What is Modern Dance ?

The modern dance movement began in the early 1900s as a rebellion against the formality and structure
of ballet. Dancers wanted to move freely and naturally through space, not just vertical high as was
typical of ballet. They wanted to be free of toe shoes and grasp the floor with bare feet. They wanted to
involve the whole body in their dance, using torso, shoulders, head, arms, hands, even fingers. They
wanted to incorporate the facial expressions that accompany the feelings and emotions of dance. Most
importantly, they wanted their dance to be not just an intellectual and physical endeavour, but creative
one as well.

Modern Dance was born; a dance discipline retaining some ballet technique, expanding upon it and
freeing it to encompass the exciting world of total body involvement and creative expression. Modern
dance may look jazz like, balletic, lyrical or totally different – creating its style for the mood being
explored. The Lion King on Broadway, for instance, modern dance.

Simply, Modern Dance is a creation of movements to match a dancer’s feelings and purpose. Any moves
are fine as long as you learn to execute them well and with meaning.

History of Modern Dance

Modern Dancers still rely on many ballet steps as part of their choreographed modern dance routines.
Modern dance deeply embedded in ballet syllabus. Historically, modern dance began as free form style
lyrical ballet among a community of professional ballet dancers who refused to stop dancing. Isadora
Duncan and Ruth St. Denis promoted modern dance as a way of continuing their dance careers,
according to their biographies. The first modern dances choreographed required no dancing en pointe
or rigid adherence to ballet movement.

A historical study of modern dance makes evident three phases of this dance style:

 The early period from 1880 to 1923

 The middle period from 1923 to1946
 The late modern dance period from 1946 to the present.

Basic Movements of Modern Dance

Basic movements in modern dance are fluidly free style. The ballet step, arabesque, in modern dance is
often performed with oblique angles of the body and in turns. Other ballet steps like chasse, pas de
bourree and port de bra of the arms are similar ballet movements used in modern dance choreography.
Certain modern dance steps are performed on half pointe in bare feet or in modern dance sandals for
stage performances.
Modern dance may include chain tour (chain turns), glissade (gliding steps) that predicate jetes (jumps)
and tour de basque (leaps) and front-to-back and side-to-side steps, like the ballet step “chase”. In
groups, modern dance choreography often includes geometric shapes like triangular, rectangular and
circular shapes using from dancers’ bodies. The use of geometric shapes in modern dance helps the
audience to “see” the theme and subject of each modern dance routine. Today, modern dance is often
confused with “jazz dance“, a dissimilar dance form that also relies on basic ballet movement. It is
performed to faster tempos in contemporary music.

The difference between modern dance and jazz dance is that; modern dance choreography is performed
with a theme in mind. Jazz dance is free form and employs a variety of sharp turns, hops, jumps, leaps
and jazz walks seat to an upbeat style of music. In modern dance, these movements are softer and more
fluid.

Popular Styles

Modern Dance from 1990 to the present has taken a very different approach. Some choreographers and
dancers include in modern dance styles hip hop, lyrical, free style and fusion, a combination of dance
forms like tap, jazz, modern and ballet. Since modern dance is usually performed in theme
choreographic sequences, it projects a message. Choreography of hip hop, fusion, and free style dance
tends to be improvisational and without specific themes. It leans more toward interpretative dance.
Today’s modern dance choreography may or may not be interpretative.

Famous Dancer

Isadora Duncan is considered the First Lady of Modern Dance. Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, Hanya
Holm and Doris Humphrey are earlier famous modern dancers.

In the US, Martha Graham is revered and honoured for her modern dance technique. Among the most
famous dancers is the statuesque Judith Jamison, whose style is a virtual testament to fluidity, grace and
stature in dance.

Other famous dancers include Bela Lewitzky, Lester Horton, Twyla Tarp, Jerome Robbins, Paul Horton,
Daniel Nagrin, Pearl Primus and Erick Hawkins.

(to be ) Twyla Tarp is an actress/dancer/choreographer who is a legend in contemporary modern dance.

Others include David Winters, Eliot Feld and Jaime Rogers. Jazz/modern dance choreographers include
Bob Fosse, Gus Giordano and Luigi.

Considered the founding mother of American modern dance, Isadora Duncan was largely self-taught.
She presented her first recitals in 1898, and by 1900 she was in Europe, where she would spend most of
her remaining life and win the greatest acceptance. Duncan was truly revolutionary. She discarded the
corset, slippers, and tutu of conventional ballet dress, adopting instead tunics that freed the body and
revealed its movement. She used music by Chopin, Beethoven Gluck, Wagner and other first rank
composers.
She danced on concert stages and in opera houses. She spoke of her dancing not as entertainment but
as art with a high moral purpose. Most of all, she insisted upon the essence of dance as movement. Her
vocabulary was simple but performed with a musicality, dynamic subtlety, and charisma that made it
powerfully expressive. In 1904, Duncan established her first school of dance just outside of Berlin, where
she began to develop her theories of dance education and to assemble her famous dance group, later
known as the Isadorables. Between 1904 and 1907, Duncan lived and worked in Greece, Germany,
Russia and Scandanavia.

Ruth St. Denis was raised in a Bohemian environment and was encouraged to perform from a young
age. She studied ballroom and skirt dancing, and was drilled in Delsarte poses by her mother. Her first
professional job was as a variety act in 1894 at Worth’s Family Theatre and Museum in New York.
Important early influences were her work with the eminent director David Belasco, eastern spiritualism
and imagery, along with European travel. She called dances translations (ethnically-inspired movement
that included contemporary dance steps that became famous for their theatricality), which were
inspired by Eastern cultures and mythologies including those from India and Egypt. By 1906 with Radha,
St. Denis had found the essence of her distinctive dance style, which combined spiral form with equal
parts voluptuousness, mysticism, and erotica. She built a stunning career as a soloist and, in 1914,
acquired a professional and personal partner in Ted Shawn. A year later the two opened Denishawn
which, as a school and company, nurtured leaders of the next wave of modern dancers, including
Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman. St. Denis was responsible for most of the
creative work, and Shawn was responsible for teaching technique and composition. In 1933, Shawn
founded his all male dance group, Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers, which was based at Jacob’s Pillow
farm in Massachusetts.

Hanya Holm was born in Germany and studied at the Dalcroze Institute. She studied in the 1920s with
Mary Wigman in Dresden, eventually becoming a member of her company and chief instructor at her
school. In 1913 Holm settled in New York to direct the Wigman Institute founded at the behest of Sol
Hurok. In 1936, in response to rising antifascist sentiment, it was renamed the Hanya Holm School of
Dance. She choreographed successfully on Broadway with dances for Kiss Me, Kate, My Fair Lady and
Camelot. Holm’s teaching emphasized space, and in choreographing, she made regular use of
improvisation. Her theatre work achieved a rare degree of dramatic and choreographic fusion.

Doris Humprey was a choreographic master, theoretician, and creator of the technique known as fall
and recovery. She studied at the Denishawn school in Los Angeles, where her teaching and creative
abilities were quickly recognized. In 1928 she left Denishawn and gave her first independent concert
with Charles Weidman, with whom she formed the Humphrey-Weidman Studio and Company in New
York. From the start her work demonstrated an unerring sense of form, as well as an interest in large-
scale abstract works. Her book, The Art of Making Dances(1959), was based on her theories about dance
composition.

Martha Graham began studying at Denishawn. During the next seven years, Graham evolved from a
student, to a teacher, to one of the company’s best-known performers. She often worked as Ted
Shawn’s partner, and became the co-star of Xochtil, his famous duet about an Indian girl and an Aztec
emperor. In the late 1920s, Graham began working closely with Louis Horst, who she had known when
he was the musical director at Denishawn. Horst introduced Graham to the work of Mary Wigman, the
German modern dancer who studied with Jaques Dalcroze and then with Rudolf von Laban. The style of
dancing Wigman evolved was, in her words, mostly dark, heavy and earthbound. Her style was
introduced to the United States in 1930’s by her student, Hanya Holm.

By 1930, Martha Graham had identified a new system of movement she called contration and release,
which was based on her own interpretation of the Delsartean principle of tension and relaxation. This
method of muscle control gave Graham’s dances and dancers a hard, angular look that contrasted with
the smooth, lyrical bodily motions of Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis.

Comprehension :

1. It is the creation of movements to match a dancer’s feelings and purpose.

2. They wanted to move freely and naturally through space.
3. To what steps modern dancers rely as part of their choreographed modern dance routine?
4. She is considered as the Mother of Modern Dance.
5. She is known as a legendary in contemporary modern dance.
6. She spoke of her dancing not as entertainment but as art with a high moral purpose.
7. She studied ballroom and skirt dancing, and was drilled in Delsarte poses by her mother.
8. Who introduced the Martha Graham style to United States?
9. Who is this dancers who often worked as Ted Shawn’s partner ?
10. She danced on concert stages and in opera houses.