MODERN DANCE: THE ART OF THE ICONOCLAST

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MODERN DANCETHE ART OF THE ICONOCLAST

• THREE QUESTIONS (AND ANSWERS TO FOLLOW).
• 1. How has the development of modern dance
  revolutionized dance performance?
• 2. Isadora Duncan (1877-1927), Martha Graham
  (1894-1991), and Katherine Dunham (1909) each had
  her own vision of what dance should say. How
  were their views similar? How were there views
  different? What is each ultimately known for?
• 3. How does modern dance make dance more
  accessible to everyone (ie, Judson Church, Liz
  Lerman, White Oak Project)?

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Question 1 How has the development of modern
dance revolutionized dance performance?

• Freedom of expression is key to the revolution of
  all the arts in the 20th century. Modern dance
  liberated the individual voice, allowing a
  great diversity of styles and points of view to
  emerge during the 20th century. Rather than
  perpetuate the limited, well-defined set of steps
  and movement which typified ballet of the 19th
  century, modern dance valued invention and
  innovation, which challenged and invigorated
  ballet as well. Modern dance choreographers
  often worked from their own bodies as the source
  for movement inventioncreating as many
  approaches to dance as there were bodies to dance
  breaking the mold of those who came before them.

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Question 2

• Isadora Duncan (1877-1927), Martha Graham
  (1894-1991), and Katherine Dunham (1909) each had
  her own vision of what dance should say. How
  were their views similar? How were there views
  different? What is each ultimately known for?

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Isadora Duncan Founding Mother of Modern Dance

• In her own words I am an enemy of the Ballet,
  which I consider a false and preposterous art
  Ballet requires a deformed skeleton and
  sterile movements whose purpose is to create
  the delusion that the law of gravitation does not
  exist for them. Duncan defied artifice and
  created dance from three sources 1.nature, 2.the
  art of classical Greece, and 3.inside herself.
  Barefoot and free from the confines of the
  corsets of the day, she danced aloneas an
  individual in naturalistic movements (based
  upon running, skipping, jumping) matching the
  dynamics of serious concert music (Bach,
  Chopin, Schubert, Beethoven and Wagner).

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MARTHA GRAHAM FOUNDING MOTHER OF MODERN DANCE
TECHNIQUE

• Graham rejected the romanticism of Duncan and the
  oriental borrowings of Ruth St. Denis and strove
  to create a new vocabulary of movements that
  could reflect contemporary life-angular, jarring,
  sharp, and intense. She created a technique
  based upon breathing-Contraction (exhalation of
  breath with accompanying contraction of the front
  of the torso) and release (inhalation of breath
  with accompanying extension of the torso). The
  technique allowed for an ingenious use of the
  floor, and gravity, a first in modern dance. Her
  choreographic themes included sexuality,
  psychological struggles, and Greek myths. Graham
  created over 170 dance works. The 20th centurys
  modern dance icon, she gave her first concert in
  1926, Graham continued to tour the Martha Graham
  Dance Company and create dances for the company
  right up until her death in 1991.

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KATHERINE DUNHAM UNCOVERING THE ROOTS OF AFRICAN
AMERICAN DANCE

• Born in 1909, Dunham performed extensive
  fieldwork-particularly in Haiti- to enable her to
  create modern dance from the roots of African
  American dance. She strove to develop a dance
  technique, based in African dance, that would
  bring Black dance to equal status of white dance
  in the dance world and, in her words, give to
  the Negro dance-student the courage really to
  study, and a reason to do so. She created the
  Dunham technique based upon the Africanist
  aesthetic principles summarized by Brenda Dixon
  Gottschild (see DAN 2100 African Roots web
  page). Of all modern dance pioneers, Dunham s
  work was most broadly based. She worked not only
  on the concert stage, but on Broadway and in
  film additionally, she choreographed Aida at
  the Metropolitan Opera in 1963.

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Question 3. How does modern dance make dance
more accessible to everyone (ie, Judson Church,
Liz Lerman, White Oak Project)?

• Modern dance is often an inclusive art form.
  Modern dance has challenged ballets
  stereotypical requirements for dancers thin body
  type, youth, elite technique (ie, perfect
  turnout), and ballets dependence upon
  music/set/theatrical conventions. Like modern
  art in general, modern dance focuses on the
  value of the unique voice of the individual, and
  has created a structure where difference could be
  explored artistically.

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JUDSON CHURCH ORIGINS OF POSTMODERNISM

• Concurrent with the explosion of civil rights
  movements, the early 1960s birthed postmodernism
  in dance at the Judson Memorial Church.
  Experimentalists, such as, Robert Dunn, Lucinda
  Childs, Yvonne Rainer, Deborah Hay and Trisha
  Brown challenged the (now) conventional modern
  dance and sought freedom for the body and
  expression unencumbered by technique and
  conventions. The Judson Church movement
  refreshed modern dance and wiped the slate clean
  for fresh perspectives to follow.

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LIZ LERMAN DANCERS OF THE THIRD AGE

• In the 1980s Washington, D.C. based
  choreographer, Liz Lerman, broke the age barrier
  with her company Dancers of the Third Age.
  Company members ranged in age from 18 to 82, and
  danced in disarmingly honest pieces based upon
  their unique life experiences. In a duet, Lerman
  explores the loving dream/memory of an 82
  year-old womans sweetheart who has died in WW
  II. Themes of sexual longing, and love challenge
  stereotypes of elderly as less than in the
  physical and emotional realms and liberates
  elderly and others to value the depth of emotions
  and longings, at any age.

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WHITE OAK DANCE PROJECT BARYSKNIKOVs BRAINCHILD

• Mikhail Baryshnikov is considered to be, along
  with Rudolf Nureyev, a premier male ballet dancer
  of the 20th century. Baryshinikov chose to
  extend his dancing career through modern dance
  and the creation of the White Oak Dance Project.
  It is a repertory company that focuses on the
  creation of modern dance works by renown modern
  choreographers for mid-career to late-career
  dancers. Rather than mourn the loss of the
  elite ballet technique that made him so famous as
  a younger (and extraordinarily virtuosic) ballet
  dancer, the White Oak modern repertory allows
  Baryshnikov to explore his individual strengths
  and unique movement qualities, and continue to
  develop as a mature performing artist.

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End You know the answers now

• THREE QUESTIONS 1. How has the development
  of modern dance revolutionized dance
  performance?2. Isadora Duncan (1877-1927),
  Martha Graham (1894-1991), and Katherine Dunham
  (1909) each had her own vision of what dance
  should say. How were their views similar? How
  were there views different? What is each
  ultimately known for? 3. How does modern dance
  make dance more accessible to everyone (ie,
  Judson Church, Liz Lerman, White Oak Project)?