EAST ST. LOUIS, Illinois -- Internationally acclaimed dancer Katherine Dunham bid adieu to Broadway nearly 30 years ago, dreaming of turning one of America's most wretched cities into a cultural oasis.


She canvassed the violent streets of East St. Louis, inviting all who were low on hope -- gangbangers, unwed mothers and the poor -- to learn the arts. Her hope was for a movement that would steer blacks "into something more constructive than genocide.''


"She is making the desert bloom,'' choreographer Agnes de Mille wrote in 1980.


But today the dream is withering on the vine, and the 86-year-old dreamer is frail, tired and frustrated.


The Katherine Dunham Museum, one of its glass doors smashed, languishes padlocked in a weed-choked lot, another weary face in a city full of hollow-eyed, burned-out buildings and trash-strewn streets.


Dunham, whose muscular physique and sensuous style once thrilled audiences, spends most of her days in bed, watching CNN or "Wheel of Fortune.'' Her house is so run down pigeons nearly pecked through the ceiling -- only after a newspaper reported her plight did donors pay to fix the damage.


"I'm embarrassed to have things like that publicized,'' says Dunham, propping her head of long gray braids against a pillow.


"What I'd like to do would be to have my life as a kind of model for people who have a lot of courage, visions. I don't like to bring in this unpleasantness.''


Lifelong arthritis and more than a dozen knee operations make it hard for her to walk. But a sense of despair also seems to keep her in bed.


"What has to happen is that I have to want to do something, like teach a class personally,'' Dunham said. "In other words, I really have to want to get up and walk.''


Born in Chicago, Dunham studied Caribbean and African cultures and dance at the University of Chicago. The subject led her to Haiti as a researcher in 1935, and to pioneering work as a dancer and choreographer who brought African and Caribbean influences into the European-dominated dance world.


Her dance company won encores worldwide up through the 1960s. She choreographed "Aida'' for the Metropolitan Opera and such musicals as "Cabin in the Sky'' for Broadway. Dunham also appeared in several films, including "Stormy Weather'' and "Carnival of Rhythm.''


Dunham's New York dance studio included such illustrious alumni as Marlon Brando and James Dean. But success had to be won in the face of widespread discrimination, a struggle Dunham championed by refusing to perform at segregated theaters.


Then suddenly, in 1967, she gave it all up to launch a cultural crusade in East St. Louis, an edgy battlefield of the black militant movement.


"Someone once said the black race has a tragic optimism,'' Dunham said in a recent interview. "I'm an incurable optimist.''


She set up an eclectic compound of artists from around the globe: Harry Belafonte was a visiting professor. Free classes offered at her museum or home included dance, African hair-braiding and woodcarving, conversational Creole, Spanish, French and Swahili as well as more traditional subjects such as aesthetics and social science. Dunham also offered martial arts training in hopes of getting young, angry males off the street.


But government and private funding, never abundant, slowed to a trickle when Dunham retired from teaching at Southern Illinois University in nearby Edwardsville in the early 1980s. About that time, her interest also turned to the political turmoil in Haiti and, in 1992, she went on a 47-day fast to protest U.S. policy on repatriating Haitian refugees.


"She's got her heart in both worlds, East St. Louis and Haiti, and both share similar problems,'' said Elizabeth Gentry Sayad, a longtime friend.


Dunham's friends say she's short on cash and sound financial advice. She had to ask for an advance on an honorarium to participate in a recent forum in Minneapolis.


"She just told me a few minutes ... after she got the check, 'Well, good, maybe that means we can keep at least one of the phones on,'" said Eugene Redmond, a literature professor and longtime Dunham associate.


Dunham's training center still exists, but only as a shadow of what it once was. A children's dance workshop continues with about 25 to 50 regular students, as does an annual -- and money-losing -- arts seminar. To make ends meet, Dunham reluctantly has gone on the lecture circuit.


"I think it's time for people to recall the immense contribution that she's made and take up the baton, so to speak, so these things transcend her,'' said her assistant of many years, Jeanelle Stovall.


In a recent interview in her bedroom, crowded with books and African artifacts, Dunham refused to dwell on her financial problems. She said she gets a university pension and her late husband's Social Security checks, but would not say how much. She insists that her personal finances are inseparable from her artistic and philanthropic projects.


"If I had any money, it wouldn't be mine,'' Dunham said. "It would go toward my projects. Personally, I don't have any money.''


Dunham would rather discuss her goal of creating a botanical garden at her 12-hectare Haitian estate, and perhaps establishing a prenatal clinic for poor women there. But her hopes are tempered by a dark current of fatalism. A self-professed student of voodoo, Dunham says she doesn't worry about material things because she doesn't expect the world to last long.


"The Earth planet is angry with this ridiculous civilization that is now ending,'' she said. "I actually find myself interested and excited by earthquakes. The sooner, the better.''


Still she hopes to finish writing "The Minefield,'' a book about her struggle to manage her dance company in the face of racism. And she is negotiating perhaps her last mine field: a fight to preserve her legacy. She wants financially strapped East St. Louis to take over her museum's operating costs so she can keep it open regularly, hinting she has offers from other cities.


"I have to see my dream as always being there,'' Dunham said. "I may be impeded here or there, that doesn't matter, as long as I realize that it's still in a state of becoming, of growing.''