Modern dance

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Martha Graham in 1948

Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance, primarily arising out of
Germany and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Modern dance is often considered to have emerged as a rejection of, or rebellion against, classical
ballet. Socioeconomic and cultural factors also contributed to its development. In the late 19th
century, dance artists such as Isadora Duncan, Maud Allan, and Loie Fuller were pioneering new
forms and practices in what is now called aesthetic or free dance for performance. These dancers
disregarded ballet's strict movement vocabulary, the particular, limited set of movements that were
considered proper to ballet, and stopped wearing corsets and pointe shoes in the search for greater
freedom of movement.
Throughout the 20th century, sociopolitical concerns, major historical events, and the development
of other art forms contributed to the continued development of modernist dance in the United States
and Germany. Moving into the 1960s, new ideas about dance began to emerge, as a response to
earlier dance forms and to social changes. Eventually, postmodern dance artists would reject the
formalism of modern dance, and include elements such as performance art, contact
improvisation, release technique, and improvisation.[1]
American modern dance can be divided (roughly) into three periods or eras. In the Early Modern
period (c. 1880–1923), characterized by the work of Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller, Ruth St.
Denis, Ted Shawn, and Eleanor King, artistic practice changed radically, but clearly distinct modern
dance techniques had not yet emerged. In the Central Modern period (c. 1923–1946),
choreographers Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Katherine Dunham, Charles Weidman,
 and Lester Horton sought to develop distinctively American movement styles and vocabularies, and
developed clearly defined and recognizable dance training systems. In the Late Modern period
(c. 1946–1957), José Limón, Pearl Primus, Merce Cunningham, Talley Beatty, Erick Hawkins, Anna
Sokolow, Anna Halprin, Paul Taylor introduced clear abstractionism and avant-garde movements,
and paved the way for postmodern dance.[2]
Modern dance has evolved with each subsequent generation of participating artists. Artistic content
has morphed and shifted from one choreographer to another, as have styles and techniques. Artists
such as Graham and Horton developed techniques in the Central Modern Period that are still taught
worldwide, and numerous other types of modern dance exist today.

Contents

 1Background
o 1.1Free dance
 2Expressionist and early modern dance in Europe
 3Radical dance
 4In the United States
o 4.1Early modern dance in America
o 4.2Popularization
o 4.3African American modern dance
 5Legacy of modern dance
o 5.1Postmodern dance
o 5.2Contemporary dance
 6Teachers and their students
 7See also
 8References
 9Sources
 10Further reading

Background[edit]
Modern dance is often considered to have emerged as a rejection of, or rebellion against,
classical ballet, although historians have suggested that socioeconomic changes in both the United
States and Europe helped to initiate shifts in the dance world. In America,
increasing industrialization, the rise of a middle class (which had more disposable income and free
time), and the decline of Victorian social strictures led to, among other changes, a new interest in
health and physical fitness.[3] "It was in this atmosphere that a 'new dance' was emerging as much
from a rejection of social structures as from a dissatisfaction with ballet." [4] During that same period,
"the champions of physical education helped to prepare the way for modern dance,
and gymnastic exercises served as technical starting points for young women who longed to
dance."[5] Women's colleges began offering "aesthetic dance" courses by the end of the 1880s.[6] Emil
Rath, who wrote at length about this emerging artform at the time stated,
"Music and rhythmic bodily movement are twin sisters of art, as they have come into existence
simultaneously...today we see in the artistic work of Isadora Duncan, Maud Allan, and others the use
of a form of dancing which strives to portray in movements what the music master expresses in his
compositions—interpretative dancing."[7]

Free dance[edit]
Isadora Duncan in 1903

Main article: Free dance

 1877: Isadora Duncan was a predecessor of modern dance with her stress on the center or
torso, bare feet, loose hair, free-flowing costumes, and incorporation of humor into emotional
expression. She was inspired by classical Greek arts, folk dances, social dances, nature, natural
forces, and new American athleticism such as skipping, running, jumping, leaping, and abrupt
movements. She thought that ballet was ugly and meaningless gymnastics. Although she
returned to the United States at various points in her life, her work was not very well received
there. She returned to Europe and died in Nice in 1927.
 1891: Loie Fuller (a burlesque skirt dancer) began experimenting with the effect that gas lighting
had on her silk costumes. Fuller developed a form of natural movement and improvisation
techniques that were used in conjunction with her revolutionary lighting equipment and
translucent silk costumes. She patented her apparatus and methods of stage lighting that
included the use of coloured gels and burning chemicals for luminescence, and also patented
her voluminous silk stage costumes.
 1905: Ruth St. Denis, influenced by the actress Sarah Bernhardt and Japanese dancer Sada
Yacco, developed her translations of Indianculture and mythology. Her performances quickly
became popular and she toured extensively while researching Oriental culture and arts.

Expressionist and early modern dance in Europe[edit]

Dancer at the Laban school, Berlin 1929

See also: Expressionist dance and Ausdruckstanz

In Europe, Mary Wigman in Germany, Francois Delsarte, Émile Jaques-Dalcroze (Eurhythmics),
and Rudolf Laban developed theories of human movement and expression, and methods of
instruction that led to the development of European modern and Expressionist dance. Other
pioneers included Kurt Jooss (Ausdruckstanz) and Harald Kreutzberg.

Radical dance[edit]
Disturbed by the Great Depression and the rising threat of fascism in Europe, the radical dancers
tried to raise consciousness by dramatizing the economic, social, ethnic and political crises of their
time.

 Hanya Holm, a student of Mary Wigman and instructor at the Wigman School in Dresden,
founded the New York Wigman School of Dance in 1931 (which became the Hanya Holm Studio
in 1936) introducing Wigman technique, Laban's theories of spatial dynamics, and later her own
dance techniques to American modern dance. An accomplished choreographer, she was a
founding artist of the first American Dance Festival in Bennington (1934). Holm's dance
work Metropolitan Daily was the first modern dance composition to be televised on NBC and
her labanotation score for Kiss Me, Kate (1948) was the first choreography to be copyrighted in
the United States. Holm choreographed extensively in the fields of concert dance and musical
theater.[8]
 Anna Sokolow—A student of Martha Graham and Louis Horst, Sokolow created her own dance
company (circa 1930). Presenting dramatic contemporary imagery, Sokolow's compositions
were generally abstract, often revealing the full spectrum of human experience reflecting the
tension and alienation of the time and the truth of human movement.
 José Limón—In 1946, after studying and performing with Doris Humphrey and Charles
Weidman, Limón established his own company with Humphrey as artistic director. It was under
her mentorship that Limón created his signature dance The Moor’s Pavane (1949). Limón's
choreographic works and technique remain a strong influence on contemporary dance practice. [9]
 Merce Cunningham—A former ballet student and performer with Martha Graham, he presented
his first New York solo concert with John Cage in 1944. Influenced by Cage and
 embracing modernist ideology using postmodern processes, Cunningham introduced chance
procedures and pure movement to choreography and Cunningham technique to the cannon of
20th-century dance techniques. Cunningham set the seeds for postmodern dance with his non-
linear, non-climactic, non-psychological abstract work. In these works each element is in and of
itself expressive, and the observer (in large part) determines what it communicates.
 Erick Hawkins—A student of George Balanchine, Hawkins became a soloist and the first male
dancer in Martha Graham's dance company. In 1951, Hawkins, interested in the new field
of kinesiology, opened his own school and developed his own technique (Hawkins technique) a
forerunner of most somatic dance techniques.
 Paul Taylor—A student of the Juilliard School of Music and the Connecticut College School of
Dance. In 1952 his performance at the American Dance Festival attracted the attention of
several major choreographers. Performing in the companies of Merce Cunningham, Martha
Graham, and George Balanchine (in that order), he founded the Paul Taylor Dance Company in
1954. The use of everyday gestures and modernist ideology is characteristic of his
choreography. Former members of the Paul Taylor Dance Company included Twyla Tharp,
Laura Dean, Dan Wagoner, and Senta Driver.
 Alwin Nikolais—A student of Hanya Holm. Nikolais's use of multimedia in works such as Masks,
Props, and Mobiles (1953), Totem (1960), and Count Down (1979) was unmatched by other
choreographers. Often presenting his dancers in constrictive spaces and costumes with
complicated sound and sets, he focused their attention on the physical tasks of overcoming
obstacles he placed in their way. Nikolais viewed the dancer not as an artist of self-expression,
but as a talent who could investigate the properties of physical space and movement.

In the United States[edit]

Main article: Modern dance in the United States
Early modern dance in America[edit]
In 1915, Ruth St. Denis founded the Denishawn school and dance company with her husband Ted
Shawn.[10] St. Denis was responsible for most of the creative work, and Shawn was responsible for
teaching technique and composition.[citation needed] Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles
Weidman were all pupils at the school and members of the dance company. Seeking a wider and
more accepting audience for their work, Duncan, Fuller, and Ruth St. Denis all
toured Europe Fuller's work also received little support outside Europe. St. Denis returned to
the United States to continue her work.
Martha Graham and Bertram Ross in 1961; photo by Carl van Vechten

Martha Graham is often regarded as the founding mother of modern 20th-century concert dance.
[11]
Graham viewed ballet as too one-sided: European, imperialistic, and un-American.[12] She became
a student at the Denishawn school in 1916 and then moved to New York City in 1923, where she
performed in musical comedies, music halls, and worked on her own choreography.[13] Graham
developed her own dance technique, Graham technique, that hinged on concepts of contraction and
release.[11] In Graham's teachings, she wanted her students to "Feel". To "Feel", means having a
heightened sense of awareness of being grounded to the floor while, at the same time, feeling the
energy throughout your entire body, extending it to the audience.[14] Her principal contributions to
dance are the focus of the ‘center’ of the body (as contrast to ballet's emphasis on limbs),
coordination between breathing and movement, and a dancer's relationship with the floor.[13]

 1923: Graham leaves Denishawn to work as a solo artist in the Greenwich Village Follies.
 1928: Humphrey and Weidman leave Denishawn to set up their own school and company
(Humphrey-Weidman).
 1933: Shawn founds his all male dance group Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers based at
his Jacob's Pillow farm in Becket, Massachusetts.
After shedding the techniques and compositional methods of their teachers the early modern
dancers developed their own methods and ideologies and dance techniques that became the
foundation for modern dance practice:

 Martha Graham and Louis Horst

 Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman
 Helen Tamiris—originally trained in free movement (Irene Lewisohn) and ballet (Michel Fokine)
Tamiris studied briefly with Isadora Duncan but disliked her emphasis on personal expression
and lyrical movement. Tamiris believed that each dance must create its own expressive means
and as such did not develop an individual style or technique. As a choreographer Tamiris made
works based on American themes working in both concert dance and musical theatre.
 Lester Horton—choosing to work in California (3,000 miles away from New York, the center of
modern dance), Horton developed his own approach that incorporated diverse elements
 including Native American dances and modern jazz. Horton's dance technique (Lester Horton
Technique) emphasises a whole-body approach including flexibility, strength, coordination, and
body awareness to allow freedom of expression.
Popularization[edit]
In 1927, newspapers regularly began assigning dance critics, such as Walter Terry, and Edwin
Denby, who approached performances from the viewpoint of a movement specialist rather than as a
reviewer of music or drama. Educators accepted modern dance into college and university curricula,
first as a part of physical education, then as performing art. Many college teachers were trained at
the Bennington Summer School of the Dance, which was established at Bennington College in 1934.
Of the Bennington program, Agnes de Mille wrote, "...there was a fine commingling of all kinds of
artists, musicians, and designers, and secondly, because all those responsible for booking the
college concert series across the continent were assembled there. ... free from the limiting strictures
of the three big monopolistic managements, who pressed for preference of their European clients.
As a consequence, for the first time American dancers were hired to tour America nationwide, and
this marked the beginning of their solvency." (de Mille, 1991, p. 20 30
African American modern dance[edit]

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform "Revelations"

See also: African American dance

The development of modern dance embraced the contributions of African American dance artists
regardless of whether they made pure modern dance works or blended modern dance
with African and Caribbean influences.

 Katherine Dunham—An African American dancer, and anthropologist. Originally a ballet dancer,
she founded her first company Ballet Negre in 1936 and later the Katherine Dunham Dance
Company based in Chicago, Illinois. In 1945, Dunham opened a school in New York where she
taught Katherine Dunham Technique, a blend of African and Caribbeanmovement (flexible torso
and spine, articulated pelvis, isolation of the limbs, and polyrhythmic movement) integrated with
techniques of ballet and modern dance.
 Pearl Primus—A dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist, Primus drew on African and
Caribbean dances to create strong dramatic works characterized by large leaps in the air.
Primus often based her dances on the work of black writers and on racial and African-American
issues. Primus created works based on Langston Hughes The Negro Speaks of Rivers (1944),
and Lewis Allan's Strange Fruit (1945). Her dance company developed into the Pearl Primus
Dance Language Institutewhich teaches her method of blending African-American, Caribbean,
and African influences with modern dance and ballet techniques.
 Alvin Ailey—A student of Lester Horton, Bella Lewitzky, and later Martha Graham, Ailey spent
several years working in both concert and theater dance. In 1958, Ailey and a group of
 young African-American dancers performed as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New
York. Ailey drew upon his "blood memories" of Texas, the blues, spiritualsand gospel as
inspiration. His most popular and critically acclaimed work is Revelations (1960).

Legacy of modern dance[edit]

The legacy of modern dance can be seen in lineage of 20th-century concert dance forms. Although
often producing divergent dance forms, many seminal dance artists share a common heritage that
can be traced back to free dance.
Postmodern dance[edit]
Main article: Postmodern dance
Postmodern dance developed in the 1960s in United States when society questioned truths
and ideologies in politics and art. This period was marked by social and culturalexperimentation in
the arts. Choreographers no longer created specific 'schools' or 'styles'. The influences from different
periods of dance became more vague and fragmented.[11] It is very common for postmodern dance to
be performed to little or no music at all.
Contemporary dance[edit]
Main article: Contemporary dance

Danceworks rehearsal of "Stone Soup" with semi-improvised music from composer Seth Warren-Crow and
Apple iLife sound clip "Tour Bus"

Contemporary dance emerged in the 1950s as the dance form that is combining the modern dance
elements and the classical ballet elements.[15] It can use elements from non-Western dance cultures,
such as African dancing with bent knees as a characteristic trait, and Butoh, Japanese contemporary
dancing that developed in the 1950s.[11][16] It is also derived from modern European themes like poetic
and everyday elements, broken lines, nonlinear movements, and repetition. Many contemporary
dancers are trained daily in classical ballet to keep up with the technicality of the choreography
given. These dancers tend to follow ideas of efficient bodily movement, taking up space, and
attention to detail. Contemporary dance today includes both concert and commercial dance because
of the lines being blurred by pop culture and television shows. According to Treva
Bedinghaus,"Modern dancers use dancing to express their innermost emotions, often to get closer to
their inner-selves. Before attempting to choreograph a routine, the modern dancer decides which
emotions to try to convey to the audience. Many modern dancers choose a subject near and dear to
their hearts, such as a lost love or a personal failure. The dancer will choose music that relates to
the story they wish to tell, or choose to use no music at all, and then choose a costume to reflect
their chosen emotions."[17]

What is Contemporary Dance?

 Cue that feeling of dread. Too many words flying
through my mind, fleeing from being said. The nervous
laugh, the umming and ahing…
So what terrible thing has happened to cause my usually coherent mind to
crumble? Someone has again asked me the question: ‘what is
contemporary dance?’
Ok, so that doesn’t sound so bad, right? Yet this is one of the questions I
dread the most. When someone who has little or no dance knowledge asks
me to explain contemporary dance, just how do I label it? How can I explain
it, without that old annoying comment: “is it all like become the tree?”
So what is the answer? What is contemporary dance? Let’s see what the go-
to web guru that is Wikipedia says about it…
“Contemporary dance is a popular form of dance which developed during
the middle portion of the twentieth century and has since grown to become
one of the dominating performance genres for formally trained dancers
throughout the world, with particularly strong popularity in the U.S. and
Europe”
…Right. Well that explains everything… This explanation, whilst of course
correct, does not actually give any indication as to what contemporary dance
looks like, what sort of movement it is, there is nothing to give a non-dancer
any ideas or images they can relate to. If you read further on Wikipedia, it
does go into more detail, but as an opening definition, it doesn’t exactly grab
the imagination.
About .com goes straight in for a more descriptive definition:
“Contemporary dance is a style of expressive dance that combines elements
of several dance genres including modern, jazz, lyrical and classical ballet.
Contemporary dancers strive to connect the mind and the body through fluid
dance movements”
Whilst this gives a lot more insight, and references styles that most non-
dancers will recognise, it still lacks in creating an image that really reflects
all that contemporary dance is. I often find myself saying “it is like ballet, but
not like ballet”, which is of course a contradiction, and woefully inadequate,
but friends who ask me this question rarely want to sit down for a 10 minute
history, style and aesthetic debriefing to get their answer. To me,
contemporary dance is so many things, maybe it is easier to say what it is
not?
When viewing contemporary dance as a genre, we picture a specific style,
but this is not the same for every individual. With so many prominent historic
figures, techniques and such freedom with artistic licence, perhaps
contemporary dance is something so multi-faceted and varied that it doesn’t
fit in one definition.
When I think of contemporary dance I think of creative freedom, pushing
boundaries, gravity, breathtaking imagery, intricate gestures, complex v
simple, strength, art, movement v stillness…heart. I literally could go on and
on.
How can I translate these into some sort of description for a non dancer?
Here lies my biggest stumbling block…help!
Other people have recognised my problem. Whilst I was considering writing
this, The Place commissioned this fantastic film. It explains a lot… if I could
carry this clip around with me and show every person who asked me about
contemporary dance, it would save me a lot of trouble… if you have a spare
moment, it is definitely worth a watch.