The Origins

In the early twentieth century, a new movement in dance arose. This movement was guided by a few pioneering dancers who began to use dance as a form of personal expression. Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller, Ruth St. Dennis, and her husband and partner Ted Shawn, each made significant contributions to a new type of concert dance in America.

Their dance reflected and challenged the art, philosophy, and issues of their time, explored the cultures of other places and times, made new advances in theatrical lighting and spectacle, and discarded the costumes and artificiality of classical ballet. They were exploring and expressing themselves in a way that had never been seen before. 

Though it often uses the body alignment and movement of ballet, modern dance has developed beyond the vocabulary of ballet. In the 1920s, several dancers who studied with St. Denis (Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman) broke away and developed their own philosophies of modern dance. 

Many of the early modern dance pioneers were women. Modern dance provided women the opportunity to become directors and choreographers. In the ballet world, these roles had been and continue to be dominated by men. Martha Graham, the most recognized of these women, has had an enormous impact on the field of modern dance. Her notion of contraction and release (a torso based movement of a sharp intake of breath followed by a strong exhalation), her ground-breaking dances based on mythology, and her theatrical personality have made her the best known modern dancer of all time. Each new generation of modern dance has inspired another.  

Often the inspiration comes in the form of rebellion against what came before. In the 1950s, Merce Cunningham, a member of Martha Graham’s company, formed his own dance company based on the idea of movement for movement’s sake and the use of chance methods of choreography. Paul Taylor, who danced for both Cunningham and Graham, further shaped modern dance by choreographing dances about real people and the everyday activities of life. Alvin Ailey brought ethnic, social, and political issues to the forefront. 

The next rebellion came in the 1960s, when dancers such as Trisha Brown rejected the codified and strict technique they felt modern dance had become. Experimental and minimal dance, sometimes called post-modern, developed during this time, as did contact improvisation. These dance makers were also influenced by the societal changes that were taking place in the United States during the 1960s. However not all choreographers were interested in rejecting the past. One in particular, Twyla Tharp, embraced all that had come before. By combining ballet with modern dance and adding her own movement ideas, she developed a style that was enthusiastically embraced by audiences.