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    Modern Dance

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    Hannah Alvarez
    The document provides a history of the development of modern dance from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century. It describes how pioneers like Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and Mary Wigman rebelled against classical ballet and incorporated free, natural, and ritualistic movements. In the early 20th century, the Denishawn company popularized modern dance in the US and abroad. Later, Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey led the second generation in developing new techniques focused on breath, gravity, and expressing inner conflicts. By the mid-20th century, choreographers like Merce Cunningham further liberated dance from constraints of music and theme. Over time, distinctions between modern and bal

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    Modern Dance

    Uploaded by

    Hannah Alvarez
    156 views20 pages
    The document provides a history of the development of modern dance from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century. It describes how pioneers like Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and Mary Wigman rebelled against classical ballet and incorporated free, natural, and ritualistic movements. In the early 20th century, the Denishawn company popularized modern dance in the US and abroad. Later, Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey led the second generation in developing new techniques focused on breath, gravity, and expressing inner conflicts. By the mid-20th century, choreographers like Merce Cunningham further liberated dance from constraints of music and theme. Over time, distinctions between modern and bal

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    The document provides a history of the development of modern dance from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century. It describes how pioneers like Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and Mary Wigman rebelled against classical ballet and incorporated free, natural, and ritualistic movements. In the early 20th century, the Denishawn company popularized modern dance in the US and abroad. Later, Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey led the second generation in developing new techniques focused on breath, gravity, and expressing inner conflicts. By the mid-20th century, choreographers like Merce Cunningham further liberated dance from constraints of music and theme. Over time, distinctions between modern and bal

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    156 views20 pages

    Modern Dance

    Uploaded by

    Hannah Alvarez
    The document provides a history of the development of modern dance from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century. It describes how pioneers like Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and Mary Wigman rebelled against classical ballet and incorporated free, natural, and ritualistic movements. In the early 20th century, the Denishawn company popularized modern dance in the US and abroad. Later, Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey led the second generation in developing new techniques focused on breath, gravity, and expressing inner conflicts. By the mid-20th century, choreographers like Merce Cunningham further liberated dance from constraints of music and theme. Over time, distinctions between modern and bal

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
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    The passage discusses the origins and development of modern dance in the early 20th century, focusing on pioneers like Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller, and Ruth St. Denis in the United States as well as Rudolf von Laban and Mary Wigman in Germany. These early modern dancers rebelled against the rigid formalism of classical ballet and sought to inspire new awareness through their dances.

    Isadora Duncan shocked audiences by dancing barefoot and wearing simple tunics, performing flowing natural movements that emanated from her solar plexus. She aimed to abstractly portray emotions induced by music in her dances.

    Ruth St. Denis' dances drew inspiration from the ritualistic dances of Asian religions. She relied on elaborate costumes and sinuous improvised movements to suggest dances of India, Egypt, and evoke mystical feelings.

    Modern dance

    Beginnings of Modern Dance


    Developed in the 20th cent., primarily in the United States and Germany,
    modern dance resembles modern art and music in being experimental and
    iconoclastic. Modern dance began at the turn of the century; its pioneers were
    Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller, and Ruth St. Denis in the United States, Rudolf
    von Laban and Mary Wigman in Germany. Each rebelled against the rigid
    formalism, artifice, and superficiality of classical academic ballet and against the
    banality of show dancing. Each sought to inspire audiences to a new awareness
    of inner or outer realities, a goal shared by all subsequent modern dancers.
    Early Dancers in the United States
    Isadora Duncan shocked or delighted audiences by baring her body and soul in
    what she called "free dance." Wearing only a simple tunic like the Greek vase
    figures that inspired many of her dances, she weaved and whirled in flowing
    natural movements that emanated, she said, from the solar plexus. She aimed to
    idealize abstractly the emotions induced by the music that was her motivating
    force, daringly chosen from the works of serious composers including
    Beethoven, Wagner, and Gluck.
    The pictorial effects achieved by Ruth St. Denis had a different source: the ritualistic
    dance of Asian religion. She relied on elaborate costumes and sinuous improvised
    movements to suggest the dances of India and Egypt and to evoke mystical feelings. With
    Ted Shawn, who became her partner and husband in 1914 and who advocated and
    embodied the vigor of the virile male on the dance stage, St. Denis enlarged her repertoire
    to include dances of Native Americans and other ethnic groups. In 1915 St. Denis and
    Shawn formed the Denishawn company, which increased the popularity of modern dance
    throughout the United States and abroad and nurtured the leaders of the second
    generation of modern dance
    German Contributions
    Although often considered an American phenomenon, the evolution of modern
    dance can also be traced to central Europe and Germany, where the most influential
    was probably Rudolf von Laban. Although there is almost no documentation to
    describe his choreography, he founded (1910) a school in Munich at which Mary
    Wigman was one of his students. He established (1946) the Art of Movement Studio
    in Manchester and worked until his death on his system of notation. She became the
    most influential German exponent of expressive movement and toured extensively.
    Other important and more recent German dancer-choreographers include Kurt Joos
    and his student Pina Bausch.
    The Second Generation in America

    At the end of the 1920s those who rebelled against the art nouveau exoticism and
    commercialism of Denishawn devised their own choreography and launched
    their own companies. Their dances were based on new techniques developed as
    vehicles for the expression of human passions and universal social themes.
    Martha Graham found the breath pulse the primary source of dance;
    exaggerating the contractions and expansions of the torso and flexing of the
    spine caused by breathing, she devised a basis for movement that for her
    represented the human being's inner conflicts.
    To Doris Humphrey, gravity was the source of the dynamic instability of movement; the arc
    between balance and imbalance of the moving human body, fall and recovery, represented
    one's conflicts with the surrounding world. Forsaking lyrical and imitative movement and
    all but the most austere costumes and simplest stage effects, Graham and Humphrey
    composed dances so stark, intellectual, and harshly dramatic as to shock and anger
    audiences accustomed to being pleased by graceful dancers.
    Graham explored themes from Americana, Greek mythology, and the Old Testament; she
    viewed music merely as a frame for the dance. Humphrey experimented more with sound;
    in a 1924 work she discarded music altogether and performed in silence, and later she used
    nonmusical sound effects, including spoken texts and bursts of hysterical laughter. Charles
    Weidman's gestural mime of movements abstracted from everyday situations provided a
    different kind of social commentarycomic satire. Winning ardent devotees, the Graham
    and Humphrey-Weidman companies dominated modern dance for 20 years
    Later Dancers
    By the end of World War II, young choreographers had begun breaking the rules of the
    modern dance establishmentcreating dances that had no theme, expressed no emotion,
    dispensed with the dance vocabulary of fall and recovery, contraction and release. Sybil
    Shearer's random fantasies, Katherine Litz's surrealistic vignettes, and Erick Hawkins's
    impressionistic soft rhythms changed the emphasis of choreography. They had no desire to
    uplift or inform.

    Foremost of this third generation of modern dancers is Merce Cunningham, whose company
    bred avant-garde choreographers for more than 25 years. Cunningham freed dance from
    spatial restraints, eliminating strong central focus from choreographic patterns and devising
    dances that can be viewed from any angle. He also released dance from traditional musical
    constraints by using electronic music and other compositions of his musical director,
    John Cage. In addition, he liberated his own choreography from structural limitations by
    using techniques of chance, such as throws of the dice, to determine the order in which
    sections of a work should occur.
    In 1957 Paul Taylor, a Cunningham and Graham veteran, presented an evening of minimal
    dance, which consisted of Taylor standing on the stage alone in street clothes and making
    only tiny changes in posture to the accompaniment of the recorded voice of a telephone
    operator announcing the time at 10-second intervals; outraged dance critics deliberately
    ignored the performance. His company ultimately became one of the most important of the
    postWorld War II troupes. Choreographer Alvin Ailey, who was influenced primarily by
    Lester Horton, combined elements of modern, jazz, and African dance in his work. The
    company he established 1958 has been internationally acclaimed and has brought
    recognition to many African-American and Asian dancers.
    The Combining of Forms
    By the late 20th cent., distinctions among modern dance, ballet, and show
    dancing were not as rigid as they once had been. Ballet technique and
    choreography have remained more formal than those of modern dance, but their
    themes and stage effects are often similar. Important modern dancers have been
    invited to perform with and create dances for ballet companies
    Dances that were released and popularized
    during the 19th century
    "Y.M.C.A." is a song by the American disco group Village People. It was released in 1978
    as the only single from their third studio album Cruisin'(1978). The song reached Number
    2 on the US charts in early 1979 and reached Number 1 in the UK around the same time,
    becoming the group's biggest hit. It is one of fewer than 40 singles to have sold 10
    million (or more) physical copies worldwide. The song remains popular and is played at
    many sporting events in the U.S. and Europe, with crowds using the dance in which
    the arms are used to spell out the four letters of the song's title as an opportunity to
    stretch. Moreover, the song also remains particularly popular due to its status as a disco
    classic.
    Let's Twist Again" is a song written by Kal Mann and Dave Appell, and released as a
    single by Chubby Checker. One of the biggest hit singles of 1961, it reached No.8 on the
    U.S. Billboard pop chart (No.3 on Cash Box) in August of that year and subsequently
    reached No.2 in the U.K. in February 1962. The song refers to the Twist dance craze and
    Checker's 1960 single "The Twist", a two-time U.S. No.1 single (in September 1960 and
    again in January 1962 on re-release).

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