Modern dance

Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance which includes dance styles such as ballet, folk, ethnic, religious, and social dancing; and primarily arose out of Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was considered to have been developed as a rejection of, or rebellion against, classical ballet, and also a way to express social concerns like socioeconomic and cultural factors.^[1][2][3]

In the late 19th century, modern dance artists such as Isadora Duncan, Maud Allan, and Loie Fuller were pioneering new forms and practices in what is now called improvisational or free dance. 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.^[3]

Throughout the 20th century, sociopolitical concerns, major historical events, and the development of other art forms contributed to the continued development of modern dance in the United States and Europe. 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.^[3][4]

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, and Paul Taylor introduced clear abstractionism and avant-garde movements, and paved the way for postmodern dance.^[5]

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.^[1][2]

Background

Modern dance is often considered to have emerged as a rejection of, or rebellion against, classical

• 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 well received there. She returned to Europe and died in Nice in 1927.^{[1][2][3][11]}
• Loie Fuller (born in 1862) was a burlesque "skirt" dancer 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 her voluminous silk stage costumes.^[1][2][3]
• mythology. Her performances quickly became popular and she toured extensively while researching Asian culture and arts.^[3]

• musical theater.^[3][13]
• Anna Sokolow - A student of Martha Graham and Louis Horst, Sokolow created her own dance company (c. 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.^[1][3]
• 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.^[14]
• 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.^[3]
• Erick Hawkins - A student of George Balanchine, 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.^[15][16]
• 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.^[17]
• Alwin Nikolais - A student of Hanya Holm. Nikolais 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.^[18]

In the United States

Early modern dance

In 1915, Ruth St. Denis founded the

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, 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."^[24]

African American

Contemporary dance emerged in the 1950s as the dance form that is combining the modern dance elements and the classical ballet elements.^[31] 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.^[20][32] It incorporates modern European influences, via the work of pioneers like Isadora Duncan.^[33]

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."^[34]

Teachers and their students

This list illustrates some important teacher-student relationships in modern dance.

• Loie Fuller
• Isadora Duncan—Duncan technique
• Grete Wiesenthal
• Ruth St. Denis
  • Ted Shawn—Shawn Fundamentals
  • Denishawn
    (school and company)
    • Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman—The Art of Making Dances (Humphrey)
      • Humphrey-Weidman school—Humphrey-Weidman technique (fall and recovery)
        • José Limón—Limón technique
    • Martha Graham—Graham technique (and Louis Horst)
      • Erick Hawkins (via George Balanchine)—Hawkins technique
      • Anna Sokolow
      • May O'Donnell
      • Merce Cunningham—Cunningham technique (also see Postmodern dance)
        • Yvonne Rainer
        • Margaret Jenkins
        • Steve Paxton
        • Richard Alston
      • Paul Taylor
        • Twyla Tharp
      • Trisha Brown
      • Ohad Naharin
• Lester Horton—"Horton Technique"
  • Bella Lewitzky
  • Alvin Ailey
• Rudolf von Laban
  • Ausdruckstanz
    )
    • Pina Bausch (Tanztheater)
  • Mary Wigman (Expressionist dance)
    • Ursula Cain
      • Heike Hennig (see Dancing with Time)
    • Hanya Holm
      • Valerie Bettis
      • Alwin Nikolais—decentralization
        • Murray Louis
        • Beverly Schmidt Blossom
• Émile Jaques-Dalcroze
  • Mary Wigman
  • Marie Rambert
• Katherine Dunham—Katherine Dunham Technique
• Pearl Primus
  • Garth Fagan
• Helen Tamiris
  • Daniel Nagrin

See also

• Concert dance
• List of dance styles
• Women in dance

References