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Ms. Afrika Abney specializes in West African dance, having honed her skills at NationHouse in D.C. With a unique style that blends traditional and contemporary elements, she inspires individuals of all abilities to embrace movement. Committed to fostering confidence, self-esteem, and personal expression through dance, Ms. Abney actively engages the community and empowers others to discover the transformative power of dance.
When she went to Dance Place, years later, she studied Dunham Technique from Dr. Sherrill Berryman Johnson.
DR. SHERRILL BERRYMAN JOHNSON "DR. J."
"Dr. Sherrill Berryman Johnson was the Founder/Artistic Director of the first HBCU B.F.A. Dance Program at Howard University in Washington, DC. Dr. J, as we all fondly called her, was Dance. She was a woman of verve, grace, and intelligence; many academic achievements and an advocate of service. Dr. Sherrill Berryman Johnson, who, for many, many years taught, choreographed, advocated, and led a movement in Dance in the Washington, D.C. region, but also nation-wide. She brought to the forefront not just one tradition in Dance, not one story of its history: Dr. Berryman Johnson strove to reveal multiple stories, bring multiple voices to light, to fuller dimension. Our awareness is richer for her contributions to life and to dance.
Dr. Sherrill Berryman Johnson attended local schools in the Washington, D.C. area. After high school, she attended Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia. Sherrill Berryman Johnson was a Full Professor of Dance/Coordinator of the pioneering HBCU Howard University Board of Trustees approved Dance Major Program, Department of Theatre Arts, Division of Fine Arts College of Arts and Sciences and the second only chairperson of the 22-year-old International Association of Blacks in Dance (IABD). She was choreographer, performer and artistic director for Images of Cultural Artistry Inc., In The Spirit of...Performance Company. With extensive study at the Katherine Dunham Institute, East St. Louis Missouri and under the tutelage of Katherine Dunham and Pearl Reynolds peace and blessings be upon their souls, since 1982 she was given permission to perform works of Katherine Dunham as well as her choreography including the Katherine Dunham technique, ballet, modern dance forms, traditional dance of West Africa, the Caribbean and America. Dr. Berryman Johnson’s work was with further extensive field research as the first Fulbright Scholar to conduct field research on the secular/non-secular dance of Jamaica under the guidance of Professor Rex Nettleford peace and blessings be upon him at the University of West Indies, 1986-1987, specializing in roots and retention of African Americans in the African and Caribbean Cultural Continuum."
"Dunham Technique is a vibrant African American dance form that engages the body, mind and spirit! Created by dance pioneer Katherine Dunham, the technique is informed by the traditional dances of the African Diaspora, as well as by modern and ballet." I studied Dunham Technique from Dr. Sherrill Berryman Johnson.
"Katherine Dunham Legendary dancer, choreographer and anthropologist, Katherine Dunham was born on June 22,1909 in Chicago, to an African American father and a French Canadian mother. She sang in her local Methodist Church in Joliet; but for a financial crisis at her church, she might never have sung anything but gospel songs. At age eight, she amazed and scandalized the elders of her church by doing a performance of decidedly non-religious songs at a cabaret party, in order to raise money. She never thought about a career in dance. Instead, she consented to her family's wish that she become a teacher and followed her brother, Albert Dunham Jr. to the University of Chicago, where she became one of the first African American women to attend this University and earned bachelor, masters and doctoral degrees in anthropology.
At the same time she became a student of Ludmilla Speranzeva, formerly of the Moscow Theater, Mark Turbyfill and Ruth Page. Following graduation, she founded the Negro Dance Group. They performed at the Chicago Beaux Arts Theater in ‘A Negro Rhapsody’, dancing with the Chicago Opera Company, and one of the performances was attended by Mrs. Alfred Rosenwald Stern, who was sufficiently impressed to arrange an invitation for Dunham to appear before the Rosenwald Foundation, which offered to finance any study contributing toward her dance career that she cared to name. Thus armed with foundation money, Dunham spent most of the next two years in the Caribbean studying all aspects of dance and the motivations behind dance. Although she traveled throughout the region, including Trinidad and Jamaica, it was in Haiti that she found special personal and artistic resonances. She wrote some scholarly essays during her trip and sold lighter magazine articles about the Caribbean under the name of K. Dunn.
Katherine Dunham revolutionized American dance in the 1930's by going to the roots of black dance and rituals transforming them into significant artistic choreography that speaks to all. She was a pioneer in the use of folk and ethnic choreography and one of the founders of the anthropological dance movement. She showed the world that African American heritage is beautiful. She completed groundbreaking work on Caribbean and Brazilian dance anthropology as a new academic discipline. She is credited for bringing these Caribbean and African influences to a European-dominated dance world.
She returned to the United States informed by new methods of movement and expression. Her presentation included photos, films, writings and her own demonstration which was an innovation in itself. She then created the Dunham Technique that transformed the world of dance.
In 1931, Miss Dunham met one of America’s most highly regarded theatrical designers, John Pratt, forming a powerful personal and creative team that lasted until his death in the 1986. They married in 1949 to adopt their daughter, Marie-Christine, an 18 month-old French child.
Dunham’s first school was in Chicago. In 1944 she rented Caravan Hall, Isadora Duncan’s studio in New York, and opened the K.D. school of Arts and Research. In 1945 she opened the famous Dunham School at 220 W 43rd Street in New York where such artists as Marlon Brando and James Dean took classes.
Dunham's big breakthrough to popular recognition took place after she moved to New York in 1939 where, in February, she opened at the Windsor Theater in a program called ‘Tropics’ and le ‘Jazz Hot’. It was supposed to be a one-night event but demand was such that Dunham ended up doing 13 weeks, and followed with her own Tropical Revue, which was a hit not only in the United States but also in Canada. She appeared at the Martin Beck Theatre in October of 1940 as Georgia Brown in Cabin in the Sky, which she also choreographed with George Balanchine.
She then founded the Katherine Dunham Dance group - which later developed into the famous Katherine Dunham Company - devoted to African-American and Afro-Caribbean dance. Miss Dunham worked as a director in the Federal Theater Project, the government-sponsored relief program for artists that also nurtured such talents as Orson Welles and John Houseman. She co-directed and danced in Carib Song at the Adelphi Theater in New York in 1945, and was producer, director, and star of Bal Nègre at the Belasco Theater in New York in 1946." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Dunham
"Black people should have recognition for themselves and their backgrounds and their relationships with other people in the world and thus lose some of their alienation. This museum has certainly stood for that in this town." - Katherine Dunham
"I really think that aside from admiring my talent you really admire me as a person and as a woman."- Katherine Dunham
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