Dunham's Data: Katherine Dunham and Digital Methods for Dance Historical Inquiry

邓纳姆的数据通过一个以凯瑟琳·邓纳姆(1909-2006)的案例研究为中心的项目，率先在舞蹈史上使用数据分析。这位非裔美国人的编舞、人类学家、教师、策展人和作家对国际舞蹈产生了深远的影响。作为一名编舞和表演者，她参与了百老汇演出、歌剧、时装剧、好莱坞电影和现代音乐会舞蹈。作为一名文化工作者，她为从重要的非裔美国人组织到美国军队的各种团体工作，并与之共事，她还受雇于工作进度管理局的写作和戏剧部门。作为一名学者，她对参与者-观察者民族志方法的发展做出了贡献，她的工作也预见到了以实践为基础的研究的当代现象。她的策划和管理工作范围从达喀尔的节日策划，到建立多个文化机构，即纽约的Dunham学校和圣路易斯的Katherine Dunham博物馆和儿童工作室。Dunham是分析跨越地理位置和文化、艺术和金融资本网络的舞蹈动作方式的典范人物。除了在许多不同的背景下工作外，她一生中有三分之一以上的时间都花在了巡演上。研究像邓纳姆这样的艺术家的跨国传播所需的数据点的规模和分布对传统的学术方法构成了挑战。因此，追踪这样的全球运动需要新的学术工具。在这个项目中，我们构建了数字地图，跟踪邓纳姆作为巡回艺术家进行的旅行，以及她的作品表现地方的方式。我们绘制了邓纳姆在进行人种学研究、编排舞蹈、创造舞蹈技术以及参与社会正义运动时，在个人和机构中建立的网络。在舞蹈史的背景下使用这种数字研究方法和数据可视化可以促进更好地了解舞蹈动作是如何在人民和大陆之间分享和传播的，以及支撑艺术和经济成功的支持和影响网络。在这样做的过程中，我们最终会问舞蹈是如何在地方之间移动的，以及世界是如何在舞蹈中想象的。在我们调查这一特定历史人物的流动性的同时，我们也解决了学术上的关切，使收集、分析和可视化的数据对舞蹈历史研究有意义。数字化方法改变了大多数人文和艺术学科的面貌。然而，舞蹈研究领域还没有意识到它可以如何从这些分析方法中受益，特别是对于历史工作，以及它可以为跨学科对话做出什么贡献。因此，这个项目不仅致力于关于Dunham的具体研究，而且还致力于舞蹈史的原始问题和问题，可以通过包括地理测绘和网络分析在内的创新的批评混合方法来提出。项目范围通过与国际学术合作伙伴项目的知识交流合作以及英国与维多利亚和阿尔伯特博物馆和One Dance UK的非洲侨民之舞的行业伙伴关系来扩大。

Dunham's Data pioneers the use of data analysis in dance history through a project that centres around the case study of Katherine Dunham (1909-2006). The African American choreographer, anthropologist, teacher, curator, and author had a profound influence on dance internationally. As a choreographer and performer, she was involved with Broadway shows, operas, revues, Hollywood films, and modern concert dance. As a cultural operator she worked for and with groups ranging from important African American organizations to the United States Army, and she was also employed by both the writing and theatre arms of the Works Progress Administration. As a scholar, she contributed to the development of participant-observer ethnographic methods, and her work also anticipates the contemporary phenomenon of practice-based research. Her curatorial and administrative work ranges from curating festivals in Dakar, to building multiple cultural institutions, namely the Dunham School in New York and the Katherine Dunham Museum and Children's Workshop in St. Louis.Dunham is an exemplary figure for analysing the ways dance moves across both geographical locations and networks of cultural, artistic, and financial capital. In addition to working across many diverse contexts, she spent over one third of her life on tour. The scale and distribution of datapoints necessary to research the transnational circulation of an artist like Dunham pose a challenge for traditional scholarly approaches. Thus, tracing such global movement requires new scholarly tools. For this project, we construct digital maps that track Dunham's travel undertaken as a touring artist as well as the ways in which her works represented place. We graph the networks Dunham built across people and institutions as she conducted ethnographic research, choreographed dances, created a dance technique, and participated in social justice movements. Using such digital research methods and data visualization in the context of dance history can catalyse a better understanding of how dance movements are shared and circulated among people and continents, and the networks of support and influence that undergird artistic and economic success. In so doing we ultimately ask how dance moves between places, and how the world is imagined in dance.At the same time as we investigate the mobility of this particular historical figure, we also address the scholarly concerns that make collecting, analysing, and visualizing data meaningful for dance historical inquiry. Digital methods have altered the landscape of most humanities and arts disciplines. However, the field of dance studies has not yet realized how it can benefit from these analytic approaches, in particular for historical work, and what it can contribute to interdisciplinary conversations. Therefore, this project is not only devoted to the specific line of research regarding Dunham, but also to the original problems and questions of dance history that can be advanced through an innovative critical mixed methods approach that includes geographical mapping and network analysis. The project scope is extended through knowledge exchange collaborations with international academic partner projects, as well as through UK industry partnerships with the Victoria & Albert Museum and One Dance UK's Dance of the African Diaspora.