Celebrating Black History Month, as we do each October, is an opportunity for girls to raise awareness of the contributions black people have made to our society. So sixth formers Luiga Senteza and Flo Chater, together with dance captains Andie Gbedemah and Saskia Phelps, shared with us their appreciation of the matriarch of black dance, Katherine Dunham, and her golden legacy to dance.   They showed us footage of Cafe-Walking  in the 1800s, and of Earl Tucker (Snakehips) and Will Henry lane  - clear influence on the likes of Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson. Katherine drew on the dance she found in Haiti in 1930s, the purest form of dance as she saw it, developing what is known today as the Dunham technique.

		Katherine’s  unprecedented blend of cultural anthropology with the artistic genre of dance in the early 1930's, produced  groundbreaking forms of movement, and in the United States, established black dance as an art form in its own right Her professional troupe,  formed in the early 1940's, was a first for African Americans, and led the way for American Dance Theatre, and Arthur Mitchell's Dance Theatre of Harlem.

Katherine was also remarkable for her stand against racial discrimination. On tour in the southern states, when her white husband was forbidden to join her at a hotel, she spoke out and refused to perform there again. In 1965 she became cultural advisor to the Governor of Senegal. Making a public stand against racial prejudice and overcoming personal tragedy in her early life, she has left us an inspirational legacy. We left the assembly with the sounds of one of her compositions, ‘Stormy Weather’, appropriately enough, ringing in our ears.