choosing dance, Dunham often voiced recognition of her debt to the discipline: "without [anthropology] I don't know what I would have done….In anthropology, I learned how to feel about myself in relation to other people…. You can't learn about dances until you learn about people. In my mind, it's the most fascinating thing in the world to learn". Ethnographic fieldwork Her field work in the Caribbean began in Jamaica, where she lived for several months in the remote Maroon village of Accompong, deep in the mountains of Cockpit Country. (She later wrote Journey to Accompong, a book describing her experiences there.) Then she traveled to Martinique and to Trinidad and Tobago for short stays, primarily to do an investigation of Shango, the African god who was still considered an important presence in West Indian religious culture. Early in 1936, she arrived in Haiti, where she remained for several months, the first of her many extended stays in that country through her life. While in Haiti, Dunham investigated Vodun rituals and made extensive research notes, particularly on the dance movements of the participants. She recorded her findings through ethnographic fieldnotes and by learning dance techniques, music and song, alongside her interlocutors. This style of participant observation research was not yet common within the discipline of anthropology. However, it has now became a common practice within the discipline. She was one of the first researchers in anthropology to use her research of Afro-Haitian dance and culture for remedying racist misrepresentation of African culture in the miseducation of Black Americans. She felt it was necessary to use the knowledge she gained in her research to acknowledge that Africanist esthetics are significant to the cultural equation in American dance. Years later, after extensive studies and initiations in Haiti, she became a mambo in the Vodun religion. She also became friends with, among others, Dumarsais Estimé, then a high-level politician, who became president of Haiti in 1949. Somewhat later, she assisted him, at considerable risk to her life, when he was persecuted for his progressive policies and sent in exile to Jamaica after a coup d'état. Dancer and choreographer From 1928 to 1938 Dunham's dance career first began in Chicago when she joined the Little Theater Company of Harper Avenue. In 1928, while still an undergraduate, Dunham began to study ballet with Ludmilla Speranzeva, a Russian dancer who had settled in Chicago, after having come