I certainly feel my career was a great career because it inspired so many many people, literally hundreds of people to follow a new kind of life and to realize that they could make out and advance their own professional and private and social lives.

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.