"I used to teach dance lessons"
About this Quote
The simple admission carries the weight of apprenticeship, survival, and generosity. Eartha Kitt came to the stage through movement, first as a dancer with Katherine Dunham’s company, which fused ballet, modern technique, and Afro-Caribbean forms. Before the fame of cabaret stages, hit records, and an iconic turn as Catwoman, dance was both gateway and discipline. To say she taught dance lessons signals not just a job but a passage through a rigorous tradition where learning and teaching are inseparable.
Teaching demands the breaking down of intuition into language and structure. Steps that a performer feels in the body have to be counted, named, and timed for someone else. That act clarifies an artist’s own technique, shaping poise, breath, and timing. Kitt’s later performances sparkle with that dancer’s precision: the staccato phrasing of a lyric, the feline economy of movement, the calibrated pause that turns charm into command. The classroom lives in the spotlight; pedagogy becomes stagecraft.
For a Black artist in mid-20th-century America, the studio also functioned as refuge and engine. Dance lessons created community, paid the bills between gigs, and kept a lineage alive. The Dunham ethos prized cultural transmission as much as virtuosity. Passing along the isolations of hips and spine, the grounded weight of Afro-diasporic rhythm, meant preserving histories that mainstream theaters often ignored. Kitt’s cosmopolitan ease, languages, and worldly stage presence grew from that touring, teaching, and absorbing.
There is humility in the line as well as pride. It nods to labor that is often unseen behind stardom, to mornings at the barre before nights in the club, to counting “five, six, seven, eight” so others can find their balance. It frames success not as sudden discovery but as a cycle: student, teacher, performer, and, by her example, teacher again. The lessons she taught lived on in bodies; the lessons she learned lived on in her voice.
Teaching demands the breaking down of intuition into language and structure. Steps that a performer feels in the body have to be counted, named, and timed for someone else. That act clarifies an artist’s own technique, shaping poise, breath, and timing. Kitt’s later performances sparkle with that dancer’s precision: the staccato phrasing of a lyric, the feline economy of movement, the calibrated pause that turns charm into command. The classroom lives in the spotlight; pedagogy becomes stagecraft.
For a Black artist in mid-20th-century America, the studio also functioned as refuge and engine. Dance lessons created community, paid the bills between gigs, and kept a lineage alive. The Dunham ethos prized cultural transmission as much as virtuosity. Passing along the isolations of hips and spine, the grounded weight of Afro-diasporic rhythm, meant preserving histories that mainstream theaters often ignored. Kitt’s cosmopolitan ease, languages, and worldly stage presence grew from that touring, teaching, and absorbing.
There is humility in the line as well as pride. It nods to labor that is often unseen behind stardom, to mornings at the barre before nights in the club, to counting “five, six, seven, eight” so others can find their balance. It frames success not as sudden discovery but as a cycle: student, teacher, performer, and, by her example, teacher again. The lessons she taught lived on in bodies; the lessons she learned lived on in her voice.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teaching |
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