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.

They had particular success in Denmark and France. Despite these successes the company frequently ran into periods of financial difficulties as Dunham was required to support all of the thirty to forty dancers and musicians.

Dunham was an innovator in African-American modern dance as well as a leader in the field of dance anthropology or ethnochoreology. For almost thirty years Katherine Dunham maintained the Katherine Dunham Dance Company the only self-supported American black dance troupe at that time and over her long career Katherine Dunham choreographed more than ninety individual dances. Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers in American and European theater of the 20th century and directed her own dance company for many years.