout the Western Hemisphere” (36).

In chapter 3, Das analyzes L'Ag'Ya (1938) and Tropics and Le Jazz “Hot” (1940) as epitomic examples of how Dunham's choreography embodied her diasporic politics following her return from the Caribbean. Das also outlines how Dunham triangulated between often conflicting interests: the desire to establish herself as an artist, the need to achieve financial stability, and the dream to become a prominent force in the world of performance. In Tropics and Le Jazz “Hot,” Dunham pushed her aesthetic prowess to present a more expansive view of diasporic politics. Choreographing work influenced by “internationalist jazz” and black folk dances from the Americas, “the race pride on display in Dunham's performances was diasporic, linked neither to a singular national identity nor to an idea of an ancient African past but to what one might think of as a web” (56). Ever conscious of needing to strike a balance between advancing her goals of having the “mainstream” view black dance as rigorous and appeasing audiences' desires for “entertainment,” Dunham's innovative choreographic aesthetics in Tropics found “that elusive blend of high art, social value, and popular appeal” (57).

Chapter 4 discusses how Dunham dealt with the pressures of representing black Americans onstage and offstage during the World War II period in which Dunham's personal celebrity grew and the stakes of representation were tremendously high. Whether in Hollywood or touring across the country, Dunham encountered significant racism, often manifested through segregation in hotels and performance venues, and her response varied, depending on the specific context. Das analyzes Dunham's work Carnival or Rhythm (1941), Stormy Weather (1943), and Carib Song (1945), among others, to highlight various strategies Dunham employed to combat racism through dance, whether that meant appeasing popular audiences and sacrificing “authenticity” in order to remain financially solvent or performing more explicit critiques of entrenched racial prejudice both on stage and in the media.

At nearly every stage of her life, Dunham insisted on building institutions that would serve to codify and disseminate dance technique and archive cultural practices. Chapter 5 focuses on one such institution: The Dunham School (1944–54) in midtown Manhattan, a significant location that literally centered the school within the mainstream performance capital of the country. The Dunham School offered an impressive curriculum of dance education in addition to a formal certificate program. Dunham's school was innovative on numerous accounts, both because of its pedagogy and because students and faculty were racially integrated. Although the Dunham School closed after ten years, its success in creating an interracial vision of how performance could shape a more just world set the stage for Dunham's future work with the Black Arts Movement and for her school in East St. Louis decades later.

Chapter 6 delves into Dunham's influence as the “Unofficial Ambassador of Diaspora” between 1947 and 1960, when the company was engaged in international tours. Early in the tour, Dunham, again, galvanized audiences with her “presentation of disparaged and hidden Africanist cultural practices as high art” through productions like Veracruzana (1949), which notably highlighted the African diasporic presence in Mexico. In Europe, Dunham established herself as a member of the artistic and intellectual elite, which opened up doors for her professionally and financially, enabling her company to continue to perform on every continent. Dunham's role as a cultural ambassador in some ways enabled her to openly confront racism abroad in a way that she had more difficulty achieving domestically. In an astonishing example, Dunham initiated social change when she and her company were denied reservations at an exclusive hotel in São Paulo because they were black. Dunham filed a lawsuit against the hotel and Dunham's Brazilian lawyer, mobilizing the publicity, then successfully cosponsored a bill in the legislature that made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race in Brazil. Das also discusses Dunham's performance of Southland, an antilynching dance drama that was performed across the world, to the dismay of the American government. Southland resonated with global audiences during a period of global movements for decolonization. Dunham, therefore, not only brought aesthetics of the African diaspora to global stages, but also inspired newly decolonized populations to create space for self-representation and cultural expression.

The final two chapters of Das's book explore Dunham's work as a cultural ambassador in Haiti and Senegal (chapter 7) and as a critical figure in the Black Arts Movement and the arts more broadly in the United States (chapter 8). Upon relocating to Haiti full-time in the early 1960s, Dunham attempted to fashion herself as a development consultant, a venture for which she was ill-suited. Dunham's proposed projects to revitalize Haiti through the arts were well intentioned, but she lacked the institutional support and financial management skills to see the projects through. Dunham traveled to Dakar in 1964 for the Dakar Festival, a project of various state institutions both in the United States and Senegal. Dunham's visions for “developing” Senegal's cultural institutions, again, proved to be too much to take on, prompting her return to the United States. Dunham then turned her focus to East St. Louis, where she founded the Performing Arts Training Center (PATC) in 1967. PATC students performed nationally, creating a sense of pride for Africanist performance traditions and inspiring generations of youth and adults, alike. While Dunham identified with a “radical humanist” approach that diverged from more radical forms of black activism, Dunham leveraged her position as a board member of mainstream cultural institutions to advocate on behalf of black history and black performing arts organizations and institutions, creating the foundation for a worldwide diasporic community of artists.

Das brings together compelling performance analysis and previously unknown archives—particularly personal correspondences and unpublished manuscripts—to flesh out a portrait of one of the twentieth century's most venerated and complex performers. Katherine Dunham is an important addition to the field of dance studies, critical race studies, and transnational American studies, as the book, like its subject, defies easy categorization. At once a cogent biography and an exemplary case study in the messiness and, often, the riskiness of diasporic politics and performance, Katherine Dunham will no doubt prove instructive to scholars and students across disciplines.