what is modern dance?

Question

also, what can i expect in a modern dance class?

Answer 1

Modern dancing is a unique and original approach to dancing. It is different most everywhere you go because it does not have a strict vocabulary of movements like ballet and tap do. Martha Grahm and Isadora Duncan are sort of the "creators" of modern dancing.You can expect to do a lot of work in parallel position, a lot of swinging, very natural moves like walking or running, and heavy,earthy movements. Modern typically is a very weighted style of dancing. But like I said it is different everywhere because it is more an approach to dancing than a type of dancing. Almost anything is valid in modern dancing. It is like taking ballet and breaking the rules or just moving your body in any way you want and calling it "modern" dance. But then there are also places that study a particular modern technique like Grahm ( you will be doing a lot of breathing excersises and releases) or Cunnignham.

Answer 2

I have been dancing for 16 years and personally I LOVE modern dance! It is my favorite style of dance because you can make it anything you want it to be. There are many different techniques used in modern dance, but unlike other styles of dance you have the freedom of creating your own movement style without worrying about staying within the "technique." There is so much emotion and freedom within modern dance and once you try you will fall in love with it. I also suggest jazz dance because that is another dance style that I absolutely love that is fun to do. Good luck with whatever you pursue!

Answer 3

I take a mandatory modern class. I hate it, honestly, because it's usually the same thing every day, and very strange. No two modern teachers teach the same thing. There is no modern dance vocabulary. It's mostly random movements and stuff. Personally, I wouldn't suggest it. Rent some modern dance videos from a library and see if you like it.

Answer 4

I define modern as ballet without all the restrictions. It's much more relaxed and stylized than ballet.

The modern classes that I have taken, have been based on a lot of stretching and strengthening, then we would do a routine and work on that. Probably doesn't help much, because every class and every teacher will be different. But I hope you take modern and enjoy it.

Answer 5

Modern dance is a dance form developed in the early 20th century. Although the term Modern dances has also been applied to a category of 20th Century ballroom dances, Modern dance as a term usually refers to 20th century concert dance.

In the early 1900s a few dancers in Europe started to rebel against the rigid constraints of Classical Ballet. Shedding classical ballet technique, costume and shoes these early modern dance pioneers practiced free dance.

In America Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Doris Humphrey and Martha Graham developed their own styles of free dance and laid the foundations of American modern dance with their choreography and teaching.

In Europe Francois Delsarte, Émile Jaques-Dalcroze and Rudolf von Laban developed theories of human movement and expression, and methods of instruction that led to the development of European modern and Expressionist dance. Their theories and techniques spread well beyond Europe to influence the development of modern dance and theatre via their students and disciples, and subsequent generations of teachers and performers carried these theories and methods to Russia, the United States and Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

Contents [show]
1 History
1.1 Free dance
1.2 Early modern dance
1.3 European modern and expressionist dance
1.4 Popularization of American Modern Dance
1.5 Development of modern dance
1.5.1 African-American modern dance
2 Contemporary ballet
3 Legacy of modern dance
3.1 Postmodern and Contemporary dance
3.2 Teachers and their students
3.3 See also
3.4 Further reading



[edit] History

An illustration showing the lineage of 20th century concert dance
[edit] Free dance
Main article: Free dance
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.
1903 - Isadora Duncan developed a dance technique influenced by the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and a belief that dance of the ancient Greeks (natural and free) was the dance of the future. Duncan developed a philosophy of dance based on natural and spiritual concepts and advocated for that acceptance of pure dance as a high art.
1905 - Ruth St. Denis influenced by the actress Sarah Bernhardt and Japanese dancer Sado Yacco, St. Denis developed her translations of Indian culture and mythology. Her performances quickly became popular and she toured extensively whilst researching Oriental culture and arts.
Fuller, Duncan and St. Denis all toured Europe seeking a wider and more accepting audience for their work. Only Ruth St. Denis returned to the United States to continue her work, Isadora Duncan died in Paris in 1927 and Fuller's work received little support outside Europe.


[edit] Early modern dance
In 1915 Ruth St. Denis founded the Denishawn school and dance company with her husband Ted Shawn. Whilst St. Denis was responsible for most of the creative work, Shawn was responsible for teaching technique and composition. Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman were all pupils at the school and members of the dance company.

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 Lee, 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 (three thousand miles away from the center of modern dance - New York), 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.
Ted Shawn

[edit] European modern and expressionist dance
Émile Jaques-Dalcroze (Eurhythmics)
Rudolf Laban
Kurt Jooss
Mary Wigman
Harald Kreutzberg
See also: Expressionist dance and Ausdruckstanz

[edit] Popularization of American Modern Dance
Main article: Modern dance in the United States
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. 205)


[edit] Development of modern dance
Whilst the founders on modern dance continued to make works based on ancient myths and legends following a narrative structure, their students the radical dancers saw dance as a potential agent of change. Disturbed by the Great Depression and the rising threat of fascism in Europe, they 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 Holm 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 theatre.
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; 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.
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 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. Member of the Paul Taylor Dance Company included: Twyla Tharp, Laura Dean, Dan Wagoner, and Senta Driver.
Alwin Nikolais - a student of Hanya Holm, not only pre-empted postmodern dance but also dance technology (as did Loie Fuller) before Judson Dance Theater in the 1960s. 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.

[edit] African-American modern 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 - 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. Dunham opened a school in New York (1945) where she taught Katherine Dunham Technique, a blend of African and Caribbean movement (flexible torso and spine, articulated pelvis and 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 ***** Speaks of Rivers (1944), and Lewis Allen's Strange Fruit (1945). Her dance company developed into the Pearl Primus Dance Language Institute which teaches her method of blending African-American, Caribbean, and African influences with modern dance and ballet techniques.
Alvin Ailey- a student of Lester Horton (and later Martha Graham) Ailey spent several years working in both concert and theatre dance. in 1930 Ailey and a group of young African-American dancers perform as Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York. Ailey drew upon his blood memories of Texas, the blues, spirituals and gospel as inspiration, his most popular and critically acclaimed work is Revelations (1960).