Modern Dance Herstory
The Beginnings of Modern Dance
Developed in the 20th century, primarily in the United States and Germany , modern dance resembles modern art and music in being experimental and distinct from the rigid formalism of classical ballet and the show dancing of the musical comedy or variety stage. Modern dance pioneers included Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller, and Ruth St. Denis in the United States, Rudolf von Laban and Mary Wigman in Germany. Each sought to inspire audiences to a new awareness of inner or outer realities, a goal shared by all subsequent modern dancers.
 |
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. Although Duncan established schools and had many imitators, her improvisational technique was too personalized to be carried on by direct successors. The work of the two other American pioneers was far less abstract although no less free. Loie Fuller used dance to imitate and illustrate natural phenomena: the flame, the flower, the butterfly. Experimenting with stage lighting and costume, she created illusionistic effects that remained unique in the history of dance theater until the works of Alwin Nikolais in the 1960s. |
|
 |
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 be cam e 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: Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman. 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. Exiled in the 1930s, he immigrated to England , where he established (1946) the Art of Movement Studio in Manchester and worked until his death on his system of notation. After studying with Laban, Wigman performed in Germany and opened her own school in Dresden (1920). She became the most influential German exponent of expressive movement and toured extensively. Although her school was closed by the Nazis, she reopened it in Berlin in 1948. 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. Martha Graham explored themes from Americana , Greek mythology, and the Old Testament; she viewed music merely as a frame for the dance. The Graham Technique emphasizes an inner stage and often moves inward toward the center of the body. Contraction is |
| usually initiated in the pelvis and involves exhaling breath while concaving the entire torso which is released by inhaling and lengthening the torso. In more than 180 works created during a career of over fifty years, Graham developed an original technique involving the expression of primal emotions through stylized bodily movement of great intensity.
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. |
|
 |
The Humphrey-Weidman technique was originated by Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman. Doris wanted to discover how the human body moved in a “natural” state. She developed a dance technique based on the body’s “fall and recovery.” The further a person leans from a balanced, centered position, the more likely they are to fall. Doris ’s view-all movement lies somewhere |
| between these two extremes.”the arc between two deaths.” The technique stresses outward movement that defies gravity and is resolved when returned to normal position. 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. Her themes were social and often heroic in scale, e.g., the trilogy New Dance (1935), which treats human relationships. Charles Weidman’s gestural mime of movements abstracted from everyday situations provided a different kind of social commentary-comic satire. Winning ardent devotees, the Graham and Humphrey-Weidman companies dominated modern dance for 20 years; the former continues as a major company today. Later Dancers By the end of World War II, young choreographers had begun breaking the rules of the modern dance establishment-creating 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. |
|
 |
Erick Hawkins studied under George Balanchine at his School of American Ballet and was later the first male dancer to join the Martha Graham Company. Hawkins opened his own school in 1951. His technique is based on the principals of kinesiology. His concept of dance is best summed up in the following quote. “The dancing body is a clear place… effortless movement is beautiful movement.” - Erick Hawkins |
| Foremost of this third generation of modern dancers is Merce Cunningham, whose company bred avant-garde choreographers for more than 25 years. Cunningham’s style of dance incorporates elements of ballet and the Graham Technique. This technique is strong, balanced, rhythmic and requires weight shifts and fast changes of direction with a primary concern on constant interplay between time and space. He also released dance from traditional musical constraints by using electronic music and other compositions of his musical director, John Cage. 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 post-World War II troupes. Another of the third generation, 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 social and artistic ferment of the 1960s provided fertile ground for even more radical departures into what later became known as postmodern dance. Twyla Tharp did away with any sound accompaniment that might distract the viewer’s attention from the dance itself. She also took dance outside the theater, staging it in such spaces as the staircase of the Metropolitan Museum of New York City and New York ’s Central Park . Yvonne Rainer pioneered in the use of improvisations based on ordinary, non-dance movements ranging from acrobatics, to military marching, to sports and games. Steve Paxton incorporated even more mundane actions into his dances (e.g., dressing and undressing) and went so far as to perform a duet with a chicken. Paxton, like other dancers and pop artists of the 1960s and 70s, was largely concerned with breaking down the barriers between dancers and audience, between art and life. The Combining of Forms
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright © 1994, 2000, Columbia University Press |
|
