Katherine Dunham Quotes

For the kind of thing that we were showing, the budget was sufficient. As we were speaking of in Haiti, we had not done that before in exactly this form and we had to have costumes for it.

You know, this isn't theatre like it used to be.

I used to want the words "She tried" on my tombstone. Now I want "She did it."

If you dance, you dance because you have to. Every dancer hurts, you know.

I really think that aside from admiring my talent you really admire me as a person and as a woman.

I don't think Ed Sullivan had anything to do with Carib Song.

We have a group of friends of the museum who try to raise, if they can, periodically something to help us. Of course, the main thing about a building like this is its upkeep. It needs central heating and it needs central air conditioning.

A creative person has to create. It doesn't really matter what you create. If such a dancer wanted to go out and build the cactus gardens where he could, in Mexico, let him do that, but something that is creative has to go on.

So many dancers paint. I used to paint. I started again recently. While I was dancing, I was very busy with my career. Start something else that makes use of your creative ability because if you don't you will die inside as a person.

We had maybe the greatest success of any company that I know of in Paris, and after two or three years I wanted to do this same number that we did for PBS, so we did it and Paris had always considered us their darlings.

My work has been much more Caribbean and eclectic. I am interested in people, and where they come from happens to have fallen within an area of Africa.

Aside from a few master teachers that we have had over the years, this has been a completely local talent development. But people have started to come now from Chicago, we have a number of students from Chicago and different places of the country and even in the world.

Go within every day and find the inner strength
so that the world will not blow your candle out.

You dance because you have to. Dance is an essential part of life that has always been with me.

I always believed that if you set out to be successful, then you already were.

I wasn't concerned about the hardships because I always felt I was doing what I had to do, what I wanted to do and what I was destined to do.

I could never live a nonproductive life and I feel that I have lived a productive life as far as I want to in terms of this company that I have for so many years.

Sometimes I have given my husband a manuscript to read that has turned out to have fantastic rave reviews and he'll tell me it is no good. Well, if I didn't know him as well as I know him I would be terribly depressed.

When you have faith in something, it's your reason to be alive and to fight for it.

Haiti itself was also photographed, some of the streets, some of the mountains, rivers, streams, etc. were photographed before talking with me about how I felt about Haiti. Then the camera went to our voodoo temple and saw a serious ceremony, a real ceremony.

I have actually five honorary degrees.